Back in the late 1980s a Daily Democrat photographer took a “grab art” photograph of a City of Davis sandwich board street sign. Unfortunately, the sign was near the southern entrance to Woodland on West Street.

You could tell the signs from the two cities apart because Davis had “COD” stenciled in red on its white wooden panels, whereas Woodland had “COW.”

At the time, both cities were in fierce debate about establishing a two-mile buffer of agricultural land so they wouldn’t eventually grow together wiping out farmland in the process. The sign just inflamed a Woodland city councilman.

According to a secondhand story, Councilman Dudley Holman found the COD sign and dumped it the rear seat of his Volkswagen Beetle and drove to Davis where city limits where he left it on the side of the road. This was just a story, however, and the person who told it to me didn’t like Dudley all that much, so it could have been made up.

Fast forward a few decades, however, and it appears as though Davis administrators have spread to Woodland and now Yolo County governments. It makes me wonder if Woodland and the county overall won’t one day resemble Davis just as places in Idaho are starting to take on a California style given the people moving there.

It’s also much like Woodland’s “North North Davis,” that’s located in the Spring Lake Subdivision. People working in Davis can’t afford to live there so they bought new, much cheaper homes in that southeastern portion of Woodland where they are only nine or so miles from Davis.

The latest transplant is Davis City Manager Mike Webb, who has been tapped to serve as county administrator, replacing interim administrator Dirk Brazil, who — you guessed it — served as city manager for Davis from 2014 to 2017. Prior to that he was acting as assistant county administrator for Yolo County from 2006 to 2014.

But, wait, there’s more.

Back in March 2012, Woodland’s City Council hired Paul Navazio as city manager. Navazio at the time had been serving as Davis’s assistant city manager since 2008, except for an 11-month period when he acted as interim city manager.

Navazio, in turn, hired Ken Hiatt in May 2013, bringing him from Davis where he had been working as a community development director. He filled a similar role in Woodland until being named assistant city manager/community and economic development director in August 2016.

Navazio retired in early 2020, and Hiatt began serving as interim city manager on March 7, until the “interim” was removed from his title in late July 2020.

All of these people are very capable with decades of experience. Webb has decades of time on the job in Davis as did Navazio and Hiatt. Each have brought new ideas on how to run their respective organizations.

Navazio, for example, was a finance wizard. He helped bring about the Woodland-Davis Water Project as well as the aquifer-recovery system that provides the city with clean water year-round.

Hiatt has carried on that tradition, keeping the city on firm financial footing while putting a priority on environmental initiatives, managing to cut the community’s carbon footprint by spearheading new bicycle lanes among other things, upgrading the city’s water and sewer systems along with working to attract new businesses and addressing homelessness.

I have nothing against any of these administrators. They are all in my opinion very capable public servants.

But the question has to be asked if the ideas and initiatives that have made Davis, Davis, haven’t rubbed off on Woodland and the rest of Yolo County?

I wonder how Dudley would have felt about that?

Jim Smith is the former editor of The Daily Democrat, retiring in 2021 after a 27-year career at the paper.