Meet the 27-year-old mayor about to double her Bay Area city’s population

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Brisbane Mayor Madison Davis is 27, paints faces at children’s birthday parties for extra cash and lives at home with her parents because she can’t afford a place of her own.

While she’s by no means a typical mayor, she is a typical victim of the Bay Area’s affordable housing shortage. And in that sense, she’s the ideal person to lead her tiny city as it sets out to do something it has resisted for years — build a ton more housing.

Last November, Brisbane voters approved erecting between 1,800 and 2,200 homes, plus commercial and hotel space, on the mostly vacant Brisbane Baylands site just south of San Francisco, after state legislators threatened to intervene to get the housing built. It’s a massive undertaking for a city of fewer than 5,000 people. By the time it’s finished, Brisbane’s population is expected to double.

It’s also immensely controversial. The land, a former industrial site and municipal dump, is polluted and not yet safe for habitation.

But Davis has grand plans for the site. She sat down with this news organization to discuss how Brisbane will accommodate so many new residents, how the project has divided the community and how she hopes to bring it back together, and why Brisbane is ready to leave the ranks of other Bay Area cities routinely criticized for not building enough housing. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q How do you expect the Brisbane Baylands project to change the city?

A First and foremost, we’re looking at doubling the size of our town. And so with that comes so many changes. There’s the possibility that a high school could go there. For years, Brisbane has really wanted to have a high school because right now we don’t have one.

With a development that large you have a bunch of new businesses that are going to come to town. You have new recreational opportunities. You have so many more citizens, and I think there’s a process there of trying to make sure that we all feel like one connected city and not two separate entities. Really we’re trying to figure out how we’re going to manage all those things.

Q What’s the biggest worry you have about the potential impact?

A The thing we’re all most worried about is the toxicity of the site. A lot of it is uncharacterized or unknown. And it’s fill, so it’s highly susceptible to liquefaction. I want to make sure that the people that go there are safe, the people that live there are safe. And I feel very responsible for that.

And I want to make sure that those people who live out at the Baylands feel like they are part of Brisbane, and they know they live in Brisbane — they don’t live in San Francisco, they live in Brisbane.

Q How are you going to make sure residents there are safe?

A That’s really up to DTSC (the state Department of Toxic Substances Control) and Regional Water Quality Control Board — those are the agencies that oversee that process, and so we’re really trusting that they’re going to do a good job. That’s kind of part of what’s difficult, because we aren’t remediation experts and we can’t pretend to be. We do have a community advisory group called the BBCAG, and we kind of work together with those agencies to bring up concerns. We also hired a remediation consultant, Dr. Lee.

Q A big part of the reason this project has become so well known is because of its potential to help ease the Bay Area’s housing shortage. Are you seeing the effects of that shortage in Brisbane? 

A I think that every city feels the effects of the housing crisis. Me personally, I live at home with my parents. And so I’m probably the only elected official, in San Mateo County at least, that lives at home. And I don’t know when I’m going to be able to afford to move out.

I’m (also) seeing this really affect a lot of seniors. I’ve had a number of neighbors who, their rent got increased or their landlord no longer wanted to renew their lease, so they were looking at other housing options and they just couldn’t afford market-rate rent.

Q Does Brisbane have an obligation to help fix those Bay Area housing problems?

A I think everyone, every city, has a role in providing more housing. But I think that there is something still to be said for local control. And I think that there is a balance that we can strike there with cities taking that step and taking that initiative to provide local housing and doing it on their terms.

And I think that the cities that do take the initiative and provide housing really should be commended for the work that they’re doing. For the size of our town, 1,800 to 2,200 units is a huge number. Even for any city, but specifically for us. That’s huge. And I’m still not hearing ‘you did a good job.’

Q Do you feel like Brisbane gets a bad rap?

A I think Brisbane is still spoken about in the context of a city that is resistant to housing, because of things that have happened in the past. Yeah in the past Brisbane was very resistant. But we got it together. I mean, we completely mobilized our whole community. That is a challenge to do.

The vote for Measure JJ really boiled down to local control. That’s why I think Brisbane mobilized together and said: hey, we do realize there is a housing crisis, we do realize that we have a vast amount of land and we can contribute to easing the situation as best as we can, but we want those decisions to be on our terms. So I’m hoping that going forward we’re going to get recognized for doing that. And I want that for my citizens too, because they struggled with this vote. It wasn’t easy. And I think in a lot of ways it divided our community amongst friends, amongst neighbors.

Q How do you come back from such a divisive vote and reconnect the community? 

A For me it’s really about reminding people that we all have the same goal. We all want the land to be safe. We all want a community that feels like Brisbane. So if we’re going to make that happen, then we all need to contribute our voice and we need to get involved. We are working with Home for All, and we’re coming up with a couple of workshops where we’re going to ask the community to participate. So I say to people: would you rather add your voice to the mix, or have something happen without your input and then not be pleased with what the outcome is?

Q With market-rate housing so expensive in the Bay Area, how are you going to make sure Baylands provides homes everyone can afford?

A I think ultimately that really boils down to the developer. We are going to tell them what our community is looking for, and they have to be willing to build those things. (Brisbane requires 15 percent of new units must be priced below market rate.)

Q How is Brisbane going to make room for the new residents? And how will the city’s resources and roads accommodate them? 

A Well the city is going to obviously have to provide additional services to handle the doubling of our population. But the way that the measure was written was to ensure that whatever the development comes out to be, whatever is created there, can’t cost the city money. There has to be enough commercial (tax revenue) to offset all the costs that are going to have to go into all the infrastructure that the city is going to need to provide.

We are going to need to provide more fire personnel, more police officers. In terms of transportation, I’d like to see a shuttle network — a shuttle that could take people from central Brisbane to the Baylands and vice versa. Obviously there is a Caltrain station there too. I think it is a really underutilized, under-serviced station, and I’d like to see that station have more trains coming through it on a regular basis.

Even the way that energy is used out on the site — I can see some creative solutions happening, making sure that it’s energy neutral or that it’s generating its own energy. Creative solutions around (recycling water). I think that there’s an opportunity there for this to be a community that people write about. That people refer to. I really think the sky’s the limit.

Want to weigh in on what happens to Brisbane Baylands?

The first community engagement workshop to discuss the Brisbane Baylands project will be from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. March 21 at the Mission Blue Center, 475 Mission Blue Dr., Brisbane. There will be dinner at 6 p.m.

Madison Davis

Title: Mayor of Brisbane
Age: 27
Residence: She lives with her parents in Brisbane, the city where she grew up
Education: College of San Mateo, Skyline College and San Francisco State University, where she graduated with a degree in business
Past Positions: Secretary of the Brisbane Parks & Recreation Commission and senior account executive for San Francisco-based loyalty program operator FiveStars. In addition to her role as mayor, she currently serves as CEO of the Brisbane Chamber of Commerce and runs a home staging business with her mother.

Five facts about Madison Davis 

1. She was 24 when she was elected to the Brisbane City Council, making her San Mateo County’s youngest elected official.

2. She has four adopted cats: Stella, Luna, Shiloh and Penny.

3. She paints faces at children’s birthday parties and other events.

4. Her friends describe her as a real-life version of Leslie Knope from the TV show “Parks and Recreation.”

5. She has an annual pass to Disneyland.