* Editor’s note: Each of the five candidates for Davis City Council were asked to pick a place in Davis important to them as the setting of their interviews for this series of profiles, which will publish alphabetically this week.

For Lucas Frerichs, it’s the Davis Farmers Market.

Nothing feels more like Davis to Frerichs than a Saturday morning spent with wife Stacie — and the third member of their family, Poppy the Wonderdog — strolling through the vendor stands stuffed with fresh produce and surfing the waves of Davis residents who ascend upon Central Park every week, without fail.

“The Farmers Market is a very special place for me and also for my wife and I,” Frerichs said while visiting the market Saturday morning. The 32-year-old candidate has lived in Davis for 16 years.

“We spend a lot of our time here, and we believe in the notion of supporting our local farmers,” he said. “It’s also pretty much one of the major heartbeats of this community.”

Recently, Frerichs and his wife have been attending the Farmers Market for a different reason.

On the north end of the long line of vendors, alongside the booths of his competitors — all of whom are seeking three seats opening on the dais in June — Frerichs has set up a stand of his own.

And he’s not selling just-ripe tomatoes, or eggs from his backyard chickens.

Instead, under a green canopy, Frerichs flies a banner that lists the three “guiding” principles on which he sells his campaign: courage, commitment and collaboration.

The three C’s are the three ways in which he describes his candidacy for the City Council.

“I feel like ‘courage’ is the notion of sticking to one’s beliefs even in spite of criticism and I think that has been lacking (on the City Council), and could be improved upon,” Frerichs said.

As for “commitment,” Frerichs detailed the four city commissions on which he has served over the past decade, in addition to the time he spent on Davis Food Co-op board of directors and his involvement with several nonprofit organizations in the community.

Frerichs also serves on the city’s Innovation Park Task Force, a panel created in 2010 to explore peripheral sites for future business park development to accommodate medium-scale businesses.

“It’s about working together, trying to come to some sort of common good, and I believe that I have a lot of experience in that,” Frerichs said of the “collaborative” part of his platform. “But it’s also something I think could be really furthered on the City Council. Things have gotten better over the past few years in terms of people working together, but there’s still a long way to go.”

Frerichs has had years to put that collaborative spirit to work, serving on the boards of directors of Yolo Basin Foundation, Davis Media Access, Saving California Communities, California Center for Cooperative Development, Acme Theatre Company and the Yolo County Democratic Party.

But beyond his platform, Frerichs — who in his professional life works as a policy consultant dealing with natural resources issues at the state level — is running on an assortment of issues that he believes are important to the city of Davis and its residents.

At the top of that list sits the city’s budget.

“We’re in an unprecedented fiscal era and it’s really a new dynamic in terms of city and state financing, investment in infrastructure, community planning,” Frerichs said.

“I think there needs to be a comprehensive line-by-line examination of the city’s budget and really, there also needs to be a community conversation about the types of programs and services citizens want in this town.”

Frerichs believes much about how Davis can craft contracts for its public employee groups — which plays a major role in balancing the budget — will be decided at the state level. Still, he believes employees must be open to sharing in the consequences of budget cuts.

“This is a time of shared sacrifice,” Frerichs said. “Everyone needs to be willing to help share in potential cuts that need to be made.”

For many Davis residents, no issue may be of higher priority than the city’s water utility. Frerichs believes Davis needs to rely on more than just groundwater.

“I think that it’s very important to have a diversity of options for our water, so I support the concept of the water project,” Frerichs said. “I just think the details of how the rate structure is going to be handled, and particularly in this day and age, in this economy, in terms of unprecedented uncertain fiscal times, I think it’s a shock for a lot of people to see potentially high increase in water rates.”

Frerichs also said he would like the city to consider a publicly owned utility.

With his four years of service on the Planning Commission, city planning also remains important to the candidate.

As someone who has proposed, been approved for and finished construction on an infill project in Davis — a project where he, his wife and their dog currently make their home — his planning principles, in fact, begin with infill.

“I’m sold on infill development, frankly, because we did it ourselves,” Frerichs said. “We built an infill project a few years ago where we live. As a community, we talk a lot about doing infill and then we don’t actually do a lot of it.

“It’s something that’s very important to me and that’s sort of what guides me now in terms of how I view planning. I think there a lot of opportunities downtown to do additional infill projects.”

Regardless of the issues, however, Frerichs believes that serving on the City Council is the next step for him to give back to the community.

“I moved here for my senior year of high school 16 years ago and I fell in love with the community,” Frerichs said. “I decided to stay, I met my wife here and we’ve made our lives here.

“And throughout that time I have been dedicated to the community and would really relish the opportunity to continue that dedication to the community by serving on the Davis City Council.”

For more information on Frerichs’ campaign, visit www.lucasforcitycouncil.org.

— Reach Tom Sakash at [email protected] or (530) 747-8057. Follow him on Twitter @TomSakash

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Lucas Frerichs, a candidate for the Davis City Council, and his wife Stacie take a walk with their German shorthaired pointer, Poppy, through Central Park. Wayne Tilcock/Enterprise photo

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