Agreed. I'd say my point still stands because duplicated database calls affect performance and scalability and this can grind the project to a halt at a certain

Agreed. I'd say my point still stands because duplicated database calls affect performance and scalability and this can grind the project to a halt at a certain point. Also this refactor is much more dangerous/probably buggy. On the other hand refactoring your data logic is just business as usual, and you will probably do it in both cases anyway.