The Davis City Council passed a resolution on Monday 3/25/2019 with detailed instructions to staff regarding parking downtown. The Davisite received the specifics of the resolution from the City Clerk on 3/29/2019. The specifics exactly as delivered to the Davisite are as follows:
The below petition is being circulated at change.org. It was started within the last 2 days – after the recent neighborhood meetings. At the time of this posting it already has 270+ signatures.
The petition can be signed here: **sign**
By Char Henwood
A lot happened at the meeting at the firehouse yesterday.
Mayor Lee, Council Member Frerichs and City staff got an earful from the El Macero and South Davis Community about the many problems with the recent Mace Blvd "improvements." After extended comments they looked quite crestfallen.
This comments were presented at Wednesday's Broadband Advisory Task Force meeting.
Please be wary of granting any private enterprise exclusive use of city facilities.
Regarding wifi and cellular service, around 40-years ago, when the technology was new to most of us, Davis and many other US cities were seduced by carriers into granting exclusives in exchange for a few public access channels. Few would have imagined that these carriers would merge into what is now a handful of enormous corporations controlling distribution of data, communications, and information.
The channels “given” cities have proven to be essentially worthless as they exist only as long as mostly unpaid volunteers are willing or available to maintain them. In what has developed as a world of hundreds of choices and the ease with which live or recorded video can now be transmitted to managed or unlimited audiences, viewing through their pocketable phones, tablets or their computers, there is little evidence of measurable viewing of of the so-called “public” cable channels, Davis’ among them.
Please examine who benefits the most from that historical decision to grant exclusive access to one corporation.
At the Broadband Advisory Task Force (BATF) meeting last night, the BATF recommended that the City Council defer action on Staff’s proposed Astound Fiber Contract. If approved, the Astound Fiber Contract would grant one fiber company, Astoud/Wave, exclusivity on building out fiber in Davis, precluding a community-owned alternative. The following letter was submitted to the Davis City Council in opposition to Staff's proposal.
It’s my understanding that the purpose of city government is to act as both the elected and the paid representatives advocating for the needs and welfare of the entire city, including all its citizens, schools, small and large businesses, police, fire, infrastructure, etc. What I heard last night at the task force meeting is that our city government is considering taking care of only itself by accepting a free service from a large for-profit corporation in exchange for throwing the entire rest of the city under the bus. While city government gets free high-speed fiber connectivity to many of its facilities for 30 years, Astound is going to be given free rein to reap huge profits by charging whatever it wants to everyone else in Davis. There will be no competition to control prices, no incentive to innovate, no guarantees of net neutrality or customer privacy, and no requirement that harder-to-reach areas of our city will receive any service at all. Davis will be at the mercy of one more utility monopoly.
This is just wrong on so many levels, it’s disgusting.
PETITION TO CITY OF DAVIS TO RESTORE MACE BOULEVARD TO TWO LANES (BOTH WAYS)
The “Traffic Calming” project on Mace Boulevard was unnecessary, was not properly presented to the residents of South Davis (especially the current residents), was obsolete and ill-conceived when the plan was completed in 2013, and since its installation has created massive congestion, dangerous traffic issues, more safety issues for the bicyclists and pedestrians it was purported to protect, rampant road rage, and in short has seriously disrupted the lives of all Davis residents and especially South Davis residents, as demonstrated by our daily experiences.
Despite city planners’ insistence to the contrary, the changes to Mace have resulted in a situation where emergency vehicles will be unable to access neighborhoods and evacuations will be impossible to carry out. No matter how many lights are flashing and how loudly the sirens wail, there is no place for gridlocked traffic to go to get out of first responders’ way. When the area is gridlocked, side streets are also blocked, so there are no alternate routes for first responders either. In some neighborhoods, the “improvements” have created issues for ADA access to vehicles, another safety concern.
Following is a copy of a letter sent by Alan Pryor, a Natural Resources Commission member, concerning pesticide use in Davis and the qualifications required for consideration for the IPM Specialist position for which the City is now seeking a replacement. The letter was sent to Stan Gryzco (Public Works Assistant Director), Richard Tsai (Environmental Resources Manager), and John McNearny (Wildlife Resource Specialist) as the top 3 City officials overseeing the as-yet-to-be-replaced Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Specialist.
Readers may recall that the previous beloved IPM Specialist, Martin Guerena left the position under unusual circumstances and was subsequently awarded the City's Environmental Recognition Award last year in the Individual Category for his decade of service to the City.
Yesterday, I wrote an article wondering whether the City Council would listen to citizen’s objections to the downtown parking proposal, drawing attention to a pattern of problematic communication between Davisites and Council. Last night, they unanimously approved what is being billed as a “compromise” between the proposal and what Davisites wanted (which was, for the most part, no change to what we have currently).
How did the Council do?
This being winter grading season at the University, I’ve got grades on my mind. I give the Council a ‘C+’ for process and a ‘C’ for outcome.
Tonight, the City Council will decide whether or not to convert approximately 32% of downtown parking to metered parking spaces, 7 days a week, 10 AM-10 PM. The opposition to the City’s proposal from citizens and business owners has been vocal and voluminous.
Will the City Council nonetheless vote to proceed with the plan? And if they do, will voters next spring remember and think twice about re-electing incumbents?
This is not the first indication that the Council isn’t communicating well with its citizens.
With just a little over a week left of the March Cool Cuisine vegan Burger Battle, I thought now would be a good time to share the burgers that I’ve tried so far. I hope to try at least one or two more before the end of the month. (Full disclosure: I’m not actually vegan, more like a flexitarian).
My partner and I have tried four of the entries, focusing not on the burgers-trying-to-be-like-meat, but rather on the more unusual offerings. Our burgers have come from the Davis Food Co-op, Yeti Restaurant, Redrum, and Zumapoke & Lush Ice (with the Upper Crust Bakery providing vegan buns for the Co-op and Zumapoke). All were creative, flavorful, and, most importantly, delicious. Of the four, the one from the Co-op is probably my favorite… but not by much. Each was outstanding in its own way.
Davisite 