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Davisite Banner. Left side the bicycle obelisk at 3rd and University. Right side the trellis at the entrance to the Arboretum.

Month: August 2023

  • Locally produced, “Yellow Skies” Music Video for Climate Action

    Yellow Skies Cover(From press release) On Friday the locally produced Yellow Skies launched a YouTube music video from the Fridays for Future noon time Davis 5th and B location.  "We are starting from a shoestring and the viewership is growing steadily. We have several hundred views and some really enthusiastic reviews."
     
    @eliotlarson7422
    So powerful! Thank you ❤
    @sarahnovick3168
    So moving!!
    @geraldineclemens5150
    Heartfelt song she does beautiful job. Thanks

     

    Watch here:

     Yellow Skies asks you to join in the work and to declare a climate emergency, a national climate emergency. It is not an emergency to run around in chaos. It is an emergency called to calmly stop using fossil fuels and go into hyperdrive on local food, locally sourced just-about-everything and to produce lots of renewable energy – and to do it quickly. 
     
    The Yellow Skies music video is built around a song. "The song aims to make an enjoyable and meaningful listening experience about what our youth are experiencing, what we are all experiencing." Yellow Skies starts and finishes with clips of youth climate activists speaking out for all of us to take action and points to a few of the many organizations leading the way and demanding change to policies that protect fossil fuel use.

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  • Letter: $1/2 Million Picnic Structure for Arroyo Is Excessive

    Picni_Page_10
    Dear Council Members,

    We are very appreciative of Council Member Partida's pulling of item B, the “Arroyo Park Picnic Area Shade Structure Project,'' from the consent calendar July 18. Given the magnitude of the proposed financial commitment, and the fact that the final cost differed so greatly from what the Recreation and Park Commission had been asked to consider, it was certainly appropriate to do so. We continue to hope that even at this point one of the four council members who voted in favor of the project will ask for reconsideration and that the council will vote to send this item back to the RPC.

    As you know, at the July 18 meeting, the council, in a four to one vote, approved funding in the amount of $407,675 for an open-air structure that would house six new picnic tables and two barbecues. No plumbing. No wiring. No funds set aside for future maintenance. At the cost of not replacing a tree that had died and of removing precious green space from a well-used and aesthetically pleasing, shady expanse of lawn — an unwelcome departure from the original park plans. A project as staff-driven as any we’ve seen. And this vote was based on grossly misleading testimony from Davis city staff.

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  • Solano Park, UCD’s opportunity to start building higher-density student housing

    Mesa

    UC Irvine's Mesa Court part of their Middle Earth complex of student housing including three 6-story building of beautiful student housing that the are hugely popular with the students. https://educationsnapshots.com/projects/4672/uc-irvine-mesa-court-towers/

    By Eileen M. Samitz

    While a recent article by UCD Chancellor May opened with his goal for UCD to be a good neighbor to Davis, there’s much more UCD can, and needs to do to reach that goal.

    Historically, in 1989 UCD signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the City of Davis, in which UCD promised to not have “sharp” enrollment increases to avoid impacting the City,  that it would provide more on-campus housing to accommodate its student’s needs, and that it would not exceed 26,000 students by 2006.

    None of these promises were kept. UCD enrollment continued to accelerate, but for the next two decades production of on-campus student housing did not keep pace with the expanding student population. Instead, UCD executed “master leases” with the owners of local multi-family housing complexes, which reserved those apartments exclusively for UCD students. Because UCD is tax-exempt, this practice allowed the owners of those properties to then claim a property tax exemption, thereby depriving the City and County of much needed tax revenue. 

    UCD has a long history of missing on-campus student housing targets. In November 2000, the UC Board of Regents  released a report titled “UC Housing for the 21st Century,” which assigned  UCD a  goal of 11,143 on-campus beds by 2012, but UCD missed that goal by 1,835 beds, Then, UCD’s 2003 Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) anticipated that UCD would house 10,800 students on-campus by 2016, but missed that target by 1,400 beds.

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  • Hot Davis Days Cars & Coffee is Sunday

    CoffeeAndCars

    Attendees enjoy the 2022 Hot Davis Days Cars & Coffee event. (Chris Lossin, CPP, Aperture Alley Photography)

    (From press release) Davis Downtown will present its third annual Hot Davis Days Cars & Coffee event on Sunday, Aug. 13 in Central Park, 301 C St.

    The event, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., is free for participants and attendees. Vintage, new, electric and other specialty vehicles are welcome. No registration necessary. Participants are asked to bring their cars to the Farmers Market Pavilion between 9:30 and 10 a.m. Once that area is full, overflow vehicles for the show may park on C Street, between Third and Fourth streets.

    Patrons and participants may enjoy treats from Upper Crust Baking, and coffee from Pachamama. Davis Downtown is collaborating with several other groups to make this year the largest and best Cars & Coffee event yet. These include the car-enthusiast groups Cars and Coffee Sac, Davis Motorsports and Yacht Club Premier Car Club.

    For details, visit https://davisdowntown.com/hot-davis-days-cars-coffee/. For additional information, email info@davisdowntown.com.

    Davis Downtown leads and energizes the downtown as the primary business, entertainment and cultural center of Davis. Alive with activity seven days a week, downtown Davis draws locals and visitors alike to experience fine food and beverages, retail, professional services, arts and entertainment in an extraordinary and sustainable gathering place.

  • Concerns regarding our pesticide spraying program

    BiteBy David Abramson

    Dear Neighbors,

    You may have seen that over the past several months, I have been sharing regularly with notifications about and my concerns regarding the pesticide spraying program that’s being done by the Sacramento Yolo Mosquito Vector District in our County. Yes I'd rather be doing something else but alas, many people don't even know this is happening, so I thought an awareness campaign was appropriate.

    As others have posted, the agency has scheduled an entire blanket aerial spray of the chemical Diprom/Naled over the cities of Davis and Woodland tonight and tomorrow between 8:30PM-12AM.

    My concerns are that:

    1. They are using a pesticide (Naled/Diprom) that’s currently banned in the EU due to concerns of it’s toxicity
    1. This pesticide has known toxic effect on bees and butterflies even at the doses prescribed for mosquito spraying programs (1)(2)(3). Many studies have conducted tests of varying quality in controlled environments, single-species results of large insects, or for single dose exposure, but not for this particular spraying program or frequency in which the spraying is happening and in an ecosystem setting accounting for all variables of the real world.
    1. Formal requests to the SacYolo Mosquito Control Vector District to share the science that shows the pesticide to be safe for the ecosystem, including our native pollinators has not been satisfactorily fulfilled. In neither of the two requests did they highlight a study showing the spraying program to be safe for insects or other pollinators.
    2. There is a lack of transparency, accountability, and oversight on the spraying programs. As far as I know, there are no ground samples being taken by the agency or independent researchers after these sprayings and no regular monitoring or data that's publicly available.

    To that end, I am recommending that:

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  • The Housing War is Over – Greenwald Declares “Uncle”

    Yesterday could go down as the most important day in Davis history:  the day the housing back-and-forth between David Greenwald and Ron Ortel ended.

    On Greenwald simply declared, after more than a decade of housing-essays and long comments between the two:

    "Uncle"

    This will mark the start of a new era with a Davis Vanguard free of housing articles, signed under the Treaty of White, named after our long-departed Innovation Officer, for no reason in particular.  Or the color white, I'm not sure.

    The Vanguard will now focus on its true passion:  cooking with fish.  Lots of articles on cooking with fish.

    Now if only Ron O. would just get over the notion that Measure J or Rent Control were good ideas.

    Oh, well.  Baby steps.  😉

    That should elicit an essay for the Davisite.  On Housing  😐

    What have I done?

  • The Appalling Spectacle Now Happening in Yolo Superior Court

    By Robert Canning

    Like a number of people, I watched the live video stream of the Carlos Dominguez competency “trial” in Department 10 of Yolo County Superior Court last week and will watch again when the trial reconvenes.

    As a forensic and correctional psychologist for the past twenty years with experience working in and consulting to jails and prisons on mental health treatment issues, I was amazed and appalled watching the spectacle unfold in real time. The trial is to determine the competence of a young man whose severe mental illness is on display daily in open court for all to see. The law requires the jury decide first whether Mr. Dominguez suffers from a mental disorder, and then if the mental disorder interferes with his capacity (competency) to understand and reason about the charges against him, and whether he can aid in his own defense.

    What is most appalling to me is that his mental illness has been allowed to worsen while in custody. If the Yolo District Attorney had not requested a jury trial then Judge McAdams would have been the sole source of the decision about Mr. Dominguez’ competence. Given his comments this week to the public defender, I believe he would have found Mr. Dominguez incompetent to proceed weeks ago. In that case Mr. Dominguez would have been able to receive treatment for his mental illness sooner, possibly in a state hospital setting. If this treatment was provided, it is possible that Mr. Dominguez could be restored to competency in a matter of months.

    The law requires that detainees in jails receive adequate medical and mental health care. This has been guaranteed since 1976 when the Supreme Court decided in favor of inmates in Estelle v Gamble. Subsequent case law has reinforced the right to appropriate care and emphasized the role of correctional systems in providing that care.

    Because we have a public trial with testimony from mental health and medical experts and jail staff, we can see some of the glaring inadequacies of mental health care in our county jail.

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  • Welcome to Al’s Corner – “Pouring Gasoline on the Dumpster Fire of Davis Politics” – August 2023

    image from www.sparkysonestop.com

    Got a thought on Davis politics, or a even a single politic?  Got a thought on the request to give a donation to the Davis Vanguard so they can fund the replacement of their crappy old website?  I have a thought — give instead to the Davis-Ite to replace the D-ite's even older, crappier website !   Underfunded old crappy blog structures:  It's the Davis Way !