Yolo County Supervisor candidate David Abramson will be hosting a ‘Renters Forum’ on Saturday, February 15 from 5:00-7:00PM. It will be held at Davis Coworking’s new downstairs event space, right next to Fluffly's Donuts and Subway.
It will be an opportunity for renters to share their stories and to get together to develop a vision for affordable, healthful, and climate-positive housing in Davis and Yolo County.
We will also envision how we can move forward in creating affordable and accessible cultural spaces to facilitate arts, music, and healthy activities in Yolo County.
All who are interested (renters and homeowners alike) are welcome to join. Light refreshments provided.
Max capacity 40. Please register in advance to ensure your seat! https://www.facebook.com/events/122783449070392/
Author: davisite2
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Affordable Housing & Community Space: A Renter Forum
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Letter: Deos Leading for Yolo County
I want a leader on the Yolo County Board of Supervisors, someone who has fresh ideas and solutions for the new decade. I want someone who will not only question the need for a new county jail but will look at ways to reduce the incarceration rate that we have. Eliminating the cash bail system that keeps poor people in jail while awaiting their hearings is one way to accomplish this goal. Because 65% of our jail residents cannot post bail, they must stay there until his or her trial. They are in jail, often for months at a time, despite not having been proven guilty of any crime. It's a modern-day debtor's prison.It costs as much to house a prisoner in California for a year as it does to send a student to Stanford for the same amount of time. That’s a lot of money that could be used to provide more robust social services programs that lift up our county residents.
I want a leader who will return our foster care program back to one that works for families that are in distress. We need to stop shipping hundreds of Yolo County children to foster homes far from their families.
I want a leader who understands climate change as the existential threat that it is. Someone who is able to work with other committed supervisors and residents to do the hard work of making significant and urgent changes to our county’s operations model.
You have a choice of leadership for the 4th district Yolo County supervisor race for the first time in many years. The leader that I want for Yolo County Board of Supervisors is Linda Deos. She is the future.
Elizabeth Lasensky
Davis
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Strong turnout for Davis’s “Reject the Coverup” Impeachment Rally
Blue efforts are ongoing
On Wednesday evening, nearly 100 people showed up (on short notice!) at 5th and B to protest the failure of the U.S. Senate to call witnesses, much less convict, Trump for Abuse of Power or Obstruction of Justice.
People driving by enthusiastically honked in support.Photos of the Davis crowd made Rachel Maddow show….along with photos of the other 270 rallies across the U.S.
Later that evening, IndivisibleYolo and Sister District CA-3 previewed their new volunteer HQ on Olive Drive near Rocknasium, the first step of Blue Wave 2 campaign to flip the Senate and Presidency red to blue in November 2020. Arizona races are the target Red to Blue area for Davis. Over 60 people showed, celebrating that the two groups have together raised over $14,000 to fund this office space.
Last week there was also a Davis House party run by the group “The Verbs” to raise money for Democratic Senate Candidate for Arizona, Mark Kelly. It reportedly netted over $70,000.
– Submitted by a Davisite reader.
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Letter: County Supervisors Need Diversity
Please join me in voting for Linda Deos to represent District 4 on the Yolo County Board of Supervisors. We can use her lawyerly skills and her demonstrated commitment to children’s issues, social justice and healthcare.For nearly a decade, we have been represented by five male supervisors. It’s time for diversity on our board and Linda is the energetic, informed person to start that happening and restore some balance.
Because Linda cares about children, she will question and review new policies supervisors created in 2016. Yolo County out-of-home placements for foster children increased by 68% from 2015 to 2019 while those rates elsewhere in Ca have declined. Since 2008, Yolo’s rate of out of home placements is higher than 2/3rds of CA Counties and our neighboring counties. This happened after actions the Board took in 2016 in response to tragic home deaths, but perhaps they have gone too far with their actions. Only 40% of Yolo Count foster care placements are within Yolo County.
When there is severe and significant adversity, removal from the home is justified but removal too soon or without significant adversity can, in fact, cause more trauma for the child and result in more adverse impacts than keeping the child with their family. Early adversity has been shown to affect a child's brain development and can result in significantly increased health impacts later in life.
I also respect Linda’s stand on creating compassionate justice, emphasizing rehabilitation, education as opposed to locking people up for long periods and then releasing them with no support.
She has acquired the skills as an attorney specializing in consumer protection law, bankruptcy, student loans and debt collection defense and understands the real pressures of so many underserved people with the fewest resources. Please support positive, diverse change for our county supervisors.
Jean Jackman
Davis
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Letter: Deos for change
I'm voting for Linda Deos for real change.I strongly support term limits in California politics and agree with those imposed on our state legislators. I think the longer an elected office-holder is in the same job the more entrenched they become with their same ideology and their same old ways of doing things. That's no longer enough given the huge challenges facing our planet, our country, and our county.
For instance, on a local level, Yolo Co. still has an extremely regressive criminal justice system that disproportionately hammers even non-violent low-income defendants of color and minority youth.
We still have an exploding homeless population that shows no signs of abating. Yet our Supervisors are only using short-term band-aids to try to alleviate this glaring problem and have yet to enact a long-term comprehensive plan to address our homeless and housing crisis.
Yolo Co. is still increasing its carbon footprint every year while the world is burning and the Supervisors have yet to declare a climate emergency or implement policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that have already been adopted by the City of Davis and more progressive communities.
Enough is enough. Jim Provenza is a very nice man and truly believes in what he is doing. But he has had 12 years to make his mark on Yolo Co. and there has barely been a dent in improving the lives of the most vulnerable people in our midst.
It's time we changed the make-up of our staid, male-dominated Board of Supervisors and their same old ways. Endorsed by one of my favorite local progressive heroes, Public Defender and 2018 Yolo Co. District Attorney candidate, Dean Johannson, Linda Deos will work for the little and forgotten people in our county.
Linda Deos gets my vote.
Alan Pryor
Davis
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Letter: Delighted to endorse Deos
I am delighted to endorse Linda Deos for the Yolo County Board of Supervisors! The election will be held on March 3, 2020. Linda is running in District 4 for the seat currently held by Jim Provenza, who is seeking his 4th term. District 4 includes all of Davis north of Covell Blvd, most of Davis east of the railroad tracks, and all of South Davis. We support a change to the representation and perspective of the Fourth County Supervisorial District.Linda is interested in issues that have been ignored or mishandled for many years. Of note is the huge increase in the number of children in foster care in Yolo County. Due to Board of Supervisor directed changes, the number has increased from 388 in 2014 to over 670 in 2019. 55% of those children are placed outside of Yolo County.
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Commissions and Quorum-Buffers
By Todd Edelman
The high wheeler bike share bikes are rusting, the tomatoes are hibernating, the persimmons are throbbing, the Creek’s not so full, I-80 is roaring and stinky, the sun’s shining perhaps a bit more than it should… it’s mid-winter in Davis and I was just temporarily suspended from the Bicycling, Transportation and Street Safety Commission (BTSSC).
Any situation like this is Davis is subjectively-analytical, and dynamically-objective, but there’s several factors at play dealing more with facts (with spin, if only because none of us have infinite context.).
For now I am going to give what I hope to be an accurate accounting of the quorum piece of the matter at hand, and some suggestions… and then later on (today, tomorrow etc.) will provide some details on activity of the current membership of the BTSSC, including myself:
Quorum: My position is that this didn’t have to be an issue at all, or at the very least less of one. -
Gun Violence is the Focus of February Programs at Davis Methodist
Moms Demand Action, a grassroots movement for gun safety, estimates that, by early February, more people will be killed by guns in America than are killed by guns in other high-income countries during the entire year. Yet, despite wide-spread demands for sensible gun reform, the number of deaths by firearms continues to grow. Davis United Methodist Church is offering two programs on gun violence on Sunday mornings, February 9, and 23, from 9:45 to 10:50 at the church, which is located at 1620 Anderson Road in Davis.
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Statement from Equity Advocates on SB 50
Reacting to the failure of SB 50 to move out of the Senate, the groups Alliance for Community Transit-Los Angeles (ACT-LA), Public Counsel, PolicyLink, Western Center on Law and Poverty, Public Advocates, and the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation made the following statement:It is time to reject false choices and get serious about affordable housing and community stability.
The debate around SB 50, and SB 827 before it, has too often been reduced to a false choice: protect the status quo of exclusionary zoning or embrace a trickle-down market-based model. While this simple NIMBY-YIMBY binary fuels online arguments and frames the public narrative, millions of Californians continue to suffer without appropriate solutions. We reject the status quo, but we also reject the notion that the low-income communities and communities of color most harmed by the planning and zoning decisions of the past should be forced to accept new policies that fall short of true equity and inclusion.
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Artists share ideas on ‘artivism,’ tips on AB5
And upcoming art events
Autumn Labbé-Renault, chair of Arts Alliance Davis, speaks at the Jan. 16 meeting at the Davis Arts Center. Photo credit: Wendy Weitzel/Courtesy photoBy Wendy Weitzel
Since 2015, Arts Alliance Davis has united area artists and arts lovers, offering a forum for collaboration and sharing. That networking has evolved into a vibrant support community, clearly on display at its Jan. 16 meeting.
This gathering of nearly 30 joined forces at Davis Arts Center. Arts Alliance Davis meets every other month, at rotating venues. It unites artists, civic and arts organizations, businesses, patrons and other community arts supporters. The meetings are open to anyone.
This time, the group discussed two main issues: using art for activism, and a new state law’s impact on artists as independent contractors.
Davisite 