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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.

Author: davisite2

  • Traffic Fiascos: Who’s Responsible?

    By Glen Holstein

    Lately Davis has been lurching from one fiasco, paid parking, to another, Mace gridlock, like a drunk staggering home from a dive bar.  Kudos to the Davis Enterprise for connecting the dots that these and many other fiascos are related elements of a campaign that’s strangling vehicle traffic while increasing greenhouse gas release and reducing safety.  And kudos to Ellie Fairclough for pointing out the similarity between the Mace and Paradise fiascos.  As at Mace, the exit road from Paradise was reduced from four to two lanes and traffic “calmed” so much that 88 people were incinerated trying to escape the Camp Fire.

    And in the paid parking fiasco parking enforcement staff were cheerleaded so much that they started behaving more like an occupying army than public servants.  Recently when a downtown business owner tried going to lunch she was forcibly detained by a parking enforcer who yelled “You can’t leave – I haven’t written you a ticket yet.”

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  • Davis Pride Festival looks back and ahead

    Davis Pride Festival
    When: Sunday, May 19
    Time: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
    Place: Central Park, 401 C St., Davis
    What: Free event with music, food, education, kids’ activities and support for the LGBTQ+ community
    Related event: Run/Walk for Equality, 8 a.m.
    Info: davispride.org

    Image 9

    ShellyEllenByJennyRihl061608

    Shelly Bailes and Ellen Pontac react after their June 2008 marriage in Yolo County
    Jenny Rihl/Davis Enterprise photo

    (From Press release) Shelly Bailes and Ellen Pontac are two of the most prominent faces of gay pride in Yolo County. Together since 1973, their fight to legally marry was chronicled in many news reports. Finally, in 2008, they earned that right in California.

    That perspective is something they’d like to share on Sunday, May 19, when the Davis Pride Festival returns for its fifth year. The multi-faceted day includes a fun run and culminates with a festival of music, food and support for the LGBTQ+ community.

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  • Programs at Davis Methodist Focus on Immigration

    Faith-courage-communityDavis United Methodist Church is offering three programs on immigration on three Sunday mornings, May 5, 12, and June 2, from 9:45 to 10:50 at the church, which is located at 1620 Anderson Road in Davis. 

    May 5.  “Resilience on the Border: Stories of Faith, Courage and Community,” with Emily Henderson.  Emily recently traveled with a delegation from Davis Community Church to Douglas, Arizona/Agua Prieto, Sonora and met a constellation of individuals and groups working to support refugees in this border community.  Upon returning, the group created a reader’s theatre piece to share the stories they heard.  Come read aloud (or listen) to these stories and reflections.  Emily Henderson grew up in Davis, CA.  For the last 10 years, Emily has served as the Artistic Director for Acme Theatre Company – a youth-led theatre organization that develops artistic excellence, youth leadership, and an ethos of social justice. 

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  • Students and Workers Celebrate May Day at UC Davis

    UPTE-yds(From Press Release)

    WHAT:
    UC Davis students, workers, and campus organizations will come together in front of the Memorial Union on Wednesday, May 1st, from 12pm-1pm to celebrate ​May Day​. Live music will be followed by short speeches from various members of labor unions and student groups.

    Over a century ago, workers in the U.S. decided that May 1st would be the day for a universal work stoppage. On May 1st, 1886, two hundred thousands workers left their jobs to demand an eight-hour work day. Workers around the world are still fighting for a better life. Here at UC Davis, workers in the union of technical and professional employees in the UC, UPTE, have recently held a strike over pension cuts, stagnating wages, and insufficient career job protections. Members of AFSCME, the union that includes custodians and food service workers on campus, have recently held a strike against unfair labor practices, accusing the UC administration of bribery and violating their right to strike.

    WHEN:
    May 1st, 2019, 12pm-1pm.

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  • A “Revolution of Values” is needed to realize the promise of Earth Day

    MLK at Riverside Church

    By Nancy Price

    The Founding of Earth Day 

    During the 1960s, the concerns of environmental and anti-war activists began to converge as they’d had enough of corporate environmental disasters, epitomized by Love Canal (1953) and wide-spread harm to nature from indiscriminate use of DDT and chemicals that Rachel Carson revealed in Silent Spring (1962). There were also the assassinations of President Kennedy, Malcom X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy, and the increasing violence of the War in Vietnam and at home – the tragic My Lai Massacre (March 1967), police brutality at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, and the widening carpet bombing, extensive use of Agent Orange, and move into Cambodia.

    Finally, in 1969, two iconic disasters galvanized the public and legislators into action: in Ohio, the alarming fire on the Cuyahoga River in downtown Cleveland, long polluted by industrial waste and sewage; and in California, the huge Santa Barbara Channel oil spill, at that time the largest oil “blowout” in U.S. waters that covered 30 miles of pristine sandy beaches and greatly impacted marine life.

    It was no surprise that after Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson proposed Earth Day for April 22, 1970, 20 million people turned out to peacefully demonstrate. Anti-war protests continued, however, to escalate at university and college campuses and tragically, less than a month after Earth Day, four students were killed by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University, Ohio (May 4, 1970).

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  • VCE community energy advisers offer expertise, provide access

    VCEAC

    Members of the Valley Clean Energy Community Advisory Committee are, from left, Lorenzo Kristov; Gerry Braun, chair; Marsha Baird, secretary; Christine Casey; Mark Aulman; and Christine Shewmaker, vice chair. Not pictured are Yvonne Hunter and David Springer. (Courtesy photo)

    (From Press Release) Greener energy, customer choice, local control, access — they’re the hallmarks of Valley Clean Energy (VCE), a public electricity program launched locally last June. VCE serves residential and business customers in Davis, Woodland and unincorporated Yolo County.

    The highly skilled staff members, a board of directors made up of local elected officials and an advisory committee of experts from the three jurisdictions are transforming the idea of community choice energy into a reality.

    “The Community Advisory Committee is a really powerful group with quite a diverse mix of backgrounds,” says Davis City Councilman Lucas Frerichs, a member and past chair of the VCE board.

    The members’ breadth and depth of knowledge makes for a “stellar” bunch, adds Yvonne Hunter, a longtime Davis resident who is one of the CAC’s nine volunteer members. Before her retirement from the League of California Cities, Hunter served as the lead lobbyist for state legislation that authorized cities and counties to create Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) electricity providers.

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  • Bad traffic planning from the City

    By Dan Cornford.

    This city is just hopeless when it comes to traffic and traffic planning! It bases its growth plans (EIRs) on limited and outdated traffic surveys to begin with in order to hide the even worse congestion that will follow when current projects are built out.

    The Mace fiasco is just one example of the city's hopeless traffic planning.

    A microcosm of this is the situation now with 8th & L street closed (What the heck have they been doing on L street for ages?), and traffic on Covell one lane between F & Pole Line making east-west transit an ordeal with very few alternatives. Why do these same projects at the same time? Why do projects such as the one on the Covell bridge over rail line take an absurdly long time when I suspect that in many countries they could be done in a fraction of the time. Does the city monitor performance, or have late penalties or what?

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  • Show Your Support for Black Churches Damaged by Fire

    Since the news that three historically black churches in Landry County, LA were burned over the two-week period between March 26th and April 2, the Celebration of Abraham has wrestled with how to respond in a way that says to our black community, we will walk along side of you. Today we learned of a way to show that we care about our Christian brothers and sisters at these black churches. Specifically, our community can help repair the damage done to these important religious communities by donating to the GO FUND ME campaign at https://www.gofundme.com/f/church-fires-st-landry-parishmacedonia-ministry (or type “gofundme seventh district” in your search engine) organized by the Seventh District Baptist Association, a 149 year old non-profit religious organization.

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  • Urgent! Act today for CA 857 on Public Banking!

    Your short calls can make the difference to get CA 857 through its first Assembly Committees!  This is the public banking bill that does so much good.

    Please, this week, all you need to say is: Please support AB 857 the Public Banking bill that will enable California municipalities and counties — and the state as a whole — to charter their own public banks.

    Many CA newspapers, the California Public Banking Alliance (https://californiapublicbankingalliance.org/)  and many of our state's local public bank advocacy groups support this bill. 

    This week, your phone call can help flood the committee members’ offices to get this bill through these committee hurdles! 

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  • Extortion in Davis? Not from Measures J/R

    Cannery-moneyBy Matt Williams

    Extortion is the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats.  Measures J/R clearly do result in additional expenses for a developer; however, the City (and the community) don’t receive any payments as a result of any of the provisions of Measures J/R.  The additional developer dollars are paid out (discretionarily) to third parties, like election campaign consultants, and advertising channels, and experts providing testimony, etc.

    In the last 10 years I can only think of one example of “extortion”  and that example is one where the developer “extorted” an $8 million payment from the City.  Of course I refer to the Cannery CFD.  Not only did the developer receive that $8 million cash payment, but that $8 million payment cost the Davis taxpayers a total of $21.8 million in principal repayment, bond closing costs and interest payments.

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