by Lili Ma

Courtesy Sonoma Independent

PG&E’s sudden July 21 announcement to initiate what it called a Marshall Plan level effort to spend more than $15 billion to bury 1,000 miles of fire-causing overhead power lines a year for ten years marked a stark reversal of the utility giant’s argument that such an effort would be impossibly expensive. 

Potential liability for the Dixie Fire prompted the company’s recently hired CEO, Patricia “Patti” Poppe, to unveil the plan.“We know that we have long argued that undergrounding was too expensive,” Chief Executive Patti Poppe said. “This is where we say it’s too expensive not to underground. Lives are on the line.”

The announcement came two months after the Sonoma Independent, allied with the Davis Community Vision Alliance, launched a grassroots Bury Power Lines Now! Campaign.

The effort began with this article in the Sonoma Independent describing how climate change-induced high winds, hot weather and drought have caused overhead power lines in a relatively tiny area of the state to spark four of the six most destructive fires in the state since 2017.

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UC Berkeley just agreed to pay $86 Million for impacts on the City of Berkeley.

UC Davis, in comparison, agreed to contribute significantly less to the City of Davis –  $2.2 million, mostly in city and county transit infrastructure and analysis in 2018.

By Colin Walsh

Davis and UC Davis are like sister cities with a razor thin border drawn between them that runs the path of the old Lincoln Highway – 1st street, A Street and Russell Blvd. Each side of the line has its own police department, fire department, administration, and tax implications. But, what happens on one side of the imaginary line has impacts and repercussions on the other side.

No tax revenues flow from UC Davis to the City of Davis.

So what are the impacts of the 40,000 UC Davis students on Davis? What are the impacts of having o the fifth largest employers in California nestled in close with just an imaginary dividing line? What are the impacts of UC Davis’s 23,000+ faculty and staff?

It was announced last month that the City of Berkeley is to receive $86 million in a settlement to pay for the impacts from a “construction project on the northeast edge of campus” and “continued increases in UC Berkeley enrollment. The money will be paid “over the next 16 years to cover the city’s added costs in police and fire safety and other services.” (link)

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Davisite Exclusive

City of Davis Claims $691,000 for Unpaid Bills

Defendant Claims Legal Theory of “Unwashed Hands”

By David L. Johnson

In a disputed controversy involving the once-proposed Davis Innovation Center, the City of Davis has filed a $691,000 lawsuit against Binning Ranch Holding Co., SKK Developments and Sotiris Kolokotronis, the owner of SKK Developments, a major residential and commercial real estate developer in Sacramento.

The city claims the defendants failed to pay the city for services related to the project’s application, including costs for environmental consultants, planning, engineering, building inspection and legal services.

The lawsuit, filed in Yolo County Superior Court, states that under a 2014 agreement with the city, the defendants agreed “to pay the City all costs incurred, both direct and indirect…associated with the review and processing of the Application….”

Jason Hoffman, an attorney for Sotiris Kolokotronis and SKK Developments denies the claim and indicates that all specified damages in the lawsuit were caused by the city, incorporating, in part, a defensive legal theory of Unwashed Hands. This theory bars relief to a party that has engaged in inequitable behavior, including fraud, deceit or bad faith related to the subject of that party's claim.

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by David Abramson

Background

Davis area folks: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year(TM) is nearly upon us…no not that holiday!!

I’m referring to Dumpster Christmas, Raccoon Holiday, Dumpster Hanukkah, Trash Treasure Tidings, or as known in many secular or agnostic Davis/Yolo traditions.

Friday July 30th- Sunday August 1,
peaking on Saturday the 31st
August 30th-Sept 1 also peaking on the last day of the month!

Ring in Dumpster Christmas!!

*see historical Dumpster Christmas Photo Gallery

There will be couches, beds, bookshelves, and frames!
There will be Versaci and other types of clothes, shoes, and other wears!
There will be packaged food, spices, and kitchen supplies galore!
There will be laser printers!
There will be phone charging cables!
There will be musical instruments and art!
There might be air fryers (2 years streak going)!
There will be antiques and people loading antiques off in trailers to sell at antique shops for hundreds of dollars!
There will be magic and manifestation!
There will be untold gems that come once in a blue moon!
All…thrown…into…dumpsters

What to Do About it?

You have the answer in your own way!

This “guide” was drafted by a longtime celebrator of Dumpster Christmas, but please please feel free to make it better, do it better, collaborate, and engage in a way that makes sense for you.

Please add your needs/offerings and share this document with your network!!

🎁Dumpster Christmas Mutual Aid Organizer🎁

Contents: Needs, Offerings, Places to Dumpster, and Rideshare

Some Simple Actions & Ideas (please add your own flavors)

1.  take what you need!

2.  distribute what your community needs

3. pull out useful things from dumpsters that you aren’t going to take and set them aside and/or create a on-the-spot donation station if one doesn’t exist

4. Document and take pictures (then upload them here)!!

5. Wear a homemade badge or nametag to identify yourself as a member of the ‘Davis Waste Recovery Network’ (is anyone good at drawing raccoons???)

Other ideas:

-map out who is already working on this kind of thing and potential partnerships for distribution and transport (e.g. Davis Night Market | Freedge | Davis Bike Collective(?))

-Organize an “awards ceremony”, write-ups, create content and culture locally to highlight the apartment complexes who did great, and which ones flubbed. Take lots of pictures of the amazing stuff that is getting thrown away and what you’ve recovered.

-What else?

 

Safety and Security

You are solely liable for any activity that you partake in during the beautiful holiday of Dumpster Christmas. All info in this guide is simply for informational purposes only. 

Be safe, stay hydrated, wear gloves, watch out for sharp objects, be mindful of your surroundings, and be courteous to those who are moving out.

Do a proper inspection of any furniture for bed bugs (how-to article), mold, and structural integrity, and make sure appliances are in safe and working condition.

When you are finished with an area, leave it cleaner than you found it!! Do not block roadways

 

Legality of Dumpster Diving

 I will not give any legal advice here, but if you google search “legality of dumpster diving” or read this article, you can see various perspectives and landmark cases. Decisions have largely ruled in favor of Dumpster Divers and Good Samaritans, including the Supreme Court case of “California vs Greenwood”.

 

David’s Note
Sometimes an apartment manager will ask you to leave. I usually don’t have that much of an issue. note: my experience is of a white person dumpstering in Davis. 

My partner has experienced discrimination as a person of color while dumpster diving in Davis and she recommends that if you are a POC, you go alongside some white friends. It’s a shame that this has to even be a thing, but it’s the world we live in, even in Davis :/ 

I normally have a conversation with the apartment managers and let them know that I’m from the Davis Waste Recovery Network and that I am there documenting waste for a report on move-out waste. Most of them want to be known for doing the right thing.

Usually apartment managers just want to know what you’re doing. Be kind and respectful…this could be an opportunity to build bridges to apartment complexes and no longer be complicit in the insane wastefulness of move-out. Maybe they will voluntarily put up a donation station.

Do what you feel comfortable with personally. Nobody can choose that for you except yourself.

You can have an apartment manager call David Abramson at 530-902-8223 (informational purposes only), and you can also reach me at this number at any time if you have any other issues or questions. 

If you are asked to leave or experience any discrimination, please call or text David Abramson at 530-902-8223 and/or add that information to the ‘Places to Dumpster’ in the Mutual Aid Organizer.

And happy dumpstering!!!

 

Dumpster Christmas Mutual Aid Organizer spreadsheet
(add your needs, offerings, and support capabilities)

Please share this guide and organizer with anyone who might have a need or an offering and likes to get down with trash treasures!! Happy holiday!

by Alan Hirsch aka the Davis Lorax  Alan@davislorax.org

I hope people can help save Sutter trees by signing the change.org petition to support the appeal…and passing the petition  on to your friends with a note: http://chng.it/mft8fNRGmF

This is the story in 7 bullet points:

•  205 trees to be cut at Sutter Hospital unless the Davis City Council affirms a citizen appeal.
• Hospital "saves on solar” by cutting trees instead of putting solar on roof, the empty lot north of the hospital, or the treeless parking lots north of clinic.
• City OKed Phase I of the Plan in 2019 without notifying the community.
• City claims tree cutting will “improve the neighborhood character.”
• Ignores science showing healing nature of a tree-filled environment.
• City illegally issued permit when it bypassed Tree Commission.
• Sutter may already be killing the trees now by stopping watering.

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Time for more inclusive street names in Davis

 By Colin Walsh

Since George Floyd’s death just over a year ago, Americans have taken to the streets raising their voices against racial oppression. A new desire to reckon with racism has arisen in our country. One form this has taken is in reevaluating the naming of buildings and places though this reevaluation of names also predates the rise of the BLM movement. For example, in 2017 Yale changed the name of one of its residential colleges which had been named after Vice President Calhoun, an infamous white supremacist. The University of Virginia renamed its law school away from that of a former confederate general. Closer to home UC Berkeley renamed 2 of its buildings in 2020 to move away from the names of former faculty members with slave holding ties or well documented white supremacist views. (link)

Sometimes this has been controversial. In San Francisco the school district recently voted to rename 44 public schools, but then later rescinded the decision.

A few years ago in Davis we debated the appropriateness of “Sutter Place”, and ultimately renamed part of it to Risling Court after David Risling Jr. a civil rights activist and founder of DQ University (link). But, the City left both Bidwell street and place, named after John Bidwell, Sutter’s business manager. The Davis Sutter Hospital also still lists its address as Sutter Place. 

Clearly street names with a problematic legacy are not easy or quick to change, but it is time we look hard at the names of other streets and institutions in Davis. This would be an excellent job for the Historical Resource Management Commission, or a specially appointed committee. In the meantime, here is my first look at the subject. We have a few problematic street names in Davis and some serious issues of omission.

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A letter to City Council from Trace DeWitt

——–

Dear Mayor Partida and Council –

Like many residents of South Davis I was shocked and startled to learn on Friday morning that the Davis City Council plans, at a meeting this coming Tuesday, July 20, to “direct the Council Subcommittee and City staff to negotiate a tentative master lease agreement with Yolo County” embodying a CalWORKS proposal based on a Yolo County Health and Human Services (Yolo County HHS) presentation for the future use of the City’s Pacifico property that will only be received by the Council as part of the same agenda item at the very same meeting.  The Subcommittee and staff are then to be directed to “bring [that Pacifico  master lease agreement] back to the City Council for a final review.”   

I understand of course that the Brown Act only requires 72 hours’ notice of city council meetings even though 48 hours of that notice period is a weekend. This letter isn’t about the legality notice.  It’s about fairness of notice to the affected community, which in the two business days allotted cannot possibly respond to even the cursory terms of the CalWorks proposal’s most terms l in a way that can provide the Council the input needed for an intelligent decision on whether the CalWorks proposal should be negotiated with the County at all.

As all members of the Council are well aware, the historic mismanagement of the Pacifico property in South Davis as low-income housing since its default acquisition by the City a decade ago has inflicted a number of ills on the surrounding community that have yet to be satisfactorily addressed by the City, and so continue to fester to the present day.  While the City has taken some first, necessary steps to ameliorate the situation, it is far from having resolved the issues that have plagued Pacifico residents and neighboring homeowners, including drug use, alcohol abuse, theft, trespass, physical assaults, verbal violence, noise, littering, and a host of behaviors that adversely impact the lives of residents of South Davis.  The City’s inattention to these problems has been a bane on the lives of vulnerable residents of Pacifico, and of their neighbors at large. 

Now the City proposes not merely to entertain, but to negotiate an agreement with Yolo County that will presumably double the current number of residents of the Pacifico property by the addition of single-parent families to the low-income housing mix.  This increase is of necessity presumed, since Yolo County HHS’s CalWorks proposal – its “project details” comprise all of 20 lines of text (Proposal, 06-5) — does not bother to disclose the number of new residents it will add to Pacifico’s current population (the staff report implies an increase of perhaps 56 beds (Report, 06-3).  The proposal does indicate it plans to utilize the two of four buildings that are currently vacant on the property, and “keep the dormitory style layout” (Proposal, 06-5) that has been a source of complaints from residents in the currently-occupied buildings, with “no budget to improve the habitability of each unit” (ibid.).  And  while proposing to add this new population of single parents and their children to the residents currently housed on the Pacifico property, Yolo County HHS apparently plans to do nothing to address the problems emanating from Pacifico  – only to “manage its own residents” (Report, 06-3) and “[p]rovide additional fencing for site security and control” (Proposal, 06-5) – apparently believing it will wall off its own “vulnerable population in need of safe and secure housing” (Report, 06-3) from the onsite problems that have plagued Pacifico’s existing residents and the neighboring population for the last decade.

Three business days is simply not enough time for citizens having a genuine interest in the welfare of our vulnerable, underserved populations to bring to the Council what it needs to know of their concerns for their Pacifico neighbors and themselves in their daily lives.  The community has a right not to have its concerns dismissed with the bland assurance of the City that “Staff and the Council Subcommittee heard the questions and concerns and believe that many of them can be addressed in partnership with Yolo County” (Report, 06-2).  Citizens have a right to express their skepticism of that belief in the face of the spectacular failure of the past partnership to come to grips with Pacifico’s problems.  The City Council should defer Agenda Item 6 to the next appropriate council meeting to afford a meaningful opportunity to make their views known to their representatives.

– Tracy 

What is fueling the push to radically rewrite Davis’s laws on development?

by Colin Walsh

“Pro-development activists try to trick you into thinking it helps the poor to destroy neighborhoods to make way for luxury condos.” 

“An agenda for building up the power base of the neoliberal right is not going to get too far in liberal beachheads like San Francisco or New York using the traditional Republican platform. It needs a new story that appeals to young millennials, and it has found it in the “pro-housing” language of the YIMBYs. But in the end, it’s pushing the same underlying principles: the way to a more efficient future is to destroy belief in regulation, public investment, and democratic participation, whether the arena is charter schools or health care or housing affordability.”

Nathan J. Robinson made these statements in a recent Current Affairs article. Let’s look at what is behind the YIMBY push in Davis.

The Davis Housing Element Update Committee (HEC) had its final meeting on May 26th where they voted to pass 10 motions that, if ultimately adopted, would radically change the development landscape in Davis. The recommendations include abolishing the 1% annual growth cap, doing away with single-family (R-1) housing zoning, removing checks, balances and public input from the approval process, and several other radical developer-friendly proposals. Neither staff nor the public were informed ahead of time of this discussion by the Committee. These radical proposals have since taken up most of the discussion at 2 planning commission meetings, and at the Davis City Council meeting on 6/15. To understand where these recommendations came from, one needs to understand the committee members and the web of developer and real estate interests surrounding the Committee. This chart helps paint that picture.

 

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