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Author: Roberta Millstein

  • React in haste; repent at leisure

    A few reflections on our recent tragedies

    By Roberta Millstein

    Before I say anything else, let me begin by expressing my deepest condolences to the family and friends of David Breaux and Karim Abou Najm.  Both were important contributors to the community, both with more to give.  The third stabbing victim, is, as of this writing, thankfully still alive.  Although her name has not been released yet, I venture to say that she too is an important member of our community.  I can say that with confidence because I deeply believe that we are all important community members.

    With two of the three stabbing victims being unhoused, I am grateful to see that the City is working toward providing emergency shelter for those who are willing to accept it.  I hope that these efforts are successful; given that the perpetrator(s) have not been found, the unhoused members of our community are clearly more vulnerable than ever.

    Beyond protecting those who most need it, what else can the City do?  Here I will admit to being tired, wrung out, and on edge, so I don’t have the energy to go on at length.  So what follows will be, I am sure, too brief.  But perhaps it will be enough to get people thinking.

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  • It was an April Fool’s kind of week in Davis this week

    Calendar-aprilfool

    What is going on with the City Council?  Tuesday’s meeting was surreal.

    By Roberta Millstein

    First, Councilmember Bapu Vaitla, critic of NIMBYs who dare to say that projects should be better, suggested that the proposed University Mall redevelopment isn’t good enough.  Somehow, even though the site has been retail-only for decades, Councilmember Vaitla claimed that that use isn’t consistent with the General Plan – stating, among other things, that the project does not provide “a diversity of housing options” – and he called for an appeal of the Planning Commission’s approval of the project.

    If Councilmember Vaitla were a defender of the project as approved, he would likely say that an appeal like this was just a delay tactic.  But because it’s his objection to the project, he marshaled Davisites to come speak in favor of the appeal.

    Then Councilmember Gloria Partida, who has consistently argued that we need more housing in Davis, voted to deny Councilmember Vaitla’s appeal, effectively guaranteeing that there would be no housing at the University Mall site (since the vote to hear the appeal had to be unanimous).

    To further the up-is-down left-is-right Council meeting, the council – to a person – decided no, it will not go forward with putting any of four housing-projects-in-process on the ballot for November 2024.[1]  This is in spite of, again, all four councilmembers touting themselves as being pro-housing, and perhaps even more puzzling, in spite of the fact that two of the four councilmembers wrote the report suggesting that the Council take up the question of which project to put in process for November 2024.

    A representative of one of the developers of the four projects even got up to say that nothing should be put in motion for November 2024!  Surely this was April Fool’s?  Nope, April 4.

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  • Regenerative agriculture and the role of UC Davis

    Ministries-for-the-futureBy Roberta Millstein

    Yesterday, I attended a wonderful event on the UC Davis campus.  The purpose of the event was to celebrate the new Environmental Humanities Designated Emphasis at UC Davis, and it brought together in conversation two renowned scholars, Donna Haraway (a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist Studies Department at UC Santa Cruz) and Kim Stanley Robinson (an award-winning science fiction author who lives in Davis; the title of the event, “Ministries for the Future,” is also the title of one of Robinson’s recent books).  It was a wide-ranging, fascinating conversation – so popular that it was literally standing room only – that I can’t begin to summarize here (but you can watch online). 

    Instead, I want to highlight two important and related points that Robinson made: one was about the purpose of the University of California and one was about regenerative agriculture.[1]

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  • Happy Darwin Day!

    Darwin

    Why is Darwin so often only shown as an old man with a beard?

    By Roberta Millstein

    Happy Darwin Day!  It’s been 211 214 years since Charles Darwin was born.

    For your Darwin Day, here is a selection of some of my favorite Darwin quotes, all from On the Origin of Species, First Edition.  I hope you enjoy them!

    The beginning of the book:

    “WHEN on board H.M.S. 'Beagle,' as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts seemed to me to throw some light on the origin of species—that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers. On my return home, it occurred to me, in 1837, that something might perhaps be made out on this question by patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts which could possibly have any bearing on it.”

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  • Those ‘pesky’ City Commissions

    Scooby-gang-1969By Roberta Millstein

    As a Gen-Xer, I grew up watching a lot of fairly silly cartoons, Scooby-Doo among them.  The plot of Scooby-Doo was pretty much always the same.  The main characters would ask a lot of hard questions, and always end up unmasking the “bad guy,” who would utter a phrase along the lines of “if it weren’t for those pesky kids!”

    Reading Item 5 of tonight’s City Council agenda makes me feel like I am in an episode of Scooby-Doo.  Commission meetings are too long, the staff report suggests.  They duplicate efforts, staff implies.

    Yet it was the commissions who asked hard questions about DISC.  They asked, for example, about the carbon emissions from the project and better ways to mitigate them.  They asked about the percentage of affordable housing.  They asked about the number of trees and protection for burrowing owls.  They asked about the effect of the project on our downtown.

    These were hard questions that were not asked by staff and not asked by the City Council.   They all ended up being issues in the campaign that resulted in voters rejecting the DISC project.

    Now, it seems, staff would like to reduce the power of those “pesky” commissions with all of their questions.

    Are the commission meetings really too long?  One easy way to make them shorter would be to put a time limit on presentations by developers and others; we can expect that commissioners have read the provided written materials.

    Are the commissions really duplicating effort?  As evidence, staff provides a table where different commissions weigh in on the same topic.  What staff fails to mention is that they are looking at different aspects of the same topic.  For example, when Open Space & Habitat looks at a park, it considers habitat values. Rec & Park considers recreational values. Tree Commission looks at the number and species of trees.  Yes, these can overlap, but they are distinctive issues that require distinctive expertise. There is no duplication.

    Commissions are treated as pesky by those who have to answer their hard questions, but commissions keep the democratic process in Davis strong.  If we want to revisit the commissions, let’s at least involve them – something that was not done for this meeting.  Our past and present commissioners can provide needed insight into this process.

  • Davis Enterprise should promote better discourse

    The following was sent to the Davis Enterprise to be published as a letter to the editor, but as of the time of this posting they have declined to publish it.

    Edit: The letter finally appeared in the 12 February 2023 print edition, but I don't believe that it ever appeared online.

    By Roberta Millstein

    The recent article, "Planning Commission OKs R&D facility for Second Street" elicited a number of comments on the Davis Enterprise's Facebook page where the article was posted. Of these comments, the one that was picked as the "Editors' choice for the web comment of the week" stated "In a town that's absolutely jam-packed with know-it-alls somebody will come up with an objection."

    Why did the Editors pick this comment out of all the others?

    Surely the 2nd Street project is exactly the sort of infill project that most Davisites preferred when they voted overwhelmingly to defeat the sprawling peripheral DISC project. I for one have no objection to it.

    Will someone object? No doubt. Name me one issue that all Davisites agree on. I am guessing that there is no such issue.

    But that isn't really the point of the "Editors choice" comment, is it? The point is to denigrate Davisites who dare to raise objections to developer's projects. Or maybe it's just to denigrate Davisites more generally.

    So, I ask again, why would the Editors choose to reprint this comment in the newspaper? Is this the sort of discourse that the Davis Enterprise wants to promote? And if so, why?

    We can do better and so can the Davis Enterprise.

  • The City’s Failure to Plan for Emergencies

    Fixing power pole

    PG&E crew working into the night to fix a leaning power pole near Cesar Chavez Elementary

    By Roberta Millstein

    The recent storms have made it amply clear that the City lacks any sort of coherent plan for dealing with storms (and presumably other sorts of emergencies).  Every action taken in response to the recent storm was late, and in some cases, inadequate. 

    Yet these storms were comparable to other big storms that Davis has experienced in past years.  And even if they weren’t, the storm that occurred over New Year’s Eve and into New Year’s Day ought to have been a warm up, with lessons learned for the storms Jan 4-8, all of which were well-predicted by weather forecasters. 

    The City seemed to make things up as they go.  To be clear, I am not faulting rank-and-file staff, who clearly were working hard under difficult circumstances.  It has also been reported that the City did a good job finding shelter for people lacking housing.  I am grateful for these efforts.  I am faulting the City Council  and the City Manager for failure to provide leadership.  There should have been plans in place for these kind of events long ago.

    Here are the areas that need to improve.  I have broken them into short-term, medium-term, and long term, in the sense that the things in the short term can and should be fixed right away.  The others will take a little longer.

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  • Will the (new) City Council Uphold Democracy?

    DemocracyThis article was originally posted on July 17, 2022. The City Council, which will be composed of four members: Mayor Will Arnold, Vice Mayor Josh Chapman, and Councilmembers Gloria Partida and Bapu Vaitla, will decide this Tuesday (Jan 3) whether to go forward with an election or not. I stand by what I wrote below, calling for an election for District 3 with no interim appointment, and I urge Davisites to email members of the City Council before 3 PM on Tuesday at CityCouncilMembers@cityofdavis.org to let them know your views.  You can also call 530-757-5693 to leave a public comment between 12-4 PM the day of the meeting – this is item #5 on the agenda – or give public comment in person (the item is estimated to be heard at 7:20 PM).

    By Roberta Millstein

    This City Council does not have a good track record on democracy.  It has the opportunity to do better this time.  Will it?

    Newly appointed Mayor Lucas Frerichs, having served on the Council since 2012, is anticipated to step down on January 2, 2023 to become Yolo County District 2 Supervisor.  That will leave a vacancy on the Council in District 3 (note that county and city district numbering is different) until the November 2024 election.  The Council has a choice of two ways of filling the vacancy: 1) call a special election to fill the vacancy (see staff report for possible dates) or 2) appoint someone to fill the vacancy.

    The first way is the democratic way.  It’s the way that allows the voters of District 3 to select a representative who they feel listens to them and understands their concerns about their district.  It’s the way that allows new voices to put themselves forward for leadership of the city, fulfilling one of the promises that district elections were supposed to bring – i.e., more localized campaigns being easier and less expensive to run.

    The second way is the power-abusing way.  All the other districts will have elected their representatives, but District 3 would be appointed by councilmembers who are not even in their district.  There is nothing about this process that would ensure that the appointed representative would know about and care about issues particular to District 3.  What this process does allow for, however, is for councilmembers to appoint someone who sees things their way or who is part of the current power structure in Davis.

    Note that the Council also has the option of calling for a special election (the second way), but then appointing someone to fill the vacancy until the election.  I think this option is problematic too.  The person appointed for the interim period before a special election would have the advantage of incumbency in that election. The council should refrain from any appointment at all and simply call an election to fill the seat.[1]

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  • Letter: Support Education in Davis

    Teacher2A good education is a human right. It is also a societal good, given human interdependence. These are basic moral truths, yet we don't always act like they are, as two recent happenings in Davis illustrate.

    As reported in the Enterprise, DJUSD teachers, backed by many supporters, have been asking for a salary increase, given the high cost of housing and the lower salaries that Davis teachers have as compared to neighboring cities. Teaching is extremely rewarding, but it is not reasonable to expect people to dedicate their hearts and souls only to find out that they cannot make ends meet. So teachers who can leave, do leave, and K-12 education is sacrificed.

    During the same time period, several groups of University of California workers have been on strike (two have now settled), including graduate student teaching assistants. Ostensibly, these workers work "half time," but that is misleading. In some (perhaps many) cases, these workers end up doing far more than 20 hours per week, given grading, assisting students during office hours and appointments, holding discussion sections, answering emails, etc. In addition, these grad student workers are expected to do their own coursework and research, making the position in reality a full-time one. (They are often not permitted to take outside work, or at least strongly discouraged from doing so). That these grad student workers cannot likewise make ends meet threatens their own education as well as the education of undergraduates.

    Paying these workers more is the obvious solution, but dedicated housing on DJUSD land and UCD land, respectively, should also be in the mix, as a way to buffer against the vagaries of inflation and rising housing costs.

    It is a moral imperative that we do more for our DJUSD teachers and our UCD graduate student workers.

    – Roberta Millstein is an Emerit Professor in the Department of Philosophy at UC Davis

  • Why DiSC matters for the City Council election

    Some of DiSC’s proponents called it a tiny city. That suggests it is a microcosm of Davis as a whole and all of the issues it faces.

    DCC with DiSC in background-2By Roberta Millstein

    In a recent interview with the Davis Enterprise, Gloria Partida said that “I know that people right now are very focused on what happened with Measure H” but that being a member of Council is “not a one-issue job.”

    However, Measure H represents a large number of central and key issues that future Davis City Councils will have to weigh in on.  It would have been bad for Davis in variety of ways, as Davis citizens widely recognized when they rejected the project by an almost 2-1 margin. 

    Thus, a candidate’s stance on Measure H speaks volumes about their values and how they would govern.  Gloria Partida (District 4), Dan Carson (District 1), and Bapu Vaitla (District 1)  were strongly in favor of Measure H.  In contrast, Kelsey Fortune (District 1) and Adam Morrill (District 4) strongly opposed Measure H.

    As the No on Measure H campaign emphasized in its ballot arguments and campaign literature, each of the following issues was relevant to the proposed project. In no particular order:

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