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Category: Ethics

  • Winters Votes to Join Valley Clean Energy

    VCE(From press release) The city of Winters is the fourth local jurisdiction to join Valley Clean Energy, Yolo County’s not-for-profit public clean power electricity agency. The cities of Woodland and Davis as well as the unincorporated area of Yolo County are already members, having launched the agency in June 2018.

    At its Oct. 15 meeting, the Winters City Council passed a resolution approving the terms of membership in VCE as well as the first reading of an ordinance authorizing implementation of the community choice aggregation program for all electricity customers in Winters. The second reading and adoption of the ordinance occurred at the Nov. 5 council meeting.

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  • City smuggles ARC EIR decision onto Tuesday’s Consent Calendar

    Transportation consultant believes ARC may result in new significant impacts or a substantial increase in the severity of significant impacts.

    ARC-location-overviewBy Roberta Millstein

    After the controversy over the approval of the Mace Ranch Innovation Center (MRIC) Environmental Impact Report (EIR) back in February 2017, and after having to pull the most recent son-of-MRIC item from the Consent Calendar (the project now misleadingly dubbed “Aggie Research Campus” or ARC), you would think that the City Council would have learned its lesson not to try to smuggle important items on the Consent Calendar, where items are meant to be uncontroversial and passed unanimously without any staff presentation or discussion from Council or citizens.

    If you thought that, as I did, you were mistaken.

    Readers may recall that the ARC is a proposal for a ~200 acre business park with housing and hotel to be built outside Mace curve on prime farmland.  When the City Council approved the EIR, they knew it was very possible, even likely, that updates to the EIR would be needed in light of changes to the project or changes to relevant conditions, such as traffic.  Now that the City is moving forward with evaluating the new ARC proposal, the time has come to revisit the EIR.

    Staff is recommending that the Council authorize the City Manager to enter into a contract with Raney Planning & Management, Inc. to prepare a Supplemental EIR and to approve a budget for that purpose, to be paid by the applicant.  However, there are at least three potential concerns with this recommendation.

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  • As the fires rage and the blackouts continue, Newsom ducks

    The guv sounds tough — but he has no plan. And he's ignoring the only (obvious) solution to the current and future crisis.

    Screen-Shot-2019-10-28-at-8.17.07-PM

    Gav talks tough about PG&E — until it comes to solutions.

    By Tim Redmond

    Gov. Gavin Newsom is sounding all harsh and tough toward PG&E as Northern California burns out of control again and the blackouts continue.

    At a press event that he promoted on Twitter, Newsom said that PG&E’s “years of greed, years of mismanagement, years and years of putting shareholders over people are over.”

    Watch the video: It’s classic Newsom. “We will hold them to account,” he says. “We will restructure” the company when it gets out of bankruptcy.

    And then … what?

    How is that “restructuring” going to work if PG&E remains a privately owned utility that sets up its own corporate structure? How are we going to “hold to account” a company when it’s already in total collapse – and Newsom has no plan to address that except to ask Warren Buffett to buy it?

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  • VCE Pays Back Startup Loans Early

    VCE_loan_repaid_early

    Pictured left to right: VCE Board member and Yolo County Supervisor  Don Saylor, VCE Chair and Woodland City Council member Tom Stallard, VCE Board member and Davis City Council member Lucas Frerichs, and VCE Interim General Manager Mitch Sears

    (From press release) Valley Clean Energy’s board of directors has announced that the local community choice energy agency is repaying its start-up loans early, years ahead of schedule.

    VCE was formed in 2016 as a joint powers agency comprising the city of Davis and the unincorporated area of Yolo County. The city of Woodland joined later, in 2017. Each agency lent VCE $500,000 to cover program implementation costs with a requirement that the loans would be repaid with interest.

    “Now, after less than 1½ years in operation, we are repaying the loans — far ahead of schedule,” said Tom Stallard, a member of the Woodland City Council who chairs the VCE board of directors. “The agency’s firm financial footing allows us to do so.”

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  • Candidate runs for Yolo County Supervisor on a Local Green New Deal platform

    IMG_4955My name is David Abramson and I am running for District 4 Yolo County Supervisor on the platform of a Local Green New Deal. A Local Green New Deal lays out a plan for local infrastructure, planning, and policy that will help us address the climate crisis we are in. It also aims to transform our economic system into one that supports ecological healing and true community wealth-building.

    Growing up in Davis and living here most of my life, I know that Yolo County residents care about their communities. We care about each other, we care about our families, our neighbors, our schools, about the health and well-being of our workers, our youth, and our elders. We care about the health of our planet, and about the future we want for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

    We hear the calls from the youth saying, "We want a future! We want our political leaders to step up to the challenge, to transition from fossil fuels, and to take the challenges that humanity faces seriously and fearlessly, and to spring forward into action!"

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  • VCE takes steps toward creation of a locally owned and operated public utility

    VCE(From press release) The board of Yolo County’s clean power agency has submitted a $300 million bid to purchase Pacific Gas & Electric’s lines, poles and other electricity distribution assets within Yolo County.

    The purchase would enable the creation of a locally owned and operated public utility that the board has concluded would result in a more successful, efficient and safe electricity system.

    Following the announcement this summer of its intent to examine the purchase of local PG&E assets, and after months of study and review with expert consultants, the Valley Clean Energy board of directors submitted a non-binding offer Friday, Oct. 18, to purchase PG&E’s assets.

    Valley Clean Energy’s offer would ultimately be subject to approval by the federal court handling the PG&E bankruptcy case.

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  • United Methodists Host Program on Students with Disabilities

    (From press release) Large numbers of K-12 and college students have disabilities and, although schools are legally required to accommodate the special needs of students with disabilities, often they do not. 

    On Sunday morning, October 27, from 9:45 to 10:50, the Davis United Methodist Church will host a presentation on Disabilities, Students, and Schools with Joyceanne Beachem and Austin Tam, members of the Disability Task Force of the California-Nevada Conference of the United Methodist Church.   The church is located at 1620 Anderson Road in Davis. 

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  • Open Letter to City Council on Jump’s Age Discrimination

    Jumpvote

    Uber photo modified by T. Edelman

    Todd Edelman sent the following email to the City Council today for tonight's Council meeting. For reference, please see yesterday’s article by the same author.

    Dear City Council,

    1 -  I feel it is important to note that when modifications to the bike share ordinance related to bike share were initially adopted, the BTSSC was bypassed, and that one element which Staff pushed hard for – locking bikes TO racks – resulted in a lot of the problems we had with bikes parked where they were not supposed to. Though Sacramento's unofficial policy permitted flexible parking in 2018, the Staff resisted a change until the spring of this year. Thankfully, the current Staff Report recommends e.g. "parking in the street like a motorcycle".

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  • City of Winters set to join VCE in special meeting, Thurs, Oct 10

    VCE(From press release) The Valley Clean Energy board of directors has scheduled a special meeting for 3 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 10, in the Woodland Council Chambers, 300 First St. in Woodland.

    The board is scheduled to accept the city of Winters’ request to join Valley Clean Energy, a community choice energy agency that has been providing electricity service to customers in Davis, Woodland and unincorporated Yolo County since June 2018.

    The Winters City Council is set to execute a joint powers agreement with VCE on Oct. 15 and authorize enrollment of Winters’ municipal, commercial, agricultural and residential accounts.

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  • Student Debt Town Hall, Wed Oct 9

    Cancel-student-debt(From press release)

    WHAT:

    Student debt in the U.S. has now reached $ 1.5 trillion and is currently the second biggest source of debt in the country. In 2017, 65% of students graduating from college had taken out loans, graduating with an average debt of $ 28,650 . In this country alone, 44.7 million people are living with student debt.

    This is no small matter. Student debt can prevent people from getting a mortgage on a house, starting a family, saving for retirement, leaving a stable yet unfulfilling job to find a position in their field of study, leaving a job to live with their loved ones in another city – the list goes on. Just the thought, and fear, of accumulating debt prevents many from pursuing higher education, affecting their chances at social mobility. And this fear is quite justified. Student loan delinquency or default rates are 11.4 %, with black college graduates defaulting at rates five times higher than those of their white classmates. Defaulting on a loan can have serious consequences. It can prevent an individual from getting an apartment or a job and take away a section of someone’s paycheck, tax refunds, or Social Security payments. Some states even cancel professional licenses for individuals who hold student loan debt.

    This is why student, community, and labor organizers will be hosting a student debt town hall on October 9th, 7pm-8:30pm in Davis, CA to discuss our communities’ experiences with student debt, as well as existing legislative and political solutions like the Student Debt Cancellation Act , proposed by Rep. Ilhan Omar, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, and Sen. Bernie Sanders.

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