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Category: Ethics

  • VCE Integrated Resource Plan Workshop

    Information / Questions / Customer Input

    VCE(From Press release)  – Valley Clean Energy will host a public workshop in early December to discuss and seek input to their Integrated Resource Plan (IRP). The workshop is open to all VCE customers and interested parties, and will offer information and answer questions, while gathering input from customers.

    VCE’s IRP outlines our planned power supply for the next 3 years and provides a forecast for expected electric demand and resource supply until 2030. The IRP also details our commitment to renewable and low carbon energy procurements. The IRP is a VCE planning document that is updated every 2 years and is also governed by regulatory requirements. Our final plan will be submitted to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) for consideration in May 2020.

    The workshop agenda will include:

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  • Mace Mess: 11 Broken Promises

    Mace mess2Squandered Trust

    Comments given to the Davis City Council by Mimi McMahon

    Trust is an important element when citizens elect officials to act on their behalf.  There is no room for special interests or personal gain.  A promise is a contract. The City has squandered the trust of Davis citizens and those affected by the Mace Mess you and your staff have created.  You have wasted millions of dollars of our hard-earned taxes. 

    Broken and Unfulfilled Promises

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  • Unprofessional behavior from City staff and Councilmember Arnold

    Poor communication continues; irregularities confirmed

    Appl-received-aug-2019By Roberta Millstein

    At Tuesday’s Council meeting, several Davisites and I showed up to give public comment about an item on the Consent Calendar, scheduled to be approved without discussion. The item concerned the environmental review for a new housing project proposal for Olive Drive.

    We raised concerns such as: the fact that this was the first time the project was disclosed to Davisites, preventing any input from citizens prior to review; the failure of City staff to provide the project application and description, only providing them when Colin Walsh noticed that they were missing and requested them, with the result that Davisites had less than the required 72 hours to review (see article from Colin Walsh); and the likelihood that the project is not realistic as proposed, which would make the environmental review pointless at best.

    This was the third time in recent days that we have had to raise concerns about items being on the Consent Calendar that should not have been, the other two times having to do with a proposed ~200 acre business park on prime farmland outside of Mace curve.

    Last time, Councilmember Will Arnold yelled at us.  This time, he compared us to Flat Earthers.

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  • Thursday’s Caltrans Workshop Key to Davis Growth and Climate Future

    IMG_6919By Alan Hirsch

    On Thursday Caltrans will hold a workshop on the future of the I-80 corridor, Davis’s Connection to the rest of the World.  It will be in the Blanchard room of the Library at 6:30pm.

    Caltrans will be considering different options to deal with transportation demand in this corridor.

    Will they just address only thru traffic, i.e. Tahoe Snowbirds…or real needs of people who live in the corridor, for example transit needs that can’t be met by slow, limited stop and expensive Capitol Corridor Train service or the anemic and unreliable Yolobus service?

    If you care about traffic on Mace Blvd…or how we can have accommodate economic growth in Davis — like the proposed 12,000 (!!!)  trip a day Aggie business park on Mace curve  — this is the meeting to go to.

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  • Linda Deos responds to anti-Provenza op-ed

    Supervisor race kerfuffle

    Linda-Deos

    Linda Deos, candidate for Yolo County Supervisor

    By Linda Deos

    Last week, the United States House of Representatives began impeachment hearings, focused on the President’s decision to withhold Congressionally approved military aide from Ukraine in exchange for dirt on his political opponent. This same week, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court indicated it might take away DACA, President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, threatening millions of young immigrants with potential deportation. These actions highlight the vast powers of the state, and the ways they can be wielded against innocent people.

    We live in the City of Davis, often referred to with a bit of pride by longtime, liberal residents (and consternation by more conservative ones) as ‘The People’s Republic of Davis.’ But we are also the city that made national news a few years ago when protesting students were pepper sprayed by campus police. And now we are a city where a longtime Enterprise columnist casually referred to a group of Davis residents as “Trumpian” for writing an op-ed in the paper.

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  • United Methodist Alternative Giving Fair Benefits Non-Profits

    (From press release) Benefit the greater good while shopping for the holidays at the Davis United Methodist Church Alternative Giving Fair, Sunday morning, November 24, from 9:30 to 1 pm. 

    The fair will include homemade items, handicrafts from around the world, calendars, cards and other seasonal items.  All proceeds benefit non-profits, such as Heifer International, Sierra Club, Grace Garden, Sahaya International, and United Methodist service projects.  The church is located at 1620 Anderson Road in Davis. 

    Davis United Methodist Church is a reconciling and an inclusive community of faith.  Church services are Sundays at 8:30 and 11:00.  For more information, visit www.davisumc.org or contact the church office at davisumc@davisumc.org or 530-756-2170.

  • 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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