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Category: Ethics

  • New Commissions are Opportunity for more public participation and Innovation

    By Alan Hirsch, Davis Lorax

    The controversial city council plan for commission consolidation and refocus is going into effect this summer. This is a rare opportunity for reform I hope is not missed. 

    Let us begin by restating the overarching goals council set forward in this reform: 

    Davis Council Resolution 24-079 May 2024

    Guiding Principle for New Commission Structure

    . City Commissions should act at all times with the understanding that guiding principles are at the core of their work.

    1. Promote and embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion
    2. Prioritize environmental and social justice
    3. Make space for community engagement
    4. Balance environmental and fiscal sustainability
    5. Strive for innovation and human progress

    The first meeting of the new Climate and Environmental Justice Commission on 7/22 Monday is precedent setting as it can begin to put implementation meat on the bone of these principles by:

    1. Better Prioritize Environmental  Justice than in the past  (principal B)
    2. Change meeting practices to allow more public participation. (principle A & C)  
    3. Speed surfacing of new ideas and follow through on their implementation.  (principle E

    As a first step in embracing council principles for this reorganization,  I suggest the  commission’s pass a resolution to  establish these ground rules for operation

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  • Farmer’s Kitchen Cafe Energy Prices Force it Out of D Street Location

    Farmers-kitchen-cafeby Scott Steward

    My brother came over from the Bay Area, where they have a lot of great dessert shops, and we sat down on my mom's west Davis back patio for a picnic lunch.

    I had stopped at previously at the Farmer’s Kitchen Cafe and picked up a beautiful (gluten-free) crust strawberry and raspberry pie, which we had with a small amount of ice cream, following our humus and vegetable platter with potato and green salads.

    But the pie! "Best pie I've had," my brother exclaimed, and his wife agreed and the seven of us present were able to eat half of the large 12" diameter desert. 

    This is the kind of consistently tasty and inspired eating you get from the Farmer's Family Cafe. Roseanne and her family have served sit-down no hurry service, and have provided a subscription menu, for years from the D Street location, but no more as of this July.

    In the last eight months, Roseanne has had to pay PG&E $36,000 in energy bills. Energy bills have always been high for the businesses renting in the conspicuously inefficient 11,400 sq ft D Street building (est. built in the 60s), but the last 8 months are different. $36,000, and Roseanne—who is not one to want to move—is moving to a new location to be announced once all is settled.

    Two systemic problems forced Roseanne's hand, and she is just one of the majority of businesses that have seen profits reduced by high utility bills. Not since Enron in 2000 have utilities increased so much in such a short period of time. The owners of these old buildings keep on collecting rent checks and do nothing about what it costs tenant businesses to keep buildings cool and food hot.

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  • Fighting Antisemitism: Lessons from history

    Hagen Cover

    William W. Hagen is an emeritus professor of History at UC Davis, specializing in German and east European history. His archival research has often taken him to Berlin and Warsaw, as well as to Vienna, Jerusalem, and New York. He recently recorded a podcast on HIS book, Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1914-1920 (Cambridge University Press, 2018); https://newbooksnetwork.com/anti-jewish-violence-in-poland-1914-1920

    https://hagen.faculty.ucdavis.edu/

    By William W. Hagen

    Antisemitism has sung many tunes in willingly open or gullible ears. But its keynotes are fear and resentment. Historically, it often arose from the mysterious thought that the children of Israel were, collectively, a negative and even dangerous presence. Such fear had primordial roots, but took long-lasting anti-Jewish shape in early Christian attitudes, transmuting later into modern prejudices.

    It now slumbers in Western culture, waking now and then to foment small or big trouble. The resentment arises in hostile minds from bafflement that a numerically weak and historically persecuted people should, as a group, flourish materially and culturally – and, seemingly, possess power inimical to the aggrieved antisemite.

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  • Ten Ways to Get the Yolo CAAP Back on Track

    By Juliette Beck, Yolo climate justice advocate

    Yolo County recently reduced their draft Climate Action and Adaptation Plan (CAAP) – potentially the most important document to guide Yolo County residents, businesses, farmers and decision-makers in our collective response to climate breakdown. 

    As a member of the Yolo Climate Emergency Coalition that set this planning process in motion, I commend the hard work and thoughtfulness of hundreds of people that contributed their energy, time, thoughts, ideas and hopes. Our goal was – and still  is – to mobilize a Just Transition to an ecological, equitable, resilient county. 

    The draft plan offers a number of important and valuable actions, but the county’s consultants – Dudek – fail to chart the just transition strategies needed to avert catastrophic climate change and the accelerating impacts.

    Add your response to the draft CAAP by July 10 through the comment portal at yolocaap.org. Here are some recommended changes:

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  • Al’s Corner – July 2024 – Open Community Discussion Page

    IMG_5229Your host:  Alan C. "Al" Miller

    Pictured:  an extreme version of himself

  • Sierra Club Hosts Summer Potluck and Wetlands Talk

    Image 573(From press release) Join the Sierra Club and YoloSol Collective on Wednesday, June 26 for a summer potluck and panel presentation on “Restoring Cache Creek Wetlands.”

    For this free, public event, we are pleased to welcome Native Californian cultural practitioner Diana Almendariz, Cache Creek conservationist Jim Barrett, and UC Davis entomologist Geoffrey Attardo in a discussion of how the lower Cache Creek’s watershed ecosystem functioned in the past before agriculture and mining changed its current condition. Panelists will share their ideas for a restorative, climate-resilient future for the creek and its plant and animal wildlife.

    Almendariz is a naturalist, educator and practitioner of Maidu/Wintun, Hupa/Yurok culture, heritage and experiences. Following the teachings of renowned Wintun basket weaver and culture bearer Bertha Mitchell (1936-2018), Almendariz has been working for more than twenty years to bring to life a Tending and Gathering Garden in a reclaimed mining pit at the Cache Creek Nature Preserve.  She is a frequent lecturer at UC Davis, Sacramento State, museums and nature centers. She leads workshops on cultural burning on place-based traditional ecological knowledge.

    Jim Barrett, a retired physician, conservationist and proud grandfather, has lived alongside lower Cache Creek near the home of Yolo County settler pioneer William Gordon for 24 years. As a board member of Cache Creek Conservancy and the Sierra Club Yolano Group, he envisions a role for reclaimed gravel mines in the restoration of lower Cache Creek.

    Geoff Attardo, Associate Professor of Entomology at UC Davis, is passionate about mosquitos, marshes, and teaching science.  He specializes in the study of arthropod disease vector biology and the role of bio-diverse ecosystems in public and environmental health. Geoff is currently partnering with Almendariz on a project to demonstrate the benefits of traditional tule and cattail wetlands management.

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  • Oh Do *@#$%& Off, Greenwald (regarding building on a conservation-forever easment specifically, but also in general)

    City-promised-to-protect-a-strip-of-land-along-a-creeCome on Greenwald.  Seriously?

    When people fought decades ago to save land from development, forever, do you believe what they were really fighting for was to save the land from development 'forever, or until there was pressure to build housing, whichever comes first' ?

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  • Al’s Corner June: Committee Rise, Committee Set

    CRCSIt's June, and the City of Davis is in mourning.  People are visiting the Davis Cemetery to visit our fallen committees.  To celebrate this misery, Alan C. Miller sang "Committee Rise, Committee Set" at the City Council meeting last night, sung to the tune of "Sunrise, Sunset" from Fiddler on the Roof.  Mr. Miller was brought to tears by his own performance.

         This can be viewed at this link:  https://davis.granicus.com/player/clip/1703?view_id=6&redirect=true

         At this time signature:  38:10

    Here's the lyrics from Tuesday night's (June 4th) council meeting:

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  • Police Surveillance and Military Equipment Acquisition Policies t

    MRAP 2014-08-29 at 9.42.39

    MRAP 2014-08-29 at 9.42.39 AM

    To be Discussed and Possibly Decided at Tuesday, June 4th Davis Council Meeting

    By Scott Steward

    Right when Davis is in full graduation mode – the City is to consider items that have everything to do with how free you are to express your views without being recorded and traced, with or without your knowledge.  Is this servail increasing our safety or providing more tools that have to be maintained and that have to find an excuse to exist?

    Military equipment in a civil city?  Where Davis has been resistant, other communities are less so, and the armaments that our police department does not have, it can leave them wondering if they have to borrow the highest gauge shielding and firearms.  Or is that true?  Is keeping the peace more about relationships and not over-arming to defend against community breakdowns that erupt in bizarre and tragic ways?  Ways that no shielding can defend.  A teenager hidden in a house, a gun owner deciding he does not like a police officer, a gun owner whose roommate does not suspect he has lost it. Or a knife held by a young man whose mind and body go feral?

    Disarming those whose weapons are for organized crime and premeditated harm, this is part of peacekeeping, and how that can happen safely for the police officers is to be heard and understood.  What are the tradeoffs? What is necessary, and what is contributing to escalation?

    Item 5 (7:15) – agenda is here: https://documents.cityofdavis.org/Media/Default/Documents/PDF/CityCouncil/CouncilMeetings/Agendas/2024/2024-06-04/City-Council-Agenda-06-04-24.pdf

  • Sierra Club and Environmental Council of Sacramento Sue Caltrans over Environmental Deficiencies of Yolo I-80 Freeway Widening Project

    I-80 Widening Logo
    (From press release) On May 29, the Sierra Club and the Environmental Council of Sacramento (ECOS) filed a lawsuit against Caltrans alleging legally inadequate environmental analysis of the I-80 freeway widening project through Yolo County.

    The lawsuit’s goal is to stop Caltrans from widening 17 miles of the I-80 freeway from six to eight lanes between Davis and Sacramento through the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area until Caltrans conducts a valid analysis of adverse environmental impacts threatened by the project and implements appropriate mitigation for these harmful effects.

    Caltrans’ Environmental Impact Report (EIR) grossly underestimates increased vehicular travel, which would emit far larger quantities of greenhouse gases (GHG) and air pollutants than claimed. The EIR fails to consider viable alternatives, such as increased public transit or alternate tolling strategies. Therefore, the project neither adequately manages demand nor produces adequate revenue to fund needed transit alternatives. Also, Caltrans’ proposed mitigation is woefully inadequate to offset the resulting increased GHG and air pollutant emissions.

    Caltrans violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) by failing to acknowledge that freeway widenings do not produce less congestion but, in fact, result in increased traffic — leading to worse congestion and pollution – due to “Induced Demand”.

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