By Adam Morrill
I’m pleased to formally announce my candidacy for Davis City Council, District 4.
I was born and raised in the Bay Area where I met my high school sweetheart and wife of 22 years. We both came to Davis as undergraduates and after graduating decided this is where we wanted to raise our family. I have been active in the community as a volunteer firefighter, CPR instructor, basketball coach, and AYSO referee. I have spent 25 years of my life as a Davis resident (20 of which as a homeowner) and I have witnessed the gradual decay of a once prosperous city due to neglect and a lack of vision and planning.
I’ve entered the race because I am a solution and results oriented person and I want Davis to be a place where my kids want to raise their own families and where they can afford to own their own home. I want to fix our crumbling roads and sidewalks and ensure there are fiscally responsible plans to maintain them. We need to proactively maintain our urban forest, greenbelts and parks so that they can remain one of the great assets of our city. I want to work with local businesses to revitalize our downtown to make it a destination for our residents and visitors to Davis.
We need leaders who push for strategic infill development that will provide entry level housing to young families and workers, as well as dedicated Affordable Housing, not unaffordable housing that permanently destroys prime farmland. We need leaders that will work cooperatively with our local non-profits, faith-based organizations, and the county to address the homeless crisis in our city. They are the experts and should take the lead, while we should support them rather than wasting funds and trying to duplicate their efforts.
We need leaders who will provide innovative support and resources for our public safety staff to effectively deal with violent and property crime while also actively engaging and building partnerships within the community to compassionately attend to the issues associated with homelessness and mental health. We need leaders who will not just give lip service to attaining carbon neutrality by 2040, but lead by example with the city taking concrete steps NOW to immediately lower the city’s carbon footprint.
I am the person to do the job, and that’s why I am running for Davis City Council, District 4.
Contact: adam@adam4davis.org
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Al's Corner is a place to comment on local issues and articles/comments from other local forums that you may or may not have been banned from. For the few Rule-ez at Al's Corner, see "Pages" –> "Al's Corner – What It Is".
Davisite 
I have aural nerve damage in one ear and so have had to, out of necessity, learn how sound affects the human body. Loud sounds can cause me splitting headaches emanating from the inside of the ear, severe ringing in the ears, internal ear pressure, disorientation, burning, aural misinterpretations, etc. Sound frequency, duration, distance, peak-volume and distortion all factor into the severity of an 'event' as I have come to know them.
Though dependent on particular circumstances, in general shorter bursts of loud sounds are more damaging than longer duration of softer sounds. That is why going with some sort of 'averaging' system would be a tragic mistake. This would ignore the very real damage done by peak sounds. My world-renowned ear doctor from Stanford Ear Clinic would back me up on this. He has coached me on how to live with my condition, which is not treatable.
My ear doctor explains that there is a 'threshold' level at which the noise becomes damaging to hearing (in my case, the threshold is much lower than those with a healthy ear). The PEAK noise is almost always the problem. Therefore, changing the city noise ordinance to consider some AVERAGE measurement as the standard is not only unwise, it is INSANE.
To give an example of how unwise this is, an example everyone can understand – consider train horns. A train horn — at 100' in front of the horn — ranges from 96 to 110 db. Even at the low end this is painfully loud, and on the high end can cause ear damage in just a few seconds. But, if you averaged the railroad noise around the tracks over a period of hours, it would show very low AVERAGE noise as over time there are few trains. The PEAK noise is when the damage is done; AVERAGING OVER TIME would FAIL to CATCH the DAMAGING peak sounds.
While I am more bothered by sound than those with healthy hearing, ear disease is rampant and hugely under-diagnosed in this country. There are many people with my condition and many other hearing diseases who are intolerant of various sound conditions. This is not just about an annoyance, it is at times debilitating.
Another thing to consider is that those close to a noise source suffer from the exposure repeatedly and over time. Those adjacent to noise sources are the people who must be considered paramount and above all else. Let's say a nightclub with sub-woofers goes in next door to someone's house. But ON AVERAGE less than 1% of the people in town even hear the noise. The standard must be on how the noise effects those adjacent, not on the fact that 99% of Davis voters never hear it. Another abominable use of 'average' exposure.
I urge the commission, the City, and the Council to retain current noise-ordinance formulas and standards, and reject any attempt to change the noise ordinance to be more allowing of harmful peak noise exposures.
Sincerely,
Alan C. Miller, District 3