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Category: Politics

  • Letter: Deos Leading for Yolo County

    Deos-for-supervisorI want a leader on the Yolo County Board of Supervisors, someone who has fresh ideas and solutions for the new decade. I want someone who will not only question the need for a new county jail but will look at ways to reduce the incarceration rate that we have. Eliminating the cash bail system that keeps poor people in jail while awaiting their hearings is one way to accomplish this goal. Because 65% of our jail residents cannot post bail, they must stay there until his or her trial. They are in jail, often for months at a time, despite not having been proven guilty of any crime. It's a modern-day debtor's prison.

    It costs as much to house a prisoner in California for a year as it does to send a student to Stanford for the same amount of time. That’s a lot of money that could be used to provide more robust social services programs that lift up our county residents.

    I want a leader who will return our foster care program back to one that works for families that are in distress.  We need to stop shipping hundreds of Yolo County children to foster homes far from their families.

    I want a leader who understands climate change as the existential threat that it is. Someone who is able to work with other committed supervisors and residents to do the hard work of making significant and urgent changes to our county’s operations model.

    You have a choice of leadership for the 4th district Yolo County supervisor race for the first time in many years. The leader that I want for Yolo County Board of Supervisors is Linda Deos. She is the future.

    Elizabeth Lasensky

    Davis

  • Strong turnout for Davis’s “Reject the Coverup” Impeachment Rally

    Blue efforts are ongoing

    Davis trump impeachment rally 2020 02 05 5th x B (4) crop

    Davis trump impeachment rally 2020 02 05 5th x B (18)On Wednesday evening, nearly 100 people showed up (on short notice!)  at 5th and B to protest the failure of the U.S. Senate to call witnesses, much less convict, Trump for Abuse of Power or Obstruction of Justice.

    Davis trump impeachment rally 2020 02 05 5th x B (20)People driving by enthusiastically honked in support.

    Photos of the Davis crowd made Rachel Maddow show….along with photos of the other 270 rallies across the U.S.

    Later that evening, IndivisibleYolo and Sister District CA-3 previewed their new volunteer HQ on Olive Drive near Rocknasium, the first step of Blue Wave 2 campaign to flip the Senate and Presidency red to blue in November 2020.  Arizona races are the target Red to Blue area for Davis.   Over 60 people showed, celebrating that the two groups have together raised over $14,000 to fund this office space.

    Last week there was also a Davis House party run by the group “The Verbs” to raise money for Democratic Senate Candidate for Arizona, Mark Kelly. It reportedly netted over $70,000.

    – Submitted by a Davisite reader.

  • Vanguard Publishes Demonstrably False Information

    Misinformation persists even after the author and board members are notified

    VanguardBy Colin Walsh

    On Monday February 3rd the Davis Vanguard published a story titled “Monday Morning Thoughts: Strange Decision on Commissioner Punctuates a Strange Night for Council” by David Greenwald (link). This is not a big groundbreaking story; it mostly focuses on the Council’s decision to suspend a Commissioner for two meetings and takes the opportunity to make fun of people who spoke at public comment. Sadly, it also had the effect of again dragging a hard-working City of Davis volunteer Commissioner’s name through the mud. What is most notable about the Vanguard article is that it has specific false information that distorts what actually happened.

    The third paragraph of Greenwald’s article about the January 28th City Council meeting states,

    The council then attempted to split the baby so to speak – instead of ousting Mr. Edelman, they suspended him for two meetings, February and March, with some sort of conflict resolution process.  That was not enough for the three commissioners who all resigned, leaving the commission short of a quorum.

    The second sentence is demonstrably false. This sentence clearly states that three commissioners resigned after the January 28th Council meeting, but the January 9, 2020, BTSSC agenda had already announced the departure of Commissioners Andrews and Gudz (link). If it was on the January 9 agenda, then the announcement was made at least several days before, possibly as far back as the December BTSSC meeting (link).

    Jan 9 BTSSC agenda_highlighting

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  • Letter: Deos for change

    Deos-for-supervisorI'm voting for Linda Deos for real change.

    I strongly support term limits in California politics and agree with those imposed on our state legislators. I think the longer an elected office-holder is in the same job the more entrenched they become with their same ideology and their same old ways of doing things. That's no longer enough given the huge challenges facing our planet, our country, and our county.

    For instance, on a local level, Yolo Co. still has an extremely regressive criminal justice system that disproportionately hammers even non-violent low-income defendants of color and minority youth.

    We still have an exploding homeless population that shows no signs of abating. Yet our Supervisors are only using short-term band-aids to try to alleviate this glaring problem and have yet to enact a long-term comprehensive plan to address our homeless and housing crisis.

    Yolo Co. is still increasing its carbon footprint every year while the world is burning and the Supervisors have yet to declare a climate emergency or implement policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that have already been adopted by the City of Davis and more progressive communities.

    Enough is enough. Jim Provenza is a very nice man and truly believes in what he is doing. But he has had 12 years to make his mark on Yolo Co. and there has barely been a dent in improving the lives of the most vulnerable people in our midst.

    It's time we changed the make-up of our staid, male-dominated Board of Supervisors and their same old ways. Endorsed by one of my favorite local progressive heroes, Public Defender and 2018 Yolo Co. District Attorney candidate, Dean Johannson, Linda Deos will work for the little and forgotten people in our county.

    Linda Deos gets my vote.

    Alan Pryor

    Davis

  • Letter: Provenza for preservation of open space and farmland

    EnterprisePic (4) - cropSupport Jim Provenza

    I am delighted to write in support of Supervisor Jim Provenza. I have known Jim for a long time. He is very accessible to the residents of the county. In several incidents, I reached out to him to solve issues with the county. He contacted the right persons and resolved the issues in no time.

    Jim's priorities at Yolo County include the preservation of open space and farmland in Yolo County, the protection of our water supply, and the promotion of services for children, crime victims and senior citizens. He is committed to ensuring that Yolo County delivers essential health care and effective public safety protection.

    Supervisor Provenza has 30 years of county and state government experience, and a long career in public interest law. For the 23 years, he has worked as a special assistant district attorney. He is also a past member of our school board. We are fortunate to have him as our supervisor.

    Hamza El-Nakhal, 

    Davis

  • Commissioner receives poor treatment from City Council

    City Council needs to stop shooting from the hip

    CC-re-BTSSC

    The Council in deliberation. Note that the caption is incorrect; "bicycle" should be "bicycling"

    By Roberta Millstein

    The City Council has a disturbing pattern of making shoot-from-the-hip decisions on the dais without proper deliberation and analysis.  This past Tuesday one commissioner, and commissions more generally, were caught in the crossfire.  (There was also a poor decision on pesticides on the same night).

    To understand what happened, you’ll need a bit of the backstory, starting with the November meeting of the Bicycling, Transportation, and Street Safety Commission (BTSSC) – whose members also behaved improperly, as will become clear.

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  • Letter: Delighted to endorse Deos

    Deos-for-supervisorI am delighted to endorse Linda Deos for the Yolo County Board of Supervisors! The election will be held on March 3, 2020. Linda is running in District 4 for the seat currently held by Jim Provenza, who is seeking his 4th term. District 4 includes all of Davis north of Covell Blvd, most of Davis east of the railroad tracks, and all of South Davis. We support a change to the representation and perspective of the Fourth County Supervisorial District.

    Linda is interested in issues that have been ignored or mishandled for many years. Of note is the huge increase in the number of children in foster care in Yolo County. Due to Board of Supervisor directed changes, the number has increased from 388 in 2014 to over 670 in 2019. 55% of those children are placed outside of Yolo County.

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  • Commissions and Quorum-Buffers

    By Todd Edelman

    The high wheeler bike share bikes are rusting, the tomatoes are hibernating, the persimmons are throbbing, the Creek’s not so full, I-80 is roaring and stinky, the sun’s shining perhaps a bit more than it should… it’s mid-winter in Davis and I was just temporarily suspended from the Bicycling, Transportation and Street Safety Commission (BTSSC).

    Any situation like this is Davis is subjectively-analytical, and dynamically-objective, but there’s several factors at play dealing more with facts (with spin, if only because none of us have infinite context.).

    For now I am going to give what I hope to be an accurate accounting of the quorum piece of the matter at hand, and some suggestions… and then later on (today, tomorrow etc.) will provide some details on activity of the current membership of the BTSSC, including myself:

    Quorum: My position is that this didn’t have to be an issue at all, or at the very least less of one.

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  • How much housing is being built in Davis?

    The answers might surprise you.

    Sterling-project-under-construction
    Sterling project, 2100 5th St, under construction (611 beds)

     By Roberta Millstein

    Recently on NextDoor and elsewhere, Davisites have been disagreeing about whether Davis is building enough housing or whether it needs more.  The discussions have become particularly relevant in light of two potentially large projects: the University Commons project (264 residential units / 894 beds) and the so-called Aggie Research Campus (ARC), which proposes 850 units as part of the larger proposal for a massive 200 acre business park outside of Mace Curve.

    But to answer the question of whether we have enough housing or not, Davisites need to know how much is in the pipeline.  I suspect that most Davisites don’t know the answer to that question, even if they’ve been paying attention.  This article is the result of my attempt to figure out the answer. 

    If you just want the answers I calculated, here they are: the housing that is now in the pipeline will accommodate more than 10,000 additional people in the City and more than 20,000 additional people in the City and UC Davis combined.  The details of those answers are below.

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  • Article 4 of 4: Sierra Club Yolano Group Questionnaire for Yolo County District 4 Supervisor

    Three-for-supervisor
    by Alan Pryor, Chair – Sierra Club Yolano Group

    Introduction

    This article is the 4th and final in a 4-part series on questions presented by the Sierra Club Yolano Group to candidates in the Yolo County District 4 Supervisor race on the March 2020 ballot and the candidates' responses. This article covers questions and responses in the areas of Transportation Management, Environmental-Social Justice, Other Environmental-Related Issues, and Community Support. The order of the candidate responses are changed with each article. 

    See article 1 of 4 here, which gives a "Table of Contents" for all four articles, an introduction explaining the article series, announces that the Yolano Group is not making an endorsement in this race, and covers questions and responses in the areas of Reductions in Carbon-Based Energy Use and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions. 

    See article 2 of 4 here, which covers questions and responses in the areas of Solid Waste Management, Water Management and Conservation, and Toxics in the Environment.

    See article 3 of 4 here, which covers questions and responses in the areas of Land Use and Development.

    Part 6 – Questions Related to Transportation Management

    Issue 6-1 – Transportation-Related GHG Emissions

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