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Category: Politics

  • Council public comment

    Brett_LeeBy Jon Li

    The Mayor Pro Tem is proposing that city council meeting public comment be limited to a half hour at the beginning of the meeting, and time given at the end of the meeting for public comment. That is the way it is done at most city councils around the country.

    The Davis community activists have demanded the right to longer time for public comment. I believe that recent city council meeting experience is that a few activists have tried to take over the agenda of the meeting during public comment, and on many occasions attempted to derail the council from its meeting agenda purpose.

    What is public comment for? Roberta Millstein claimed "Let's recall what general public comment is for: 1) it's for members of the community who want to speak to items on the agenda, but can't stay late, and 2) it's for members of the community to speak to items that are not on the agenda. "

    I think you forgot what the purpose of public comment is. Then we can talk about what it is for, and then we can talk about the more effective approaches to setting ground rules to achieve identified goals.

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  • Problematic changes proposed for Davis City Council meeting comments

    Brett_LeeThe City Council is considering some changes to its meeting format, according to the Davis Enterprise:

    One suggestion was to limit general public comment at the beginning of the meeting — requiring that it end at a specific time — and continuing it for those who still wish to speak after all other agenda items have been dealt with.

    The reason for the possible change?

    “The idea is that as we start with a new council in July, that we find a way to make the meetings more accessible for the public and make them function more smoothly,” [Brett] Lee said.

    So, meetings will be more accessible for the public if we force some members of the public to wait until the very end of the meeting to make general comments?  No. That would make meetings less accessible.

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  • Election post-mortem

    YoloCountyBallotHaving taken a day off to reflect, here are some of my thoughts about the election just completed.

    First and foremost, let me assure everyone that the Davisite will continue! Some have speculated that this blog was created just to promote Nishi. That was never the case and time will show that to be true. If there have been a lot of articles about Nishi, that was because many of our current authors (myself included) were very engaged in that issue. The Davisite was always intended to be a blog by and for Davisites, which means that our content will always reflect our authors.

    So, now is a good time to reissue a call for authors: send us your thoughts, be they political or not, artistic or not, funny or not. You can be a regular author, or send us something from time to time, or maybe just once – long or short, it doesn't matter. (But remember that on the Internet, most people don't want to read things that are very long!). The sidebar contains our contact info and comment policy, the latter of which serves as guidelines for authors as well.

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  • No air pollution testing at NISHI? Gimme a break! Not testing is just a public health and public policy sin….. and totally non-scientific.

    Frankly, it still boggles my mind that the Nishi developers refused to allow air quality testing at their proposed development site.  They had about all the benefits you can imagine, an ideal situation in that a famous UC Davis professor with the right equipment to do air quality monitoring offered to do the testing in a fair and systematic way (you can call it "scientific") in order to determine the unique patterns of air quality at a site that is below grade, adjacent to a very busy highway and wedged in by the railroad tracks.  BUT THE DEVELOPERS SAID "NO!!!!".

    WOW!  A big "NO!!!!" to scientific testing. 

    Had they asked the Yolo County Epidemiologist like I did whether or not this kind of testing was advisable from a public health perspective, here is what they would have heard (communication from Dr. Dabritz: 

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  • Johansson: Better choice for D.A.

    By B. & D. Lindeman

    As if 12 years of Reisig in the D.A.'s office isn't enough of a reason for a change in leadership. (hasn't anyone ever heard of the good idea of term limits?) But it's his latest campaign flyer that I received in the mail (4th one!) that compels me to write. Instead of promoting the supposed merits of the Reisig reign, it is mostly devoted to maligning the character of the man running against him: Dean Johansson! I'd say that kind of below-the-belt tactic maligns Reisig's character. It reminds me of the tactics of someone we all know who lives in the current White House.

    Thus, if I had an overly simple rhyming campaign slogan, it might be, "Reisig is mean, so vote for Dean"! (maybe "overly aggressive" would be kinder but it doesn't rhyme). Fact: (not fake news, folks): Jeff Reisig, our Yolo County DA, brings more cases to jury trial per capita than any other DA in the state! That means that Reisig's office conducts more felony trials than counties that have a much higher population than ours. Yolo cannot be that much more crime ridden! This fact alone is a co$tly (for taxpayers) and valid reason for a change in D.A. leadership.

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  • Nishi’s costs, health risks, and loose ends

    Nishi-train-car
    By Cara Bradley, Thomas Cahill, Gilbert Coville, Pam Gunnell, Marilee Hanson, Michael Harrington, David Kupfer, Robert Milbrodt, Roberta Millstein, Don Price, Nancy Price, Rodney Robinson, Johannes Troost, Dean Vogel, Colin Walsh, and Michael Yackey

    Two years after Davis voters rejected the Nishi project at the polls, it’s back on the ballot as Measure J with the same pollution hazards from the adjacent I-80 freeway and railroad, but without the commercial component that was supposed to deliver significant revenue to the City.

    Here are seven problems with the Nishi project:

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  • Nishi Hot Dog Give Away: Currying favor or buying votes?

    Whitcombe-ticketsBy Gilbert Coville

    Last night John Whitcombe and the Yes on J campaign gave away free hot dogs at the Anderson Place Apartments in an attempt to convince voters to approve Nishi 2.0.  The Anderson Place Apartments complex, located on the corner of Hanover Place and Covell, is one of the 14 apartment complexes around Davis owned by Whitcombe and Tandem properties. I was not in attendance myself, so the following report and photographs are based on information that was given to me by individuals who prefer to remain anonymous.

    Holding rallies like this where freebies are given away is legal so long as there is no quid pro quo. An example of quid pro quo would be if someone says, “I will give you a hot dog if you vote for my development.”  There is no evidence that there was quid pro quo at this event; however, it is eerily similar to some of Whitcombe’s past practices that resulted in a major Davis scandal.

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  • Nishi money spills into tax measures

    Pileofmoney-croppedBy Gilbert Coville

    As we all know, it’s illegal to give money to an elected official in exchange for a favorable vote. However, monied interests get around this by contributing to elected officials’ pet projects if a vote goes their way.

    This doesn’t happen in Davis. Or does it?

    On Feb 6, our city council voted to advance the Nishi 2.0 student housing project to a Measure R vote. They were clearly not as excited about this project as they were with the previous Nishi proposal (just search on YouTube: “Davis council lukewarm”). However, they advanced the project to the ballot anyway; it is now Measure J. The Council continues to promote the project, with the mayor as the de facto spokesperson for Yes on Measure J.

    The Council also is promoting two local tax measures, H and I, to help fund local park and road maintenance. Two Council members are officers of the committee promoting these measures, and Council members have been staffing its table at the Farmers Market.

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  • The Aggie’s article on Nishi air quality: Some additional information

    The Aggie has a great new article on the air quality issue at Nishi, including interviews with Dr. Tom Cahill and myself.  I have just a few things to add.

    One is that since the article was published, the amount contributed by the developer to sell Measure J to voters has gone from over $170,000 to over $250,000 (a quarter of a million dollars).  This is eight times the cost of what one air quality test would have cost.

    Second, according to the article "Whitcome says there were some issues found at the site, but 'nothing of any real consequence.'"  That's not an accurate statement because the site has not actually been studied, just an adjacent site.  And here is what they found at the adjacent site (from Barnes 2015, the study used in the EIR):

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  • Robb Davis/Matt Williams Dialogue on Nishi Financials – Part 3 of 3

    Robb and Matt at Nishi Forum

    By Matt Williams

    As follow-up to the May 6th CivEnergy forum on Measure J, I published my personal reasons why I oppose Measure J as an article for the Davisite and as a comment to the Vanguard.  Prompted by my list, Mayor Davis took the time to respond to all eleven (11) of my comments one-by-one.  I thank Robb for doing so, and particularly thank him for the structured format he used to reply. This is the third in a series of articles on Nishi's financials in which I respond to Robb Davis's replies to me.  The first article is here and the second article is here.

    Matt: Nishi 2018 has no dollars for deferred maintenance of capital infrastructure.
    Robb: See previous point. We don’t need it because the developer is responsible.
    Matt: That is the same short-sighted, politically-driven thinking that created the current dilapidated state of our roads and the $8 million annual shortfall in the City Budget.
    Robb: That is an editorial comment to which I will not respond.

    The interchange above is at the heart of the City’s current unsustainable fiscal situation. Past Councils for well over a decade have ignored the advice of Staff regarding the maintenance of the City’s capital infrastructure. The year-by-year individual circumstances have differed, but the behavior pattern was the same. Over and over again, the Council chose to avoid a public dialogue about the fact that our City’s appetite for spending exceeded its annual income.

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