Category: Uncategorized

The following article is compiled from Davis Vanguard comments by Ron Glick regarding the special City Council meeting held on Tuesday, April 28. Ron Glick did not wish to author a formal article, but granted me permission to compile his comments into this essay.

Last night was awesome. The Jewish and Muslim communities of Davis met in the Town Hall and for almost three hours [and] respectfully listened to each other speak. Each person was allowed to speak for two minutes and everyone adhered to the time limit. Getting all these people together within one room and everyone being respectful and listening was an achievement in and of itself.

It has been a long two and a half years. There has been much pain, suffering and strife. Many people . . . in this town have been touched by that suffering and when the war will end is still anybody’s guess. So getting the people of this community together, with their disparate opinions, each having a voice, and listen to each other, can hopefully be a step forward towards healing.

While many words have been spilled about the MAPA report . . . another important study was conducted . . . It showed that people connected to events half way around the world can be traumatized by those events. It is clear many in Davis have been traumatized by this ongoing horrific war. Last night was an opportunity to share that pain and hopefully it was cathartic for some people. But even if it wasn’t it provided a space for a divided community to sit together and share their humanity.

The Mayor did an outstanding job of running the meeting and the staff should also be commended for respectfully setting the tone. All in all, Davis should be proud of being a place where a meeting like the one that took place last night could happen.

So much for the positive. I have a concern about one aspect of what was passed. I worry that political opinion will find its way into the training program . . . Time will tell, but as always, the devil will be in the details.

One moment from last night needs to be noticed . . . because it was off camera. After hours of testimony it was finally time for the council members to speak. . . . [Mayor Neville] spoke for a long time and remained respectful throughout as did most of her colleagues. Next came Council member Vaitla. He began by addressing what he thought the CC should do and that was fine. Then after some time he veered off and started lecturing the community about genocide. About 20 people who had patiently and respectfully sat through over three hours of the meeting all got up together and walked out.

What compelled Vaitla to go there at that moment I have no idea . . . On the other hand I think I have a good understanding of why so many walked out. The Jewish community of Davis doesn’t need to be lectured about genocide. We have plenty of experience with genocide. In fact . . . he was addressing people, some of whose families survived the Shoah . . . Vaitla has a knack for pissing people off and lecturing community members from the dais. I don’t know why he somehow consistently screws up. Last night was another example of him sadly and badly misreading the room.

[Addressing another commenter] Interesting that you would lump Jews and blacks together . . . because those are the two groups who experience the most acts of racial and religious violence in America according to Department of Justice statistics. While you may not see such bigotry and therefore don’t think it’s a problem that doesn’t mean its not a real problem.

[Addressing that same commenter] Huh? What are you talking about? The people who walked out . . . have not committed any acts of genocide. They are upstanding law abiding members of this community who are well aware of what is going on in the world and share a desire for the killing to stop. They do not need to be lectured . . . about international law. He was not saying anything they haven’t already heard and they certainly were not obligated to stay while being lectured from the dais. The people who left had politely followed the rules and respectfully sat there for almost four hours until Vaitla started lecturing them.

What amazes me is that Vaitla has a way of insulting community members from the Dais. This is not the first time I have watched him act up there in such a way that totally turned people off. While everyone else on the City Council was trying to walk the line of trying to bring the community together Vaitla decided to lecture the community about the meaning of horrific acts committed in warfare that the people he was lecturing have no control over whatsoever. Its truly bewildering to me why he thinks its appropriate to act the way he does in meetings. I think he misunderstands the job of being on the CC.

[That same commenter says, in the quotes] “He’s an activist,…”

[Ron Glick responds] Oh I thought he was a city council member.

[Addressing that same commenter] So the people who left are bullies? They didn’t say anything, they simply left. How does that make them bullies? No the bullying repeatedly is Vaitla who seems to not understand that attacking people from the dais is not a productive strategy.

[Addressing that same commenter] Well we finally agree on a point. The city should focus on potholes instead of international politics. But its not the Jews of this community who produced the MAPA report. Its not the Jews of this community who wanted the CC to take this up. Yet after behaving appropriately, according to the rules, and acting with the appropriate decorum, they got lectured . . .

What you probably don’t know is that the Mapa (sic) report made many recommendations to the CC. Many of these recommendations were outrageous, inflammatory and inaccurate. So much so that the CC wouldn’t even take up the report itself. Of the 11 original recommendations the CC adopted only three.

When the HRC sent the MAPA Report to the City Council for approval, one of the HRC members wrote a dissenting opinion, as is his right. Astonishingly, the Human Relations Committee, a group that is supposed to help minority groups, decided to NOT include that minority opinion.  Here, in full, is that dissenting opinion.  With permission of the author.

To Davis City Council,

As a Commissioner on the HRC, I believe it is important to provide you with my minority opinion regarding the “Report on MAPA Climate & Experiences in Davis” recently approved by the HRC.

At first glance, the report appears to simply document feelings of concern and alienation among members of the MAPA community and recommends that the City of Davis, DJUSD, and UC Davis demonstrate solidarity and provide training on anti-MAPA bias. On the surface, this seems like a straightforward and unobjectionable request from an oppressed and marginalized community.

However, a closer reading reveals a very different and deeply troubling narrative. The report does not document systemic discrimination against MAPA community members across Davis institutions. Rather, it focuses overwhelmingly on allegations of harassment by individuals identified as ‘Zionists’. The implicit — and at times explicit — message throughout the report is that Zionism is equated with fascism, and that Zionist individuals have no legitimate place in the Davis community.

It is important to clarify what Zionism actually represents. Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people, like all other peoples, have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel (Eretz Israel). It is a movement rooted in the pursuit of safety, dignity, and national liberation for Jews following centuries of persecution, displacement, and genocide. To demonize Zionism is to deny a fundamental aspect of Jewish identity and to delegitimize Jewish aspirations for freedom and security.

(more…)

It’s time to TRASH almost everything between First St & Cowell/Research Park Drive

Focus of post: Consent Calendar item, this evening in City Council:
“Authorize the City Manager to sign the California Transportation Commission ATP Cycle 8 Signature Page for Richards I-80 Bicycle and Pedestrian Improvement Grant Application and if awarded authorize CityManager to commit agency resources and funds to grant”

First things first: On April 13, Lincoln Sabini was killed in the Greater Davis Mobility Ecosystem ¹. Please pause for a moment. Release. Sign Petition.

Hot on the heals of the ethically-repugnant fake patriotism of the City Council – okay, Council member Vaitla made a just above symbolic opposition vote – final approval for July 4th Fireworks via Consent – also in the midst of the forming trials of the Esparto Fireworks Murderers including the impossibility of County Supervisor deniability/ignorance over a decade – now we have the Council using the never-meant-to-be blunt instrument of the Consent Calendar to remove active transportation infrastructure from a long term project designed to herd rabid driving kittens in the Richards-80 “Uptight Diamond Project”. 

Also a decade in the corrupt birth canal of Caltrans, in the buns of a stinky Double-Double, the ghost of a Murder Burger, the bike lane clogging coffee that only incestuous Dutch siblings would ever create… we have a mostly mysteriously delayed, budget over-ripened waste of concrete and bitumen bits getting a lazy bifurcation… a separating of the funding mechanism o its active transportation elements.

By increasing capacity between I-80 and Olive Drive and removing the long-flowing ramps for the westbound freeway, the Richards-80 Project will indeed at least temporarily remove some conflicts or stress from the ill leeches – freeway-to-local connections – that suck the metal fecundity units (mostly “cars”²) from the Eisenhower into the Bike Friendly Paradise of the Greatest Nation on Earth!  But it will also just push the same or more metal encased bags of flesh (humans, beneficial bacteria and sometimes companion animals)into the Downtown, where the permanently soiled diaper of mostly fare free parking won’t actual expand like the belt-loosening induction of demand of that ex-President-named maximalist infrastructure perpetual gift – and that famous quote about the “military industrial complex” applies to cars… it’s motonormativity and it’s a cancer (the I-80 widening).

The City needs to instead use staff capacity to apply for something else and very related better like vast improvements to the rough and/or ableist existing under crossing to South Davis – perhaps purchase the land along the Dry Putah Creek just east of the I-80 under crossing so that the multi-use path (MUP) can finally go that way, repave the west end of Research Park Drive – and perhaps also use the $$$ for the in-progress Cowell protected bike lane (which is very flawed due to this thing called motor vehicle headlights glare – it’s also ableist, yep yep, but we can solve this!)

YES, just as the Uptight Diamond will revert to coal not so long after completion, the designed and approved MUP is a WASTE of time: It has no safe connectivity at the Olive end, is problematically serpentine and has an absolute danger point – where the stairs shortcut to the top meets the Downtown-direction bike lane on a 4%-ish slope after a 90 degree turn.

It’s true that – Richards-80 this train wrecking train wreck of a project was left to staff and current council to deal with, BUT:

100 times worse is the WHOLE ENTIRE JUNCTION BETWEEN FIRST ST AND COWELL/RESEARCH PARK DRIVE INCLUSIVE OF THE NEW AND OLD FREEWAY EGRESSES  – IT IS SIMPLY AN EXISTENTIAL MESS THAT CAN NEVER BE SORTED OUT IN A JOYOUS, SAFE AND SUSTAINABLE WAY. 

TAKE THIS OUT OF CONSENT, THROW IT INTO THE RECYCLING – ALONG WITH THE CLAIMED 88% OF EVERYTHING ELSE IN TOWN –  and make plans to reach out to the next hopefully kinder Federal administration and convince them that a HUGE investment is needed to first very nearly destroy everything – oh yeah, sorta sad that millions is being spent now to something something symbolic related to the shape of a freeway like a belt but also the traffic induction belt of perpetual loosening and populist vote gathering!

Again, again, and again… City Council, it’s really not your fault, it’s objectively awful. Just please admit it, force Caltrans to agree…. and move on to something different and better.

Thank you!!

Just for fun: For what’s been spent so far on the war in Iran, every single student, YES, every single student, K-12, in the USA could have a $1000 bicycle. 

AND HAVE SOME FUN AND DANCE

1. This is the actual transportation infrastructure and systems of the city, campus, peripheral areas and region. ↩︎
2. A motor vehicle is a general technical term for a tool for mobility conveyance; “car” is a function of this tool and others that can perform the same thing in a partial or often superior and e.g. more efficient fashion… normal bicycles for single passenger trips (in combination with public transport), cargo bikes, etc.
   ↩︎

(An Open Letter to Trader Joe’s)

To the Management of Trader Joe’s in Davis,

Of all the important things Davis Jews should be concerned about, this isn’t on the top-ten list. However, Trader Joe’s has placed a wall painting in the Davis store restroom depicting a menorah, with the words “Happy Hanukkah!” and the Trader Joe’s logo. It appears as part of a decorative series of prints otherwise unrelated to religion, holidays, or cultural identity.  The menorah depiction does not belong in the print series, and most certainly it does not belong in the bathroom.

In years past, I would have laughed at the naivety of such a decision and rolled my eyes. But times have changed for Jews in Davis, and worldwide, over the last few years. Calls for the death of Jews and the destruction of Israel have been shouted publicly on campus and in town. The morning after the Bondi Beach Massacre, a large swastika was spray painted on a silver utility box on 5^th Street. Before October 7th, 2023, there was, for most of my lifetime, a sense of acceptance and safety for Jews in Davis and in much of the USA. Today that is shattered.

With Jewish identity increasingly treated as suspect, conditional, or abstracted into slogans and symbols detached from actual people, the casual handling of Jewish symbols feels dismissive. The tokenism of a people can lend to an atmosphere of hostility. With echoes of the toxic anti-Jew bigotry of 20th-Century Europe growing again in western culture, we cannot casually laugh-off a bathroom menorah today, even as we can laugh at the absurdity.

The murderous incidents in Washington D.C., Boulder, Manchester, and Bondi Beach, and this month’s arson of a historic synagogue in Mississippi, last burned by the Ku Klux Klan 60 years earlier, illustrate how the world has changed. Not so much in the news are the numerous non-fatal hostile incidents against Jews that were much rarer before October 7th, 2023, and the vast changes Jews have felt to their acceptance and safety in society.

The menorah is not just an artistic graphic like the rest of the art series in your loo. It is a religious and cultural symbol, and for many Jews there are long-standing norms, explicitly taught, about where such symbols belong and where they do not. Public bathrooms are not neutral spaces for such symbols, not just in Judaism but in many religions and cultures. What makes this placement stand out is the casualness. The menorah appears to have been treated as interchangeable with abstract or whimsical themes, folded into a design series where meaning was secondary to visual variety. This flattening of a Jewish symbol lacks cultural sensitivity.

Perhaps one solution would be bringing symbols and images from several major world religions into the bathroom, to make it fair! It is worth asking, for each religion, how this would land. What if there were a crucifix mounted above the toilet? Or a painted portrait of the Prophet Mohammed (which, in many Muslim traditions, is itself considered offensive) on the wall? A Buddha stuck in the ceiling vent? Radha and Krishna dancing on the bathroom sink? Would any of those have made it past an internal review without anyone pausing to ask whether this was appropriate? Would those have been waved through as just cheerful, inclusive décor?

Almost certainly not.

Jews I have shown the bathroom menorah to have expressed a variety of reactions, from laughing out loud hysterically, to “Oh my!” to “No way!” to “That’s not A.I.?” to “What were they thinking?”.  What no Jew said was, “how nice of them for respecting our people by placing a menorah print in the bathroom”.

Trader Joe’s is known for its attention to detail, often charmingly so. This feels like a case where no one stopped to ask the most basic question: does this placement make any sense? The fact that the menorah print did make it through suggests the assumption that Jewish symbols are sufficiently benign, decorative, or flexible that placement does not really matter. That assumption is common. It is also wrong.

This is an easy fix, but it is reasonable to ponder why this was not caught before the print was placed on the bathroom wall in the first place. Thank you for applying the same care in this matter going forward that Trader Joe’s is known for. I look forward to a bountiful display of Jewish foods, wares, and symbols out on the display floor for the upcoming Passover and the next Hanukkah.

Sincerely,

Alan C. Miller, Davis

by Alan C. Miller — Illustrations by Art E. Fishalint-Elligence

Council Meeting (Dec. 16) link, (item starts at 38:00):

https://davis.granicus.com/player/clip/1902

I don’t care about housing and I don’t care whether Village Farms is built or not. Because I am a bad person. In your eyes.

What I do care about is transportation. And if more of you understood and cared about transportation, housing would not be the issue that it is and always will be. And you would be good people. In my eyes.

But what I really crave is a live soap opera unfolding before my eyes in City Chambers. A train wreck, if you will, to extend the transportation topic completely off the rails 🤦. And last Tuesday night in Council Chambers was the greatest episode in the long TV series “Davis City Council Meeting”, which is usually as exciting as the proverbial drying paint. Yes, this one may be runner up to 2010’s Greenwald vs. Asmundson for sheer dray-ma, but without a white-knighted local blogger galloping in to the lobby to ‘break it up’.

During Council discussions on Village Farms, three members of the development team came to the dais to ‘answer questions’. This progressively broke down into heated exchanges between the mayor and the development team. The core issue seemed to be whether ‘affordable’ housing units would be included in the baseline (Bapu’s alternative motion) for the developer to build, with a trigger, in order to ‘guarantee’ those be built, or whether to go with the new staff recommendation of the developer’s offer of more land and infrastructure. (If I got any of that wrong, people who care please clarify in comments)

I’ll highlight two statements, not because they are the best quotes to help readers understand the issue, but because they were the most dramatic and entertaining, the point of this article. The first is from Bapu in a back and forth with Doug Buzbee of the development team. This starts in the minute after 3:00:00 on the video:

“I’ll fight you every step of the way. Because that city code, what that city code says is build the units or . . . hold on, hold on, I’m gonna finish here . . . it says build the units. Or it says, give us in lieu fees and we set the in lieu fees — and by the way the level that we set the in lieu fees if they were multiplied by 280 they’re gonna come out to about $60 million which is the financing gap that we have. Or it says in language, and I pulled it up so I can read it, it says: “accommodate the land dedication requirement for the project in its entirety. The land dedicated would be of sufficient size to make the development of the required affordable units economically feasible”.

Now, do you think that City Council intended to provide an option that said either build the units, provide enough money in in-lieu fees or give us about 5% of the project value in land. Do you think that’s what City Council intended? Because I don’t. And if you want to come back with that offer, if that’s your interpretation, then I’ll fight you every step of the way.”

The second, rather jaw-dropping statement is from Sandy Whitcombe of the development team and can be found at 3:13:00 (and is the basis for the top-most political cartoon):

“I want to be clear that 16 acres of land is worth tens of millions of dollars once we’ve put all of the infrastructure in. That’s incredibly costly. This extra four acres and the six million is maybe a $30 million contribution. Just want that to be very clear.

Nobody has ever in this town done anything close. Nothing even close! And nobody will. You’ll see that very soon. Nobody will. We are talking so for over what anyone has done. And so, it is incredibly disappointing to have ‘people’ come back and ask for more more more !

Bapu! We talked. I wanted to make you happy. I had something that we discussed, and you know what it is, and that’s our line in the sand. We are not willing to go into the baseline features because we are already donating so much to get these 360 units done, that we are not willing to confuse voters and say: ‘oh, we’re going to do a hundred’. That makes no sense, and we are not willing to kill our election because of your fancy.

Basically we are willing to work in the development agreement and put in a provision that I worked on. There cannot be timing: ‘Oh in ten years if we don’t have it done we have to build it’. You’ll have another family of homeless people and that will be me — if you do that — my family. We have no ability to come up with $50 million dollars. I’m sorry.

So you can’t put timing in. You’ll have to — we, I told you what we would do, and that is our line in the sand. We’ve already said we will accept your dissent. And we will. We will accept your dissent. If we can get three of you, that’s fine. If we can’t, that’s fine.

You have to understand, this is an incredibly generous offer to the city. And I don’t think many other developers are going to come back with something like this. I really don’t. So that’s it. If you want to do the motion to include a conversation about the development agreement, we’re all in.”

Bapu’s alternate motion then failed 1-4, and the motion to pass the staff proposal then pased 4-1, with Bapu the “1” in both. I talked to two people I respect after the meeting — one said Bapu was ‘right’, one said the development team were ‘right’. So . . .

For context and to make up your own mind, set aside a few hours and watch the whole dang thang. It’s better than a terrible movie!

***Note: Pardon that the A.I. chose a white-male-appearing person with a suit and tie as mayor in the illustrations. I simply described the situation and used the first illustration it gave me. I did not try to describe character features, lest that get me in more trouble . . . . or lest we end up with an A.I. Bapu like what the Vanguard came up with several weeks ago 😳.

What does it mean for Davis? Let’s discuss in comments . . .

*** BE THERE !!!  7:25pm at Council Chambers – TONIGHT!  ***

There was Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog.  Now locally we have:

“Droppington, the Bureaucratic Pooping Pidgeon”

Davis City Council:  “We love the Davis Manor Neighborhood, for us to poop on!“

The City Council will be voting Tuesday night on the staff recommendation to keep the Respite Center at it’s current location.   

I don’t know that there is anything civil left to say.  The Dave-Us City Council has pooped on our three neighborhoods adjacent to the Respite Center, over and over:

• Initially, in 2019, the Respite Center was “supposed” to be at 3559 Second Street. This is near where the pedestrian bridge over the railroad and freeway crosses 2nd Street.  A large contingent of persons from both sides of the pedestrian bridge, persons from District 4 and District 5, descended on the Council Chambers to protest the siting, claiming among other things that their children would be threatened.  Note there are no houses adjacent or even near the proposed 2nd Street location.
• The Council then voted at the same meeting to move the Respite Center site to L Street, despite this being on the agenda as only an alternative site, so those in the adjacent neighborhoods were not there to address the L Street location since there was no indication it would be adopted.
• Note this site had both immediately adjacent residential houses as well as two nearby liquor outlets.
• The Council listened to those who came from the rich Davis suburbs to the east where the homes on average are about $100k higher in price than those in Davis Manor!  But Davis Manor was unable to respond with concerns until after the decision was made.
• The Davis City Council gave in to the pleadings of these rich suburbites and showed how much they cared about the welfare of their children; at the same time, the City Council showed that they don’t care about the concerns of the people of Davis Manor, nor have any concern about the children of Davis Manor.  
• In moving the Respite Center siting over these concerns, the Council low key admitted there was reason to be concerned about the persons that would be using the Respite Center, yet showed a complete bias towards addressing the concerns only for the rich East Davis and South Davis suburbites.
• This is a VIOLATION of the concept of Social Justice, where cities do not place the burden of infrastructure upon those with less money.  Davis Manor has among the highest concentrations of Hispanic persons in Davis, and has some of the most affordable housing stock for first-time buyers.  Placing the Respite Center in Davis Manor next to homes, rather than in a distant lot in District 4 shows that the Davis City Council TALKS about Social Justice, but is in fact exceptionally biased and overly-influenced by those with money, just like any other town.
• The District 3 Council Member at the time told me personally that a Night Respite Center would be opened soon so that those using the Respite Center during the day would have a place to go at night, to alleviate our concerns about those using the Respite Center taking up residence in and around the neighborhood at night.  Except for a short-lived, doomed-to-fail, experiment requiring a 20 minute drive each-way to a migrant center in south Yolo, no such night-center materialized.
• Since the establishment of the “rotating”, “pilot” Respite Center across from the liquor outlets on L Street, residents of Davis Manor, Huntwood Manor, and Old East Davis have experienced numerous issues and with so-called ‘homeless’ persons, far too many to elaborate on here.  Maybe I’ll take testimonies for another post someday to document all these.  While not all are caused by the Respite Center, there is no doubt the concentration of persons using the Center and coming to and through our neighborhoods has placed an undue burden upon us.  Meanwhile, those with more wealth and apparently therefore more influence from Districts 4 and 5 who complained about the proposed 2nd Street location back in 2019 continue on with their rich suburban lifestyles, blessedly UN-burdened.
• The City has never explained why the safety of the children of Districts 4 and 5 are more important than the safety of the children of District 3.
• On March 2, 2025, over 100 residents of nearby neighborhoods attended a meeting with the City about the Respite Center at Da Vinci campus.  Many incidents were vented.  City reps feigned giving a damn.  The universal message to the City from nearby residents was: ‘We have done our share, the Respite Center must be moved’.
• In September 2025 the City Council held a meeting in which a 90-day closure and moving options were considered.  This looked promising at first, until some homeless advocates spoke up about how the Respite Center ‘services’ could not possibly have a moment of interruption, despite evidence some of the services supposed offered were non-operational.  One of the homeless advocates even testified that the neighbor’s concerns about the homeless were not even real, and were just unjustified ‘fear‘.
• Tonight, scheduled for 7:25pm at Council Chambers, the City Council will consider the staff recommendation to keep the Respite Center where it is.

— Will you come by and testify?  —

Or shall Davis Manor, Huntwood Manor, Old East Davis, and District 3 in general — remain as the geographic center for the Davis City Council to POOP ON ?

BE THERE !!!  7:25pm at Council Chambers – TONIGHT!  BE THERE !!!

Click to access 6A-%20General%20Plan%20Update.pdf

From “What Do You Do”, the City of Davis Bubble Gum Channel

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The Transportation Commission is discussing the General Plan at their meeting starting late this afternoon.

I am hoping that they, Staff and any Councilmember present focus on efficiency, joy, safety and sustainability rather than performative actions, feigned accountability, feigned powerlessness, being good soldiers and lying…