Category: Uncategorized

By Greg McPherson, Luke Vitanza, and Don Shor

Tree Davis Stewardship Awards honor individuals and groups who have worked to enhance our urban forest. Just by helping to water young trees, pull weeds and spread mulch, organize school plantings, caring for older trees in neighborhoods and commercial parking lots, this year’s award recipients help to establish and sustain our city’s canopy and the landscapes beneath.

Award for individual(s): Ann Trump Daniel and Judy Hecomovich

During the hottest days of a sizzling summer, Judy and Ann were diligently watering and weeding recently planted trees and other plants in the Memorial Grove.  Every other week they would tend to the needs of over five hundred groundcovers and shrubs, as well as a dozen trees in the Wolk and Generations’ Groves. Their efforts helped to keep these demonstrations of Climate-Ready Landscapes alive and well. We wish we had more folks like them to help keep Davis clean, green, and cool. 

Location: Tree Davis Memorial Grove, 1549 Shasta Dr., Davis, CA

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By Colin Walsh

Today is the last day, and the final votes are being cast today in what has proven to be a very nasty down and dirty slime fest. What follows are my reflections on the campaigns in the form of vintage children’s book covers.

More after the jump. Click to continue.

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by Janet and Joe Krovoza

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By Marc Thomas

The City Council is not aligned to resident and taxpayers interests as evidenced by:

1)  Failing their fiduciary responsibility and care and duty as council members. The entire city council, including Dan Carson and Gloria Partida, by their actions, have allowed the city budget/deficit to deteriorate to the point of “needing” special interests/developers to generate additional tax revenue. The current city council has enabled a loss of control of the budget by the residents and taxpayers, and is the result of mismanagement of the city budget by the current city council.

2)  Unanimously supporting DiSC 1 (as Measure B in 2020) and DiSC 2 (as Measure H in 2022). The entire city council, including Gloria and Dan, who are both up for reelection, continued to unanimously support developer growth despite being voted down (not just once, but twice) by the taxpayers and residents.

3)  Supporting excessive wages and overtime for various city functions to the tune of Millions. The entire city council, including Dan and Gloria, by their actions have failed to address the overtime and wage growth where the top 10 firefighters each earn over $385K  in pay and benefits in 2021, and the fire  chief was paid over $500K in 2021.

4)  Wasteful spending. Our entire city council, including Gloria and Dan, who are both up for re-election supported MACE mess, SkyTrack, Ladder truck project, fire station kitchen remodel, etc., adding up to millions of wasted taxpayer funds.

5)  The CAAP proposal and sham survey. The entire city council, including Gloria and Dan, who are both up for reelection, supported CAAP in its original form and the sham survey which was un-navigable by the average person. How did it get so far? The city council is out of touch with residents to even approve the draft’s release to the public.

6)  Failure to address root causes of homelessness. The entire city council, including Gloria Partida and Dan Carson, who are both up for reelection, have failed to adequately address the root causes of homelessness: lost jobs, addiction, mental issues, divorce/breakup, eviction, and family issues. For some reason, they believe that just taking the homeless off the street is the answer. It's not, note even close.

7)  Unanimously supporting false marketing claims for Measure H. In addition to the project not being aligned to taxpayer and resident interests as proven by a 2:1 vote, the developer-funded (almost $1 million) campaign was misleading and 100% voted on by all existing Davis City council members.

8)  Failing to publicly and unanimously condemn a council member (Dan Carson) for suing taxpayers and residents who objected to Measure H. Resident objections should be heard and listened to, not attacked by financial interests and developers. Council members should not be aligned to developer interests, Council members MUST be aligned to resident and taxpayer interests, with taxpayers and residents never sued for objecting to City councils members special interest.

9)  Failing to recognize the type and nature of crime in Davis and take appropriate action and use taxpayer money efficiently and effectively. Dan Carson, comparing Davis to El Paso, Gilroy and Dayton, supported the need to purchase a $120,000 armored vehicle for Davis where Carson added, “We see headlines in Gilroy, El Paso and Dayton, Ohio. There’s very scary things going on out there.” We are not any of those cities, and our issues, our crime is far less severe and different. Davis' crime requires officers out policing the neighborhoods, more cameras installed and not an armored vehicle which will remain parked 99% of the time.

10) Continuing to support “politics as usual”, and failing to engage with the taxpayers on important issues. Had Dan or Gloria or any other city council member reached out to their constituents and or held neighborhood meetings to listen to the taxpayers and residents of their districts, CAAP never would have been proposed in the current form, and Measure H never would have been on the ballot with the City council's unanimous support!

by Janet and Joe Krovoza

By now pretty much everyone following city matters knows of the public follies of the Arroyo Park Sky Track.

That it was installed in Arroyo Park in May 2019, steps from neighbors’ homes, with no public demand, no notice and no Rec and Park Commission review; that the city was forced to restrict hours of use and lock and unlock it daily (using city firefighters at first) to prevent nighttime use, when the Sky Track’s abrasive banging and scraping were especially disruptive (but which led to repeat vandalism); that a noise report commissioned later that summer was doctored to show the city’s noise limits as “averages” not “maximums” but never retracted; that, out of the blue, on the eve of Memorial Day weekend 2021, staff asked city council to overhaul the city’s noise regulations so that the Sky Track would comply with the new standards (ignominiously removing the request from the agenda four days later due to community outcry); that the city ordered a subsequent noise study that showed the Sky Track had been breaking both night and day noise limits since its installation (this study, too, deliberately misrepresenting the municipal code); and that the city has, at the urging of its paid consultants – sound engineers, not lawyers – reinterpreted the noise ordinance (recall they failed in May 2021 to legitimately amend it) to justify the Sky Track remaining in Arroyo Park.

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Dear Davis resident,

I hope you will support Kelsey Fortune for City Council. Her doctoral study in energy and transportation economics and her local volunteer experience give her a deep understanding of the issues facing our City. Kelsey’s service as Associate Executive Director of Purple Tree Café has put her in touch with the needs of people with disabilities.

Kelsey’s service as a board member of Cool Davis has allowed her to work on the environmental issues facing Davis in particular addressing climate change. Kelsey’s board membership in Bike Davis has given her first hand knowledge of what needs to be done to improve the bikeways in Davis for access and safety.

She exhibits the innovative and leadership qualities of the early Council leaders that made Davis what it is today. I have had the opportunity to drive around Davis with her and listen to what she says the City needs immediately. She understands city planning well and was quick to see through the exaggeration of the DISC promoters, being the one candidate opposing it while both of her political opponents strongly supported the sprawl development.

Kelsey believes the council has to be more aggressive to get single family housing for those that have been forced out of the market. She will support the opportunities in the Downtown Plan and on vacant infill lands within the General Plan. For our community’s sake vote for Kelsey Fortune District 1.

Michael Corbett
Former Davis mayor

Toxics in the Environment and Other Environmental Issues

Introduction – As has been our custom for over 20 years, the Sierra Club Yolano Group prepares a wide-ranging questionnaire and presents it to candidates in races of interest to our local membership. The questionnaire for the 2022 Davis City Council race received answers from all 5 candidates in the 2 of the 5 City Council Districts for which an election is held in November, 2022.

The candidates, listed in alphabetical order by their first name, are:

District 1 (West Davis): – Bapu Vaitla, Dan Carson, and Kelsey Fortune

District 4 (East Davis ) – Adam Morrill, Gloria Partida

Questions were asked in the following general categories :

Part 1 – Land Use and Housing Development – Peripheral Development

Part 2— Land Use and Housing Development – Downtown Core and Student Housing

Part 3 – Energy Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Part 4 – Transportation Management

Part 5 – Toxics in the Environment and Other Environmental Issues

Part 6 – Waste Management and Financial Contibutors

Parts 1 through 4 in this series can be viewed by clicking on that article's title above which is linked to the earlier publication.

This is the 5th in the series of articles and focuses on Toxics in the Environment and Other Environmental Issues and provides candidate responses to the following questions:

Question #1 – Wood Smoke

Small particulate pollution is the leading cause of respiratory disease in the Central Valley. Approximately 50% of winter ambient air particulate pollution is related to residential wood burning and a number of Davis residents have complained of nearest-neighbor wood smoke pollution causing respiratory distress. Davis has implemented a wood smoke ordinance that allows complaints to be filed against wood burning residents if they are producing visible smoke from a non-EPA approved wood burning device. However, the police department and code enforcement) will not respond to complaints during nighttime hours when almost all wood-burning occurs because they do not have enforcement tools or available personnel.

Why or why not do you support this ordinance, and what changes, if any, would you support to it including any enforcement mechanisms?

Question #2 – Pesticide Use Reduction

Several years ago Davis banned the use of pollinator-killing neonicotinoid class of pesticides and phased out the use of the herbicide glyphosate (the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Round-up product). However, the City Council declined to require that only certified organic pesticides be used in the City’s Parks and Open Spaces as recommended by the Natural Resources Commission.

Do you support restricting pesticide use on City properties to only those certified as “organic” and why or why not? If not, do you favor restrictions on where non-organic pesticides or herbicides may be used?

Question #3 – Resiliency

Davis will face threats to infrastructure, operations, and quality of life as climate change impacts become more apparent including extreme heat events and drought, or excessive precipitation.

What would be your strategy for making Davis more resilient in the face of coming issues related to climate change?

Question #4 – Other Environmental Related Issues

What are other environmental or climate change-related issues facing Davis and how would you propose the City address these issues?

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By David L. Johnson

The following article is a satire on the August 30, 2022, meeting of the Davis City Council. At the meeting, the council voted 5-0 to relocate the existing zipline in Arroyo Park in west Davis to another location in the park. The zipline is used by children but its use causes a sharp metallic noise which has disturbed neighbors. The statements in the article may or may not be true.

Highlights

• City of Davis Consigliere Inder Khalsa argued that using a child recreation facility – the Arroyo Park zipline – is analogous to free speech cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Attorneys at CNN were perplexed by the Davis attorney’s comments. One legal analyst questioned whether Khalsa had walked into the wrong meeting.

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By Colin Walsh

The Sky Track Saga really saddens me. It seems like every step of the process has been fraught with actions that discredit our community.

From the beginning, this equipment was a problem. Any history of an original proposal to update the playground equipment in Arroyo Park seems murky, and there doesn’t seem to have been a  specific proposal for a zipline like the Sky Track. Worse, no public notice was given to the neighbors. There was no proper approval of seating the equipment on a new playground pad and there was no study of noise impacts on the neighborhood for this equipment which was very different from what had been in the park previously.

The sound impact was terrible on neighboring houses and so, understandably, neighbors complained.

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