Hello Davisites
We deeply appreciated those who came to the 3/27 Broadband Task Force Meeting, the community spoke with a unified voice to the Task Force and City Council Member Dan Carson! You wanted community ownership and open access, you want a network that will be a foundation for economic development for the years ahead, you are heroes!
But Big Money is barreling ahead.
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by Matt Williams
As members of our community who care passionately about social equity and the achievement gap in the DJUSD schools, I believe you should e-mail the Council members, and tell them that the closed session consideration of trading the current monopoly in the past generation of cable and wired telecommunications (AT&T and Comcast) for a new monopoly in the next generation of fiber communications (Astound/WAVE) is selling our school children down the road. Signing a lease with Astound only makes sense if it is for BOTH the City conduit and City fiber inside the conduit.
If the City owns the fiber, then competition between telecommunications service companies will be promoted. If the fiber is owned by a monopoly vendor like Astound/WAVE, they will not lease space on that fiber to their competitors. That will result in higher telecommunications prices for all Davis households, especially low income households, and service denials in the lower income portions of the City. That "double whammy" is referred to as "The Digital Divide." Good service for the rich. Poor service for the poor. And the quality and affordability of service is a major contributor to the Achievement Gap in schools here in Davis and across the country.
Astound/WAVE is a good company, but in an industry dominated by huge companies (Comcast, Astound, AT&T, Verizon, etc.) pricing always reflects the amount of competition in the market. The lease of City conduit being considered reduces competition in Davis. A lease of City Fiber within City Conduit increases competition, reduces costs to the consumers, and increases the quality of service for ALL Davis residents. That is what the Davis City Council (and the DJUSD School Board) should be fighting for.
Please reach out to the Council members and let them know that they can do better than the lease being considered in Tuesday's closed session.
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By Connor Gorman
Solidarity forever! The UC still hasn't agreed to provide basic rights and dignity to many of its workers (much less what they truly deserve) while simultaneously intimidating, threatening, and retaliating against workers for their participation in labor activities. Because of this, AFSCME 3299 (which covers service and patient care workers) filed an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charge against the UC and will be striking next Wednesday (April 10) along with UPTE-CWA 9119 (which covers technical and professional employees).
There are a variety of ways that students, workers (who aren't part of AFSCME 3299 or UPTE-CWA 9119), and community members can support the strike and demand an end to the UC's blatant violation of workers' rights along with demanding that the UC provide all of its workers with a living wage while maintaining and expanding essential benefits and protections like good, affordable healthcare; a dignified retirement plan; and job security. The main way that anyone can show their support is by joining the picket line for any period of time that they're able to between 7am and 5pm on the corner of College Park and Russell Blvd., while prioritizing attendance at the 12pm rally if possible (or if you're in Sacramento there will be another picket line at the Medical Center). You can even study or grade at the picket line.
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Davisites may recall the large proposed business park, the Mace Ranch Innovation Center (MRIC), which would be sited on the farmland outside of the Mace curve to the east of Davis, subject to a Measure R vote. The project proposal was withdrawn in 2016, but the commission on which I serve, the Open Space and Habitat Commission, has been told informally that the project may be re-proposed again in some form. In its original form, the proposal included 25 acres of land purchased with funds from the City’s Open Space program, widely referred to as the “Mace 25.” (See my op-ed in the Davis Enterprise, “How 25 acres of open space got into the MRIC proposal” for the history of how that occurred).
In response to the widespread belief that the MRIC proposal will back in front of the City, two local environmental groups have raised concerns about the presence of burrowing owls on the Mace 25: the local chapters of the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society. Note that burrowing owls have been designated as a “species of special concern” in California, and their numbers have been declining precipitously in recent years.
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(From Press Release) The Valley Clean Energy board of directors will meet at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, April 11, in the Community Chambers at Davis City Hall, 23 Russell Blvd. in Davis. The meeting is open to the public.
The board — which includes members of the Davis and Woodland city councils and the Yolo County Board of Supervisors — is expected to discuss strategies for increasing the amount of renewable power that VCE will offer, with a focus on local renewable resources.
VCE, the local electricity provider, launched last June and provides cleaner energy at competitive rates to 55,000 local customers. For more information, visit https://valleycleanenergy.org. To receive agendas by email, sign up at https://valleycleanenergy.org/get-in-touch/.
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Follow up to Observed Dangerous Child Safety Problem Caused by Mace Blvd Project
To: Supervisor Provenza:
Thank you for your prompt reply to my email in which I recounted my witness to yet another public safety problem created by the Mace Blvd. “reconfiguration.” For your information, I am attaching the email that I sent to City of Davis officials after the first “fire station” meeting a couple of months ago. That email summarizes a number of aspects of the public safety and traffic crisis created by the “reconfiguration” (with the notable exception, of course, of new problem I called to your attention: the enticing skateboard challenge created by the bike lane barriers soon to be augmented, I understand, by “signage” slalom poles). Despite multiple meetings with and comments from residents, petitions, and "concern" and vows to fix the mess expressed by the City, yet the project continues.
I appreciate your invitation to join your small group for discussing and strategizing about this situation. In my opinion, anyone who was involved in the conception, development, promotion, touting, or defense of this “reconfiguration” has disqualified himself/herself from participating in this matter any further; those who caused this travesty cannot be trusted to effectively undo its damage. Please consider the following as my contribution to your “strategizing” which, in the end is really quite simple, as you will see.
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By Daniel Urazandi
I want to thank every businessperson, customer, employee, visitor and friend who cared enough about downtown to object to the city's paid parking plan. If we had not spoken up they would have metered every space, endangering businesses and increasing our cost of living while reducing quality of life. While we deserve our moment of relief and celebration there are very real problems with the substitute plan the city is imposing.
Council decided not to put meters on the streets but to put them in nearly every public lot instead. This is 279 spaces that will go paid, a 600% increase. Common sense and all data says this will send drivers to the streets to avoid paying in the lots, making it harder to find a free space. This will hurt businesses, particularly those closest to the lots. The lot across from Woodstocks is going paid while there are three vacant storefronts on that block. The disincentive of paid parking will help ensure that the only occupants there continue to be homeless camps.
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(From Press Release) Friends of Empower Yolo are hosting an April shower for the agency’s domestic violence shelter in recognition of Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
The shower will run from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday, April 27, at Empower Yolo’s D Street House at the corner of Fifth and D streets in downtown Davis. Everyone in the community is invited to bring a new gift for the shelter and enjoy refreshments.
Staff members will be available to answer questions about the services the agency provides to families seeking safety.
All donations are tax-deductible.
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The Davis Friends Meeting (Quakers) will be screening Greenwich Village: Music that Defined a Generation on Friday April 26 at 7 PM. The screening is free and will be held at the Friends Meetinghouse 345 L Street in Davis.
"The 60s folk revival in Greenwich Village sparked lasting political, social and cultural changes. through Poignant interviews, rare archival footage and new live performances, this film tells the story of the great singer-songwriters, performers and authors from Greenwich Village who collectively became the voice of a generation." states a flyer distributed by The Davis Friends Meeting
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This article originally appeared on May 27, 2018. I am reposting it in light of a recent and blatant violation of the exact kind that I criticized here. On March 25, 2019, I wrote an article entitled, "City Council Out of Step on Parking, Roads, Housing, and the Claw: Will it Impact the 2020 Council Race?" . On March 30, 2019, David Greenwald wrote an article entitled, "My View: Some Are Saying the Council is Out of Step – Let’s Have a Look." If you compare the two articles, it is obvious that Greenwald was responding to me, yet he never mentions me or the Davisite. Instead, he refers vaguely to "some people."
In other words, the Davis Vanguard continues to violate the basic principles of journalistic ethics.
Recently, the Davis Vanguard has been discussing articles from the Davisite without citing them.[1] This is, in my opinion, a violation of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Code of Ethics. It also hampers the ability of a community to engage in informed discussion.
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Davisite 