On Tuesday, I received an interesting email, "Most people I know are voting against the parks parcel tax.  I'm still thinking about it."

The email surprised me a bit.  We ran a parks article and even most of the conservatives seems to have not much of a problem with the idea of extending the well-underfunded tax.

I talk to a lot of people and haven't met one who is actually opposed to the parks tax.  In fact, one of the people heading up the Measure D committee reported to me on Tuesday that the parks tax is so-non-controversial that people do not even stop to talk to them about it, they simply wave and say they are supporting it and move on.

On Tuesday night, the city nevertheless laid out their options in the unlikely event that the city were to lose out on the $1.36 million generated by the tax, which comes in at a very modest $49 annually.

We will paraphrase what the city manager said on Tuesday: it would be bad.

If you want a fuller version: "It would mean a permanent reduction in the quality of the parks that we have in the community," Steve Pinkerton told the council on Tuesday night.

The problem is that I kind of get the frustration of the email message, as well.

The problem is not the parks, it's city governance, and frankly I am disappointed and growing more disappointed at the city and what it has done since June 30, 2011 on the budget - which is nothing except pound and pray.

The pounding portion is the additional $75 grand that they gave to their professional negotiator whose job it is to exact blood from the city employees.

The pray is that somehow that will be enough money to stave off catastrophe.

I will spoil the ending for all involved - it won't be.

As much as I supported the 3-2 vote which was supported by Dan Wolk and opposed by Sue Greenwald and Stephen Souza, I still have grave concerns about the city's approach to the budget deficit.

One of the reasons I supported closing down the pool last year was a message to the community that we are in trouble.  Sadly, most that do not follow this stuff daily do not seem to get it.

The problem is that one of the things I suggested is that we figure out what our budget priorities truly are.  I agree that we need to put more money toward pensions and retiree health to shore up what are large and growing unfunded liabilities. I agree with budgeting $1 million - I have a severe problem with the fact that the budget was passed on June 30 and not implemented in any way, shape or form.

I understand Sue Greenwald and Stephen Souza both believed that the cuts needed to start through collective bargaining, but the number that we need to get to is NOT $2.5 million, it is probably closer to $7.5 million, the number cited last year by Sue Greenwald that Paul Navazio shockingly did not dispute.

That gets us back to the parks tax.  The dilemma that you have here is that the parks tax itself only funds one-quarter of the parks funding.  Ultimately, I think some of the bleak scenarios that Mr. Pinkerton laid out on Tuesday will have to come to pass.

He said, as I lift from the Davis Enterprise article: "You won't have parks mowed every week ... you're not going to see any more edging along the sidewalks in any of our parks or around the play areas, you won't have the dollars for fertilizer, you won't have the dollars to check our shrubs every year to see if we need to prune those, you're going to see less water on our grass, it's not going to be the Davis green that you're used to. It's going to be somewhere south of green in the future."

But because the parks tax only funds one-quarter of the costs, and because some of those costs are pretty fixed, it does not make sense at this time to pull the tax funding.

AND YET, and here is the critical point, we have not done what we needed to do on the budget this year.  We needed to figure out what we as a community have to fund, what we want to fund, and what we can no longer afford to fund.

I truly believe that if we want a city recreation program and greenbelts and green parks, we need to find public-private partnerships, because $7.5 million is more than 20% of the current budget.

Moreover, I resent the fact that we have patch-worked this process.  In 2010 we passed the sales tax, in 2012 we are asked to pass the parks tax.  But we have no plan.  We are flying by the seat of our pants and praying for a miracle that quite frankly is not going to come.

We are not going to fix this with new revenue from economic development.  The real estate bubble is probably never going to return to the double-digit annual revenue increases.  And the bills are coming due very soon.

So, part of me wants to agree with the hardline view that the city has been run poorly and that, despite the best of intentions in the last year, it is really not being run much better now, and we still have no plan.

The public does not pay attention until we close their pools, brown their green belts and close their parks.

And yet, despite all of this, there is no part of me that thinks this will get better magically if $1.36 million in additional revenue disappears.

Ask yourself if losing another $1.36 million will make things better or worse and then decide for yourself.

---David M. Greenwald reporting

On Wednesday, Clinton Parish, whose candidacy for judge in Yolo County can only be described as on life support, acknowledged that he failed to properly vet charges that were launched in his mailer.

According to the Sacramento Bee, the Yolo County Deputy District Attorney Parish admitted that he "did not verify claims in an attack mailer that alleged campaign rival Judge Dan Maguire was involved in corporate fraud and bribery while working at a Colorado law firm in the mid-1990s."

However, the candidate stopped well short of recanting the claims altogether.

In a statement from incumbent Judge Dan Maguire, he said, "I'm pleased Clint Parish has decided to take responsibility for the false attack against me in a recent campaign mail piece. It was the right thing to do. However, he has yet to take responsibility for all the other untrue statements in the mailer."

He added, "My reputation as a Judge is important to me, and I would like all of the mistruths in the mailer retracted."

The Vanguard spoke to campaign spokesperson Kirby Wells on Monday afternoon.  Mr. Wells at that time told the Vanguard that he had pieced together this history through a series of internet searches.  He then emailed a series of links to the Vanguard and asked the Vanguard look into the allegations further.

However, the charges appeared flimsy at best.  Judge Maguire pointed out, with respect to the corporate fraud and bribery charges, that he worked for the firm from 1993 to 1997, the case had just recently been ruled upon by a court, his old firm had over 200 lawyers at the time and he had no involvement in any of the facts of the case.

In fact, his old firm prevailed.  The court ruled last year: "To summarize, this Court finds that Plaintiffs did not prove the existence of a contract, breach by the Defendants, resultant harm or causation or even, assuming all of that, the existence of any definable and established measure of damages."

Kirby Wells appears to have been the instigator of these charges, as they have been flying around for several months, but that Clinton Parish would not verify them before approving the attack mailer is an appalling admission for an individual running for a judgeship that will require research and verification.

Interestingly enough, the Bee is reporting that the person who gave them the information is no longer with the campaign.

Writes the Bee: "Meanwhile, the Parish camp is retrenching and determining what to do with the deceptive information."

"The new look of the campaign team is taking a look at that now," Mr. Parish told the Bee. "We're looking to see what we can do about it."

He might want to start with repudiating the rest of the charges as well.

One of the key charges dealt with the decision by Governor Schwarzenegger to commute the sentence of Esteban Nunez, son of former Speaker Fabian Nunez - a move that angered many and that the former Governor acknowledged was a favor to a friend.

The flier attacks Dan Maguire, who was said to be "part of Arnold's inner circle, Dan Maguire was part of Arnold's legal team that made decisions including commuting the sentence of convicted murderer Esteban Nunez..."   Later in the flier it said, "Dan Maguire received a political appointment (never elected) and took the bench only three weeks before Arnold's last-day Commutation of Esteban Nunez' sentence."

When the Vanguard inquired about substantiation of this charge, Kirby Wells, campaign communications for Clinton Parish, pointed toward this YouTube video of the Santos Family, the victim's parents.

The problem is that it appears that Dan Maguire was appointed to the bench of Yolo County on October 18, 2010 while the commutation occurred at the last minute on January 2, 2011.

For his part, Dan Maguire says he had no involvement in the decision to commute Mr. Nunez's sentence and learned about it on TV.

When we attempted to ask Kirby Wells about this apparent discrepancy, we did not receive a response to our email.

Meanwhile, Mr. Parish, who has not responded to Vanguard requests for an interview, backed off the entire charge when he spoke to the Davis Enterprise, which paraphrased him saying "that the ads don't claim that Maguire played a part in the reduced sentence."

"The point is that he worked for the legal team that made that and other bad decisions," he said. "It really goes to show, you are a product of the offices you work for. Right or wrong, it's the truth, and people judge me based on what I and my office have done."

That would appear to be a more difficult charge to repudiate, in that Clinton Parish himself seemed to back it.

Nevertheless, there appears to be no validity at all to any of the charges.

In the meantime, while Mr. Parish lost a key supporter in Sheriff Ed Prieto, his boss, District Attorney Jeff Reisig, is standing behind his deputy.

He told the Enterprise that he learned Monday of the flier's release.

"I previously gave him my endorsement and I'm not going to change that," Mr. Reisig said Tuesday. "But I don't agree with the negative mail piece and I told him that."

---David M. Greenwald reporting

By E. Roberts Musser

A cause for concern, that has come to the forefront of public discussion recently, is the overly frequent administration of psychoactive drugs to nursing home residents.  California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform (CANHR) are strong activists against such practices.  According to a quote in their brochure Toxic Medicine: What You Should Know To Fight The Misuse Of Psychoactive Drugs In California Nursing Homes, "Tens of thousands of nursing home residents with dementia receive powerful antipsychotic drugs that are not intended or approved for their medical conditions.  Rather, the drugs are often used to sedate and control them, a terrible substitute for the individualized care they need and deserve."

It continues by noting "Antipsychotic drugs don't just hasten death, they often turn residents into people their own families barely recognize by dulling their memories, sapping their personalities and crushing their spirits.  When families win battles to take residents off these drugs, they sometimes find that the person they've always known is still there."  This issue was recently discussed at both the Yolo County Commission on Aging & Adult Services, and the Davis Senior Citizens Commission.  I would like to share three different experiences various citizens and professionals in the field have related in the commissions or to me as an individual on this very issue.

Case #1: A nursing home served residents their dinner at 5 p.m., the last meal of the day.  An elderly lady in the facility would become extremely hungry later in the evening, around 10 p.m. at night.  As a result of this woman's frustration at not being permitted to eat anything after sundown, she would get out of bed and begin hitting anyone within reach.  As a result of her physical combativeness, she was strapped to her wheelchair or bed to achieve compliance with respect to no physical violence towards other residents or caregivers.  Nevertheless the poor elder raised a verbal ruckus, yelling and screaming at being thus constrained.

A nursing home ombudsman noticed the commotion one night.  Assessing the situation, she asked management if she could try and remedy the untenable circumstance.  Management agreed, but let the ombudsman know any damage caused by the resident was the ombudsman's responsibility.  The ombudsman then fetched a warm glass of milk and some crackers.  She stood in front of the rebellious elderly woman with food in hand, as the resident sat in a wheelchair, arms and feet tied down.  The ombudsman then asked if the woman were untied, would she promise not to hit anyone.  Nodding in agreement, the woman's restraints were removed, and she was allowed to consume the light repast.  Whereupon the fatigued but sated resident promptly climbed into her bed and slept peacefully through the night.

Case #2: An older mentally ill person with dementia was very combative no matter what compassionate tactics were tried. Understandably, few nursing homes or board and care facilities wanted to take her in.  As a result, any place that did allow her to reside on the premises was forced to place the mentally ill woman in physical restraints.  It was the only way to keep this troubled lady from abusing the other residents and workers at the nursing home.  Yet given the proper dose of the appropriate antipsychotic medication, this woman would become very cooperative and act in a more socially acceptable manner.  The mental health worker who gave the Yolo County Commission on Aging & Adult Services this example asked us the following profound question: which is better, to have the woman on medication or in physical restraints all day long?

Case #3: A 90 year old man started a traveling show, visiting nursing homes with a dance partner, entertaining nursing home residents by tap dancing for them to lively music.  One resident at the nursing home would watch in fascination, peppering the 90 year old tap dancer with all sorts of questions when he visited.  It was clear to him she knew something about tap dancing in particular.  He sat down with her after the show one day, and the two chatted for quite some time.  It turned out the elderly woman used to tap dance at some period in her life.

The next time the 90 year old tap dancer visited the elderly woman in the nursing home, he brought her a pair of used tap shoes.  He took the trouble to put them on her feet and tie them for her.  This allowed the frail woman to "tap dance" to the beat of the music while in her wheelchair.  Before too many visits she was standing in place lightly tap dancing.  She now walks around the nursing home on a regular basis.  If she continues to improve, the nursing home has promised the woman she can go home for good.  Her health has improved remarkably.

Lesson to be learned: Senior citizens need to be more than warehoused in nursing homes with nothing to do.  It is important for any relatives in the vicinity to keep an eye on them and to keep them company whenever possible.  Antipsychotic drugs may be appropriate in some cases and not others, but simple common sense measures should be tried first.  Medication should be the solution of last resort.

Elaine Roberts  Musser is an attorney who concentrates her efforts on elder law and aging issues, especially in regard to consumer affairs.  If you have a comment or particular question or topic you would like to see addressed in this column, please make your observations at the end of this article in the comment section.

Council last night did not pull the consent agenda item on the contract for Best, Best, and Krieger for the city attorney services.  It's clear that the council supports the counsel they get from primarily Harriet Steiner; the question is really why that is the case.

I bring this up because on Monday, the Vanguard ran a story entitled, "Time to Reconsider the City Attorney?"

As the Vanguard argued, based primarily on what has occurred in the last six to twelve months, that the city council ought to have a public discussion as to whether it time for change.  It is not the first and will not be the last time the Vanguard has stepped out on the limb with a potentially controversially strong position.

We anticipated a strong push back, even though we believe that the we laid out a strong case that included the Zipcar situation, the failed impasse, the continuing DACHA mess, the conservative approach on Crown Castle, and the last second memo on the water referendum.

We chose broadly enough on these issues that each member of the council should have had at least one of them that they strongly disagreed with, sometimes more than one.

One might argue that Harriet Steiner, at least with her advice, avoids the big explosion that costs the city.  But going back ten years various people have shown me evidence from the failed affordable housing program to the Eoff litigation from ten years ago, that advice from Ms. Steiner has cost the city in the millions of dollars.

Of course, she has a defense for this as she expressed to the WAC back on April 26 when she told them that her job was to determine what was legal rather than the best option.  That she leaves up to the council.

In a way that makes sense, but it is hard to imagine how that helps when the advice on impasse costs the city nearly $1 million, and the impact of Zipcars could have been quite costly had other members of the community not grown alarmed.

The evidence is that the city attorney has cost money, in the past, has cost the city money in the present, and may yet cost the city money in the future.

While we anticipated strong blowback to our column from our readers, the only strong blowback we had was that they added on to the well-designed list.

Not one commenter argued against the Vanguard's core contention, and all we called for was a discussion.

One commenter noted, "The current City Attorney has a history of conforming legal opinions to suit the desires of the council majority, such as the preposterous notion that the water referendum could not challenge water rates. Citizens really need to ask themselves, which candidates will support hiring or retaining a new attorney?"

And perhaps there is the rub.  The council itself is satisfied with their current counsel even if the stakeholders in this community, those actually paying attention, are not.

Some have looked at the $500,000 pricetag and believe we can do better.  We do not join them.  We did an exhaustive analysis a few years ago.

Back on March 13, 2009, we asked whether Davis should continue to outsource their City Attorney Services to the law firm of McDonough, Holland & Allen who employed City Attorney Harriet Steiner.

What we saw was that on average, cities that have in-house attorneys tend to spend a lot more, either because they are larger or because they simply conduct more business that requires legal assistance.

We looked at comparable cities at that time and found this:

We concluded: "These data suggest that while this might be an area to cut costs on the margins, we are not going to save a tremendous amount of money."

In short, it does not appear likely that we can reduce the $500,000 price tag by going in-house.

The question should remain focused on how we get the best legal representation.  Unfortunately, the council did not even want to entertain that discussion, but we believe they are out of step with where the informed community lies on this.

---David M. Greenwald reporting

So when the Bee reports this morning that Chancellor Linda Katehi lists her mistakes in the pepper-spray incident, they miss the card trick when they write, "Though she took 'full responsibility' months ago, UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi detailed for lawmakers Tuesday specific mistakes she made in a campus pepper-spraying incident that sparked national headlines and outrage."

The Bee continues, "Katehi said she erred by setting a deadline to crack down on protesters camping at UCD and by having officers intervene in late afternoon."

"My senior administrators and I made mistakes of judgment and mistakes of execution," Katehi told a joint hearing of the Senate Education Committee and the Assembly Higher Education Committee in discussing UCD's handling of the tuition protest. "So did our campus police."

She continued, "I never wanted force used, but with 20-20 hindsight, I know the actions we took that day were wrong... Well- intended, but wrong."

Sounds good even if it does not completely square with her immediate account and statement right after the pepper-spray incident.

However, not everyone was fooled by this dog and pony show.

The Enterprise, in fact, saw right through it.  They note that several members of the legislature asked pointed questions and, more importantly, that you cannot simply listen to the words that are spoken - actions themselves have meaning.

So far, despite four reports that cast deep doubts on the administration's planning and handling of this event, only one person has lost their job, two officers remain on leave, and everything else has been tantamount to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

As the Enterprise noted, the new chief has brought in some outside consultants to review the department, while the chancellor has moved the police department from the control of Vice Chancellor John Meyer to the control of Provost Hexter.

"Otherwise, discussions about administrators have largely focused more on changes in organization and decision-making practices," the Enterprise reports.

If one person saw through the charade, it was Assemblymember Marty Block, whom the Enterprise and not the Bee quoted, saying he was worried "that the police have now become a scapegoat for the administration."

The Enterprise reported, "Katehi responded that procedures that had been in place for years - like talking through crisis responses by phone and administrators not signing off on police operational plans - 'failed us, totally.' "

But Marty Block was not fooled by the rhetoric and looked to the substance: "What I'm hearing is, despite the damning statements in the Reynoso report and the other reports, your conclusion is that everyone in your administration, but police officers, is doing a good job, given the process they had in place."

The chancellor would defend the administration: "I think they tried to do the best they could, given the processes...  I have tremendous confidence in John Meyer. He is an excellent person. It's just that the organization we had was not the one that would make him successful, or anybody else for that matter."

Moreover, we also have the exchange between Assemblymember Paul Fong and UCD Academic Senate Chair Linda Bisson.

Assemblymember Fong asked Professor Bisson why they had not called for Chancellor Katehi's resignation.

The professor responded, saying that they saw censure as sending a message that mistakes had been made but that they believed the chancellor was capable of correcting these mistakes.

But part of the problem, as we now know, is that the faculty is divided.  In February, before the reports were out and the mistakes were clear, the faculty voted against a no-confidence vote by a 2 to 1 measure, an outcome that would likely be much closer now.

Professor Bisson would say, as quoted in the Enterprise: "While things have changed, because of this (task force) report, most people felt that they had not changed enough, versus what they knew on Nov. 18, to make them lose confidence in the chancellor."

While it is easy in hindsight to spot the errors on November 18, the fact is that all of the people who made those errors, except the police chief, are still there, though they may be in a slightly different role.

The Kroll report hammered Chancellor Katehi for having a diffused leadership structure, and the problem is that every single mistake that was made by the administration is something that the chancellor was part of.

She ordered the tents being taken down, she determined the timing of those tents, she made assumptions about the non-affiliates, she never asked for legal authority, etc.

On the other hand, one could argue that had they listened to their on the ground intelligence from Griselda Castro and listened to the police on the timing of the operation...but the problem is how can anyone have confidence that a group of people who completely failed in their assessment, planning, and carry-out of the operation will be better the next time around?

Defenders will argue that she has done things better since then. Certainly they avoided one problem - the over-aggressive use of force and likely illegal use of force by the police.

But, the administration has really had one test of that.  That was in the bank blocking operation.

If you ask the administration, they will tell you it was a success and certainly it did not, as one professor put it, turn into another YouTube-fueled police disaster.

However, it is hard to argue that their handling worked.  They attempted to talk, then they talked some more, then they talked some more and added threats.

The only thing that ended the bank blocking operation was the fact that the bank gave up and closed their doors.  And when the bank did that, the DA's office filed charges against the protesters and the university turned around and sued the bank for breach of contract.

If that is an example of a well-run operation and response, I think most people would disagree.

Cruz Reynoso, despite his expressed support for Chancellor Katehi right after the report came out, seems to understand the most.

He told the Committee yesterday, "The difficult part is that we have laid out what the issues are, I think sufficiently well, so probably good procedures and regulations will come out of our report. At the same time, though, folk have to use good judgment - and good judgment can't be regulated."

That is exactly right.  Good judgment cannot be regulated and what we saw on November 18 was the antithesis of good judgment at every single turn.  And I am just not convinced that good judgment is something you can just learn.

Certainly we have not seen it yet.

---David M. Greenwald reporting