I am pleased to support Anthony Woods for election to Congress representing the 10th Congressional District. Anthony represents a new generation of young people fully committed to serving our nation.
I invite you to a special fundraiser for Anthony’s campaign on Friday, June 26, from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Palm Court Hotel, here in Davis.
Realtors around Davis have expressed concern about the overall viability of the project describing it as small housing with limited equity that is unlikely to attract existing homeowners. They pose the question as to whether the project will fail before it even gets underway.
One of the victims of the budget cuts was the suspension of the Williamson Act which was created in 1965 as a means to preserve farmland and open space from speculative buying and development. The loss in revenue from the counties has historically been made up by the state. However, in the budget crunch, the state has for some reason chosen to take the 28 million dollars that go to counties and place it towards balancing the budget.
While it has led to an outcry from rural counties and agricultural circles, in the scheme of things $28 million is relatively little money both from the standpoint of balancing the budget and a standpoint of popular outcry.
There are many who probably care little about this issue, I acknowledge and understand it. Frankly I would have simply ignored it but at some point when a person is challenging your integrity, you ought to at least clarify the issues from your perspective. For those who read the Davis Enterprise, I wish to thank Davis Enterprise Editor Debbie Davis for being willing to print a shortened version of this in today’s Davis Enterprise. She certainly was under no obligation to do so. So for that I am grateful. For those not interested in this issue, don’t worry, we have some major breaking stories you won’t get anywhere else coming out in the next two weeks, so stay tuned.
A lot can change between now and the end of the year when someone would have to file to run against him. Indeed there are some surprise bombshells that are being held just beneath the surface at this point, that if they saw the light of day could change entire calculations. But that will depend on many factors outside of anyone’s control and it’s not even clear that anyone is waiting in the wings to take advantage, should such an opportunity arise.
CalPERS Actuary Admits What Most of Have Known–Pensions Are Unsustainable in Present Form – But the more serious threat lies in the longer term and it may be a ticking timebomb. Ed Mendel who runs a blog, Calpensions had a piece appear in the Capitol Weekly Wednesday. In it, he quotes Cal PERS chief actuary suggesting what many have been saying for months or even years. He admitted things were unsustainable.
According to the report:
Last week, the San Francisco Chronicle unleashed quite a stir with an article that reported that while the UC Board of Regents was voting to cut millions from UC Budgets through furloughs, pay cuts, layoffs, student fee hikes, and other campus cutbacks, they were also approving pay raises, stipends, and other benefits for more than two dozen executives.
Wrote the Chronicle on August 7, 2009:
Superior Court Judge Timothy L. Fall sentenced Ajay Kumar Dev, 42, for his multiple count conviction of the serial molest and rape of his adopted daughter, which allegedly occurred between January 1999 and December 2004.
Superior Court Judge Timothy L. Fall sentenced Ajay Kumar Dev, 42, for his multiple count conviction of the serial molest and rape of his adopted daughter, which allegedly occurred between January 1999 and December 2004.
Everyone joked as to how long the process took, but the planning began back in the 1990s as a means to provide affordable housing for faculty and staff while supplying additional housing for some 3000 UC Davis students.
There has been a lot of talk about incoming UC Chancellor Linda Katehi and what seems to get overlooked due to the scandal surrounding her alleged admissions policy shenanigans are the huge pay increases and perks Linda Katehi will be receiving from the UC Regents while student fees climb another 9.3% this year.
Excessive executive compensation has been in the news a lot lately from AIG to the Auto Industry, but when it happens in a public institution like the University California it gets nowhere near the public outcry.
A new modeling study performed by UC Davis shows in fact many of those fears are simply unfounded. They find capacity with a two lane road unchanged and throughput improving significantly in the westbound direction and only slightly slower in the eastbound direction–seven seconds added for the entire drive from L Street to A Street. The results of this model also show other improvements that lend themselves well to other goals in the city.
Family Claims Miscarriage of Justice and Vows to Fight On By Royston Sim –
A former Davis resident was sentenced to 378 years and 4 months in state prison Friday at the Yolo County Superior Court. It is one of the longest sentences in Yolo County history.
Superior Court Judge Timothy L. Fall sentenced Ajay Kumar Dev, 42, for his multiple count conviction of the serial molest and rape of his adopted daughter, which allegedly occurred between January 1999 and December 2004.
On July 27, 2009 The Vanguard received a notice from the legal department at Google. The notice read:
“Google has received a civil subpoena for information related to your blog and anonymous comments posted on your blog. The case is entitled Calvin Chang v. Regents of University of California, Superior Court, County of Sacramento, State of California.”
The case involves a story posted on the Vanguard’s old Blogger site run through Google. The article, “Former UC Davis Officer Claims Violation of Settlement Agreement” highlights the lawsuit that UC Davis Police Officer Calvin Chang brought against his former department and University in part for harassment and in part for a violation of a previous settlement agreement. There were seven postings that were either anonymous or pseudonymous that according to Officer Chang might have originated from a former supervisor and therefore go to the heart of the case.
However, as bad as the report is, that is not our concern in Davis. Our concern is with the status and implications of incoming Chancellor Linda Katehi. And from our perspective it appears that Chancellor Katehi comes out unscathed. The report directly names nine people who either knew or should have known of the admission of substandard clouted applicants at the time of those decisions, Katehi is not only not mentioned on that list but her name does not appear at all in the report.
At the January 29, 2008 City Council meeting, the council took up the issue of Wildhorse Ranch (WHR). At that time, the consensus was that the WHR proposal they were looking at was just another housing development, and it lacked a “wow factor.” That in fact was the night that the “wow factor” phrase was coined. At that time WHR was a 259 unit development with three and four story buildings, streets and homes abutting right against the existing Wildhorse neighbors’ backyards.
The leading voice in that night’s consensus was Councilmember Stephen Souza, who dismissed the project as just not having a “wow factor.” During the 2008 campaign in an article in the California Aggie, Councilmember Souza made “wow factor” a part of his core reelection message. In that article he outlined his four components of “wow,” saying:
Last week Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger attempted to balance the budget by using his line-item veto authority to cut from various sectors of government in order to balance the budget while building a half billion dollars into the reserve. He focused his cuts on social services and health programs that have already experienced huge cuts.
While the Governor argued that he was forced to do by the Assembly which removed some of the money from the budget they passed including taking local money that goes for infrastructure and also removing offshore oil leases as a solution, Democrats such as Assemblymember John Perez (D-Los Angeles) immediately cried foul.
I should state here at the outset that what I write has nothing to do with support or opposition to a Davis Bicycle Hall of Fame which I fully support and very much believe to be one of the best things to happen to Davis. The question is always one of where and how. And I find it very interesting that on May 5, 2009, Councilmember Lamar Heystek was the only Councilmember to question why close down the teen center in order to make room for the Bicycle Hall of Fame.
What becomes more fascinating is that in the past few weeks I have had two separate emails from separate people asking me to investigate what happened. During the same time, the Davis Enterprise has had three separate letters to the editor that have questioned the decision. For me that is somewhat odd given that we are really nearly three months after the council decision was made and at the time the only person who seemed to care was Councilmember Heystek.
During the Target campaign it was often argued that Davis’ Downtown would bare the brunt of the impact from Target. Those opposing Target argued that people would divert their shopping from the Davis Downtown to the periphery when Target was constructed. Those supporting Target argued on the contrary that most of the Target shoppers already go up to Woodland to shop at Target now and that all a Davis Target would do would be to transfer shoppers at the Woodland Target to Davis and keep the sales tax revenues in Davis.
This debate took place in 2006 during a very different economic time. Nevertheless the Target Development Agreement included 100,000 dollars for “community enhancement.” The Davis Downtown Business Association submitted a proposal to city staff for the the use of that money in order to conduct a multi-media marking campaign to help focus people on shopping in the downtown.
