September 2009 - Davis Vanguard

VANGUARD INVESTIGATION: City Actions Put Affordable Housing Residents of DACHA in Considerable Legal Peril

By David GreenwaldSeptember 30, 20099 comments

In 2003, the Davis Area Cooperative Housing Association (DACHA) was formed as a limited-equity cooperative. The units were owned by a nonprofit corporation, DACHA, and member households of the organization occupy the individual units. The individual does not own the individual unit, but rather the residents own the cooperative as a whole and possess the exclusive right to occupy one specific unit within the cooperative.

Those interested in living in these units buy a share into the cooperative which makes them a member of DACHA. Each individual needed to buy a share and also make a month carrying charge toward the costs of the unit and the cooperative. This is a limited equity arrangement, meaning they would buy into their share, and they would accrue interest but not really equity over time until the point in time that they would sell their unit, at which time they would get their original share amount plus interest.

Little Progress Reported on Employee Bargaining Agreements

By David GreenwaldSeptember 29, 200925 comments

At Monday evening Finance and Budget Commission meeting, the City’s Finance Director Paul Navazio briefly updated the commission on the status of the employee bargaining. While Mr. Navazio did not get into specifics, overall he seemed to present a rather bleak picture of the prospects that there would be agreement any time in the near future.

He remarked that if the process went along much longer, the prospects of the city being able to realize savings from the process would be greatly diminished. At the end of June, the Council by a 3-2 vote passed a budget the reflected $1.25 million in savings from employee compensation cuts or less than a 4% overall cut.

Enterprise Misleads on CHA, Implies Not a Front Group For Covell Partners

By David GreenwaldSeptember 28, 200928 comments

For the most part, the Davis Enterprise’s new beat writer for the city has done a very good job of staying out of the fray and reporting in an even-handed method. This despite that fact that at times, her newcomer status shows in her reporting.

Unfortunately in yesterday’s Davis Enterprise, she made a glaring error that a few of our readers caught and alerted us to.

Staff Recommends No Business Park Exemption on Measure J

By David GreenwaldSeptember 27, 200970 comments

On Tuesday’s City Council Agenda, Staff is recommending an ordinance and resolutions by the end of the year to place the renewal of Measure J on the June 2010 ballot for voter consideration with only technical edits and no provision for a business park exemption.

Back in June, the council was unanimous in support for the renewal of Measure J basically as is. Council was divided on the sunset date which was ultimately determined to be in ten years–longer than staff and perhaps some of the council wanted, but shorter than the permanency that Councilmembers Lamar Heystek and Sue Greenwald would have preferred.

Davis City Staff Recommends Senior Housing Survey

By David GreenwaldSeptember 26, 200953 comments

On next Tuesday’s agenda, there is an item that will authorize the city to spend a maximum of 20,000 (usd) from the General Plan/ long range planning fund to do a Senior Survey.

Back in early June, the City Council by a 3-2 vote directed staff to proceed with a “Strategy for Housing Seniors in Davis.”

FULL STORY: Walk Out Rally At UC Davis Attended by 1000 Students, Workers, and Faculty Members

By David GreenwaldSeptember 25, 200952 comments

Over 1000 students, employees, faculty members, staffers, and others affiliated with the University filled the East Quad at UC Davis on Thursday afternoon advocating against fee increases that many see as the death knell for public education in California. Speakers were concerned about talk that UC President Mark Yudoff is moving toward a hybrid public-private university that will make fees that are set to go up as much as 32% in the next year, unaffordable for many.

Organizers and speakers alike pointed to the fact that this was an extraordinary collaboration between students, faculty and staff that in many ways was unprecedented. All groups seemed very alarmed at the prospect for fee hikes which will make the university unaffordable and inaccessible to many segments of the population.

Vanguard Radio September 23: UC Davis Walkout

By David GreenwaldSeptember 24, 20090 comments

September 23, 2009 show – The Vanguard discussed the issue of the September 24, 2009 UC Davis…

Whistleblower at UC Davis Fired Allegedly For Reporting IRB Non-Compliance and Ethical Violations

By David GreenwaldSeptember 24, 20091 comments

Doctoral Candidate and former UC Davis (UCD) nurse researcher Janet Keyzer has filed a lawsuit against the Regents of the University of California, alleging that she and her husband were terminated from their employment at UC Davis after Ms. Keyzer reported research violations.

According to the suit filed on September 18, Ms. Keyzer began working within the Community Oriented Pain Management Exchange (COPE) in April 2006, which was created to evaluate pain diagnosis and treatment at California State Prisons. It was a federally-funded collaborative effort between UCD, the California Department of Corrections (CDC), and the Correctional Medicine Network at UC San Francisco (UCSF).

Nude Protestors Demonstrate That the Emperor Has No Clothes

By David GreenwaldSeptember 23, 200923 comments

At first I thought it was a typo, students supposedly protesting the impending tuition hikes by going nude in the quad at UC Davis, that should have read Berkeley right? The students claimed that their lack of attire was symbolic of the fact that they are being “stripped” of their right to accessible, affordable, quality education.

As it turns out, it must have been Davis after all, because naked to these students meant walking around in their underwear. Kids today. Kind of reminds me of a hunger strike at the UC Berkeley campus a decade ago, it turns out the kids weren’t exactly starving themselves as they consumed the SlimFast diet drink. Didn’t stop the administration from caving to their demands.

Quiet and Civility Comes to the Measure P Campaign

By David GreenwaldSeptember 22, 2009156 comments

by Matt Williams –

Last night at Birch Lane Elementary School the Yes or No on Measure P debate took a somewhat unexpected turn at a neighborhood forum hosted by the Slide Hill Neighborhood Association, a civil and respectful discussion broke out. Listening to the three person panels representing No on P and Yes on P was an audience of approximately 30 people. After 50 minutes of prepared 20 minute statements and 5 minute rebuttals, the panelists used the remaining hour of the forum to answer questions from the audience.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of the audience was the fact that very few of them were not wearing a button declaring their position on the Measure. It is a good bet that neither side swayed any of the members of the audience toward one side or the other, so any real electoral impact of the evening will come from the people who watch the telecast of the debate from the comfort of their homes.

Uncertain Water Future Drives Skepticism Toward Current Public Policy

By David GreenwaldSeptember 22, 200916 comments

Slowly but surely, Davis is moving forward to a system that will require a huge capital expenditure of resources in order to provide river water. The question that I have, one that continues to arise is whether once we build that system, we will actually have water.

As is well-known by now the way this will work is that we will built a diversion to the Sacramento that will allow us to collect some river water along with the City of Woodland. However, less well known perhaps is that we only collect that water during certain months, during certain years, and possibly when the river is of a certain level. That means that we might be building an expensive toy that may not yield much in the way of water during dry years. And so if climate change means more dry years, then we get less water.

Furlough Issue Comes To Head This Week at UC Davis

By David GreenwaldSeptember 21, 200950 comments

September 24 has become the magical date at UC Davis. That is the date of the first day of instruction for the fall quarter. Planned for that day is a faculty walk out that at least 100 UC Davis faculty members have signed onto. At issue there is that they want some of the furlough days to fall on instructional days.

At the same time, last week, UC Davis told its more than 4400 union employees that if they do not accept the furlough they will face layoffs or other reductions.

Making a List and Checking It Twice: Soliciting From Readers Their Top Priorities for 2009-10

By David GreenwaldSeptember 20, 20097 comments

This has been a banner year for the Vanguard as two of our long stated city goals have come to fruition. Last fall, we came up a list of council goals. Included on that list was the top issue of bringing a grocery store to West Davis. That was ranked as the top goal. Also listed at No.3 was the Road Diet for Fifth Street.

The issue of a Grocer at West Lake has of course been a frequent topic of discussion on the Vanguard for some time. But what was interesting to me is how much momentum seemed to be generated from that article last year. People at the time almost scoffed at the notion that a Grocer would even be willing to come to that location. And yet within a short period of time, a number of Grocers had expressed interest in the site including the DeLanos. It would take us into the summer, but the deal was sealed and the shopping center, now vacant for nearly three and a half years should have a grand opening come this November.

Montgomery Situation Shows Absurdity of Testing Requirements

By David GreenwaldSeptember 19, 200940 comments

Score one against the over-reliance on testing for determining whether or not a school is achieving its goals. Montgomery Elementary school has for the past five years been designated a high achieving school by scoring over 800 points on the state’s API schedule. However, that’s not good enough under the Federal System because their score dropped modestly from last year to this year. As a result they have achieved a status of Program Improvement.

Some will argue that this demonstrates what we already have known for sometime that the federal standard is unachievable because the standards rise up to the unachievable level by 2014. The NCLB benchmarks have been described as a hockey stick because the achievement line rises at a steep angle which ends at a benchmark at 100 percent student proficiency by 2013-14.

When Commissions Should Weigh In

By David GreenwaldSeptember 18, 200953 comments

One of the issues that has arisen during the course of the Wildhorse Ranch debate is a very important question as to when commissions ought to weigh in on future housing developments. The issue was first raised by Councilmember Stephen Souza during the July 28 meeting when he asked why commissions such as the Open Space, Finance and Budget among others did not have the issue of Wildhorse Ranch come before them. City Staff at that time explained that staff did not feel the need for policy direction and did not have ambiguities about whether or not this project fell within city guidelines in these jurisdictions.

As a result the project came before only the Social Services and Planning Commissions prior to approval by council. As we now know there is at least considerable debate about the finances of the project and it clearly would have been helpful had the Finance and Budget Commission had a chance to evaluate the project, the model, and how it fit within the city’s budget and its impact on that budget.

Who’s Serious about Delta Solutions?

By David GreenwaldSeptember 18, 20093 comments

by Shawn Smallwood –

It’s easy to forget that Yolo County encompasses a portion of the San Joaquin Delta — one of the Earth’s great estuaries. Most of us in Yolo County live in upland areas relatively far from Delta waterways. We often drive to Sacramento oblivious to the Delta’s presence beneath and around us, because the Delta was radically transformed from what most of us imagine a delta waterway is supposed to look like. Where shallow flows in meandering and braided stream beds once supported expansive marshes and riparian forests, usually empty flood control basins now support agricultural crops over most years of the 10 to12-year El Nino climate cycle. A levee system contains Delta streams within relatively linear channels, as well as periodic floodwaters within the flood control basins during El Nino events. It’s when Yolo County’s flood control basins are filled that we in Yolo County are more aware of the Delta’s presence.

Those who transformed the San Joaquin Delta undoubtedly believed that their fete vastly improved conditions then and into the future for Californians. Their work supplied much of the water needed to fill the Los Angeles Basin with people and to irrigate millions of acres of the Central Valley. Their work also freed land for residential developments in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys, brought shipping to Stockton and Sacramento, and fostered recreational boating and fishing. The transforming work done during the Great Depression also employed many and helped bring America out of the Depression. These benefits, however, come with great costs, most of which were unseen for decades but which are mounting as many interest groups draw battle lines to protect the specific benefits they realized from the Delta’s transformation.

DJUSD High Performing But That’s Apparently Not Good Enough

By David GreenwaldSeptember 17, 200950 comments

How does one have high performing schools as rated by the California Department of Education (CDE) and yet fall into the category of “Year One Program Improvement” under the federal No Child Left Behind Law (NCLB)? That is the puzzle that is the federal legislation that has been a subject of much controversy for several years now – and things are about to get much worse, especially in California where funding is collapsing due to statewide economic problems.

So here’s the skinny. The Academic Performance Index (API) compiles scores out of a possible 1000 points). Any school that rates over 800 is considered by the CDE to be a “high performing school.” Davis not surprising has had every school in the district achieve in that range.

Word to the Wise: A New Assisted Living Facility In Davis?

By Elaine Roberts MusserSeptember 17, 20094 comments

By E. Roberts Musser –

Some on the Davis Senior Citizens Commission were approached by a representative of Carlton Senior Living, “a private, family-run company dedicated to creating assisted living communities”. This business is proposing the development of a 125 unit assisted living facility on the end of town where the Davis Post Office is located. It would be a small infill project called Carlton Plaza Davis, with 25 of the units situated in a dementia wing.

It was determined by this organization that the only suitable site for such a project is an undeveloped T shaped parcel next to the Konditerei restaurant. The available tract is on the eatery’s east side, the front of the lot running along Russell Blvd. The parcel abuts Davis Waste Removal (DWR) in the back. The Davis Police Department (DPD) is located on the west side, a part of the proposed assisted living facility tucked behind Konditerei.

Council Moves Forward Approving WHR Development Agreement

By David GreenwaldSeptember 16, 200962 comments

While it took the Council far longer than anticipated, going past midnight, four of them were able to agree on a modified development agreement that accounted for some of the concerns the neighbors sought to address. They were able to modify the work hours, the construction of a play structure and covered meeting area within the greenbelt, other issues such as the modification of buffer were left untouched at this point.

These issues of course were mostly cosmetic and little to do with support or opposition to project. As one person put it, they might make life a bit more bearable for the neighbors immediately adjacent to the project. There were limits as to how far the council was willing to go, but there was some give and take.

Finance and Budget Commission Hears Wildhorse Ranch Fiscal Analysis and Then Unloads on City Staff

By David GreenwaldSeptember 15, 200968 comments

Financial Planner Acknowledges Eventually City-Wide Fiscal Trainwreck –

What began as a simple hearing by the Finance and Budget Commission listening to the fiscal analysis on the Wildhorse Ranch Project became a more generalized complaint about the city’s model for fiscal analysis and the role of the commission in such an analysis. The commission eventually ruled that they lacked enough time and the necessary information to make a determination of any sort of the fiscal analysis and to sort out competing claims presented before the commission by members of the public, and by Councilmember Sue Greenwald who seemlessly shifted between roles as Councilmember, Council liaison and member of the public.

The meeting began where most of these meetings tend to, a staff report that laid out the fiscal analysis that would be presented tonight at the Davis City Council Meeting. The City Council tonight is scheduled to approve the developer’s agreement.

Month: September 2009