This will be my fifth January covering local government in Davis and Yolo County. One thing I have learned for certain during that time is that you never know what issue will come up. However, already there are huge issues looming on the horizon in Davis that could help to determine the future.
Depending on how things shake out, January may be one of the biggest non-election months we have had in recent memory.
The Contra Costa Times reported in early December that Yolo County was among four counties that had not provided data at all on 2009 salaries of all judges and employees in the court. This followed a request by the Bay Area News Group to apply California’s new judiciary adopted transparency rules.
It may be recalled that the Vanguard reported on this on December 18, 2010 and asked why Yolo County was stonewalling.
In January the Vanguard launched a project to monitor court cases in the Yolo County court system. The purpose of this program was to look into problematic cases, monitor them through the court system, and report about any abuses, overcharging, and other problems in the system.
By analyzing individual cases, we hoped to be able to determine, on a more systematic basis, the problems facing the Yolo Judicial system. While this report does not represent a comprehensive review of the court system or the DA’s Office, it does provide some insight into problems that we face.
As soon as next week, Davis may have the answer to the first of two key questions created by Don Saylor’s ascension to the County Supervisor position. The question of who is to replace him on the council will be a much longer and more drawn-out scenario than the one that determines who replaces him as Mayor or the one who runs the council meetings.
Former Davis City Councilmember Ted Puntillo joined the push for Stephen Souza to become the next Mayor of Davis. We could be less than a week from finding out who will be the next mayor, but in all likelihood it will not be Mr. Souza.
While the Gang Injunction trial wrapped up and we eagerly await Judge Kathleen White’s decision expected in May, we have further evidence that despite claims to the contrary, any gang problems in Yolo County hardly register as a blip on the radar of statewide gang concerns.
The DA’s Office argued in their closing that the Broderick Boys gang represented a clear nuisance to the West Sacramento community to the extent that they needed additional remedies not already available under the law.
A war of words is brewing in the County Government over the water deal signed a week and a half ago by Yolo County with Angelo Tsakopoulos. County Supervisor Jim Provenza of Davis is accusing the county of having run an illegal meeting, chaired by his colleague in Davis, outgoing Supervisor Helen Thomson.
According to a Sunday article in the Davis Enterprise, Helen Thomson has fired back calling Jim Provenza’s accusation “a crock” and saying it was “very irritating.”
The bad news is that UC students will have to absorb another 8-percent tuition hike. To make matters worse, that tuition hike will mainly go to cover the UC system’s massive pension bill – about $175 million for this year.
In other words, students are being asked to flip the bill so that their professors and UC administrators can retire with their full pension benefits, despite the fact that they failed to pay into the system over the last decade.
The annual report from UC Davis on the apartment vacancy rates and cost of rent came out last week. Not much changed, although the vacancy rate reportedly increased slightly since last fall to 3.4 percent while rents crept downward by an average of .55 percent, according to the annual survey from the UC Davis Office of Student Housing.
Last year, the apartment vacancy rate was 3.2 percent, and the average rent increase was 1.05 percent.
In the past week the Vanguard received a letter from a thankful individual in South San Francisco expressing appreciation for an article written in March of 2008 on former Waterford School District Superintendent Howard Cohen.
That article apparently helped tie together enough threads between Mr. Cohen’s conduct in Waterford and his conduct in South San Francisco to force his resignation on December 17, with allegations, amid among other things, that he tried to hire an old associate from Total School Solutions to a new position during a time when the school district was forced to lay off and cut salaries of teachers.
More alarming is the fast-track 14-month timeline that the city has the project slated to take, for a project that includes 610 units of housing along with 20 acres of business park. A second community forum is tentatively scheduled for January of 2011. By March of 2011, they will be into the EIR (Environmental Impact Report) preparation phase. Commissions will make their reviews in January and February of 2012, with the council taking final action by February 2012, before the next council election.
In a time of financial crisis, when all government agencies are crying poverty, in a lot of ways Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig is operating as though it were business as usual. Yolo Judicial Watch has now been covering the courts for about a year, and some of our findings are appalling.
DA Reisig and his staff may be able to write off the efforts of the Vanguard, but some of his antics have caught the Sacramento press’s attention. Two of his worst offending cases – as in waste of taxpayer money – made top ten lists for the year 2010 in both the Sacramento Bee and the Sacramento News and Review.
People keep asking me if I think this is a good deal for Davis and Yolo County. Quite frankly I do not know the answer to that. It may be a good deal, it may not be a good deal. We may not know the answer to that for some time.
However, the point I think that needs to be made over and over again is that democracy is not about outcomes. We could get together and figure out the best solution and impose it on the people, but that is not democracy. Democracy is about process – open process, transparent process, and sometimes messy process.
It took a lot longer than expected for the City of Davis to get the annual CalPERS (California Public Employees’ Retirement System) report that laid out the upcoming rates. It was expected that the news would not be good with respect to rate hikes, however, it was worse than expected. And for reasons we will get into shortly, this may be only the tip of the iceberg.
Interim City Manager Paul Navazio stressed that the city is still working out what the impact of these rate hikes will be on the city’s budget. That information should be ready to roll on January 18, when the council has their study session on pensions and the city’s unfunded liability, which is soaring with this latest report.
In a communication from former School Board Member and current president of the Yolo County Taxpayers Association, John Munn, he signaled that the taxpayers association may oppose the newly-proposed parcel tax.
“In October, the Yolo County Taxpayers Association advised the school board that it would not oppose a reasonable increase in the parcel tax to preserve core educational programs,” Mr. Munn writes, but explains that would be under under certain conditions.
In the end, it was not that the council was unconcerned about the lack of public process, but rather it was that they were not concerned enough.
Under the best of conditions it is difficult to defend oneself, particularly in a capital murder case. But the system conspired to make the task impossible for Marco Topete, accused of the 2008 killing of Deputy Sheriff Tony Diaz.
Faced with inadequate time to research the case, lack of hours in the law library, lack of privacy and protection for legal product, Mr. Topete finally had enough last week and reluctantly took back the two attorneys he had dismissed just three months ago.
On Monday we asked what the rush was with this water deal that necessitated a decision during the time that normally people are on vacation and spending time with their families. On Monday night, in a packed City Hall, part with citizens skeptical of the deal, the other part with consultant and water experts arguing this is our only shot, we finally got the answer: Sacramento developer Angelos Tsakopoulos was driving the deal and the deadline.
The public complaint is the speed at which this deal is progressing, the lack of time for public input and the fact that this is happening during winter break, leading many in this community to question whether those in power are not somewhat hiding the ball here, and trying to hide portions of this deal from full public inquiry.
This is normally the time of year I am scrambling to find new stories and spending most of my time resting and writing up a few year-in-reviews to fill space and bide my time until January when the world restarts.
But that is not the case this year, as last week we suddenly learned that the water process which had been moving slowly for years was suddenly rushing in a torrent. The Board of Supervisors rammed through an agreement with Angelo Tsakopoulos, a person I would not trust with someone else’s money, let alone taxpayer money.
Back in June we ran an article on the problems that Yolo County had in responding to public records requests in a timely matter.
There is a good article this morning in the Woodland Daily Democrat on the problems that the Yolo County Counsel’s Office had with responding to public records requests.
by Councilmember Stephen Souza and Mayor Pro Tem Joe Krovoza – Davis operates its own water and wastewater utilities. Although a big responsibility, it affords our community the flexibility to control our destiny, manage systems that support our environmental and conservation values, and force costs down at every opportunity.