Decisions made by the Davis City Council in the past will be coming home to roost. And the danger is that the city not only threatens its own fiscal house, but may indirectly imperil the school district’s as well.
Starting May 17, the council is scheduled to receive formal introduction of the City Manager’s FY2011/12 Proposed Budget. The city has not released the budget as of yet, so we cannot start reviewing the numbers.
Local official are bracing for the May revise to the state’s budget. The Governor was able to close a portion of the more than twenty-five billion dollar deficit through an initial round of cuts. However, his plan was to extend the tax increases to deal with most of the remainder of the budget deficit.
Politics have derailed this effort and it appears increasingly likely that the budget gap will be closed through an all-cuts budget, despite a strong majority of the public who prefer the opportunity to at least vote on the Governor’s tax extension package.
In West Sacramento were a group of youths, most of them 14 or 15 years old. They were drinking heavily, apparently. Late at night they walked up to a man walking through a neighborhood and one of them reportedly asked where the individual was from.
The individual, with headphones on, listening to his Ipod, did not respond immediately, so the kids jump him, beat him up and rob him. He was struck in the side of his face and went down almost immediately.
One of my chief complaints about the management of the budget deficit in the City of Davis was the state of denial the former city manager was in, and thus by extension the rest of the city, most particularly city employees and to some extent the broader community.
As we look to a new city manager, we must keep in mind the fact that, just because things are not as bad here as elsewhere does not mean we are not on the brink. The brink being looking down the barrel of huge increases in the cost of pensions and retiree insurance, based on huge and growing unfunded liabilities.
Last week was the latest in a series of volleys back and forth between those questioning the timing and the need for the construction of the Yolo County court project, which is scheduled to be completed by 2015, and Judge David Rosenberg, who has made the new courthouse a centerpiece of his legacy as presiding judge.
Financing the more than five billion dollar statewide project are fines to convicted felons and traffic violators. Roughly $178 million is going to Yolo County at a time when Yolo County is being forced to lay off and furlough employees, and cities like Davis have huge and growing unfunded liabilities.
District opponents, in the wake of the Measure A election, seem to be on a heightened state of alert. The most recent evidence is a letter to the Davis Enterprise that once again is long on rhetoric, but short on an adequate understanding of school financing.
Bill Kuhlman notes that Matt Best has been appointed to take over Kevin French’s responsibilities as HR director.
by Alex Clark –In 1985, the office of Louisiana’s District Attorney for the Orleans Parish, the head of which was District Attorney Harry Connick Sr., charged John Thompson with murder. After seeing Thompson’s picture in the newspaper, as a result of the murder arrest and charge, he was fingered by the victim of a recent armed robbery as their assailant.
Use of National Security Letters Greatly Expanded under the Obama Administration – Ross Douthat writes, “For those with eyes to see, the daylight between the foreign policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama has been shrinking ever since the current president took the oath of office. But last week made it official: When the story of America’s post-9/11 wars is written, historians will be obliged to assess the two administrations together, and pass judgment on the Bush-Obama era.”
In all frankness this story should put a chill down people’s spines. No matter how you view student protests, a journalist should not face liability for covering a protest.
But that is exactly what has happened to Josh Wolf, a journalism student at UC Berkeley.
One of the biggest barriers to timely court coverage is the unavailability of court files to members of the public or journalists, while hearings are in progress.
This has proved to be a big hindrance to timely reporting. What it means is that if one of our Court Watchers in the Yolo County courts sees a case of interest, we have to wait three or four days for the file to be moved from the courtroom where the case was heard back to the clerk’s office where we can peruse the files.
For a time on Friday morning, many thought that Union Pacific had blatantly trespassed onto private property, cutting down a tree along a fenceline. Instead, it was the owners of Slatter’s Court that cut down the tree, unbeknownst to anyone.
Nerves were already shot after the railroad fenced off a gate at the same location a couple of weeks ago, angering the city and residents as the city was trying to gain assurances that the railroad would not act without at least notifying the city.
Neither Side Happy with the Judge’s Lack of Clarity and Apparent Unannounced Changes to Key Ruling – Judge Gaard is now ordering that the DA’s office turn over a cell phone whose data is sought by Deputy Public Defender Dean Johansson to the defense, but said that it can be viewed only at the DA’s office. This angered Mr. Johansson, who believed that the previous order was to turn over the phone so that an expert could examine it in his lab.
Governor Brown’s Plan is in Trouble, Based on Legislative Counsel’s Opinion and Legislative Action – Another key provision of the his plan was the elimination of redevelopment and the transfer of those funds to state purposes. Last week, the Legislative Counsel declared the Governor’s redevelopment plan unconstitutional.
I stumbled upon an interesting letter to the editor from earlier this week. It is from a local business owner who ended up supporting Measure A because it will enable Davis schools “to continue to offer top-notch instruction and programs.”
In addition to comments that are posted for public consumption, Vanguard articles also inspire private emails commenting about the articles. Some of these are complimentary, some ask for follow-ups or to provide additional information, and some are just angry.
I was reminded of something a couple of days ago, by a comment from one of our readers who said something to the effect of “most of your readers agree.” I stopped right there. How does anyone know what the Vanguard readers think?
On any given day, somewhere around 20 different individuals post comments on a regular basis, there is another group of periodic commenters, some occasional commenters and a few that have responded only to a particular article.
The facts are staggering, as laid out in a recent brief in Yolo County’s death penalty case. California has over 700 people on death row and yet, since the death penalty was reestablished in California in 1977, only 13 offenders have been executed.
Recently, the Marco Topete case has been delayed another four months at least, due to the illness of one of the defense attorneys and his subsequent replacement. The typical death penalty case costs over a million to prosecute, and this one will be over three years old when it starts – if it does – in August.
With the passage of Measure A, the district gets to breathe not a single breath. Not a single one. The district knows that it closed about 3.2 million dollars in its current shortfall, which would be very helpful if it knew what its current shortfall was.
Our best guess, and the one that we will be operating on, is that it is about six million dollars. That assumes a lot, though. It assumes that the state’s budget deficit will remain at its current level and that the legislature will not reach a compromise on tax extensions and therefore, that it will have to cut additional money from the education budget.
This is a new feature that we are going to try that will attempt to emphasize some of the more thoughtful and illuminating comments made during the previous week. Obviously, given limitations, this is not an exclusive list. But we want to encourage thoughtful and civil, but still insightful and, at times, critical comments. Hopefully this effort will strike the right balance we seek.
hpierce May 1 “Sunday Commentary: Gas Prices a Curse or Blessing?”:
May is “Bike Month”… perhaps the Vanguard “community” should pledge and follow through on a commitment to ride a bicycle, when possible, in lieu of a motor vehicle trip. I have committed, thru my employer, and hope to have every trip within Davis accomplished via bicycle this month. A “Vanguardian” group could be established, and they could compete with the other groups that have signed up.
Judge Stephen Mock granted Michael Artz probation on Friday. However, he imposed very strict probation requirements and imposed a 270-day county jail sentence for after Mr. Artz completes his college finals.
It has been, as Judge Stephen Mock reminded the court yesterday afternoon, been eight and one half months since Michael Artz was convicted of the two lesser counts in his case stemming from oral copulation with a 16-year-old female student, a year behind him at Davis High, and from his ill-advised attempts to reconnect with her nine months later.
The website strongly criticizes eight figures who they say are leading the charge to change public pensions. These include Dan Pellissier, president of California Pension Reform; Marcia Fritz, executive director of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility; and an “anonymous out-of-state billionaire.”
