Reports have come in this morning, that Rodney King, whose beating and the subsequent acquittal of police officers led to a three-day riot in parts of Los Angeles in 1992, has been found by his fiance at the bottom of a pool this morning.
Details are sketchy at the moment.
by Matt Williams – Let me start by saying that the opinions and perspectives presented in this article are those of the author and not the opinions and perspectives of the Water Advisory Committee (“WAC”).
This week, a report released on the police handling of the October 2011 occupation of an encampment in front of Oakland City Hall in Frank Ogawa Plaza Park became the third major report from last fall’s police handling occupations in Northern California.
In late March, a report largely cleared police in Berkeley of their use of force. In April a similar report from UC Davis slammed police and administration officials for the handling of an occupation that resulted in the pepper spraying and arrests of numerous students on November 18, 2011.
On Friday the City announced the hiring of Herb Niederberger as the General Manager over Utilities, Development and Operations effective July 2, 2012 following a lengthy search that included the creation of a new position.
“This new position is a result of the city’s ongoing effort to streamline and improve services and reduce administrative overhead,” a press release from the city reported.
C Davis Investigates “Egregious Academic Freedom Violation”On June 8, the UC Davis Academic Senate unanimously criticized several UC Davis Administrators for curtailing the right “of academic freedom of Professor Michael Wilkes and all other faculty to publish scholarly articles and professional expert commentaries that address ethics and societally relevant critiques” and expressed “severe disapproval of the notion that the University of California may take legal action against professors whose scholarly publications or professional expert commentaries may be perceived by University administrators to be injurious to University interests.”
They called upon Medical School Dean Claire Pomeroy, Executive Associate Dean Frederick Meyer, and Campus Health System Counselor David Levine to “promptly and publicly take responsibility for serious errors in judgment,” write individual letters of apology, and “rescind all disciplinary actions that have been stated, proposed, or taken against Professor Wilkes.”
Sitting down with DCEA (Davis City Employees Association) President Dave Owen was a tough experience. Despite arguments that can be made that many get above-market salaries, these are not wealthy people. They are not living it up. Most work hard for their living and during this economic time, struggle to make ends meet.
Accepting cuts of 20% in salary and 20% in benefits would likely cripple many of them. Talking to Dave Owen, they thought they were doing what they were supposed to be doing over much of the last decade – they took the pay increases offered to them, took certain benefits in lieu of salary increases, made tradeoffs along the way.
Jose Granda and Thomas Randall have never seen a tax that they like, which is their right and it is fine. However, Jose Granda does not seem to understand a few things. First, how poor your ballot arguments have to be in order for a judge to strike them as intentionally misleading and deceptive.
Moreover, he does not seem to understand how out of step he is with the rest of Davis. As he was leading his anti-tax brigade this spring, he got less than 28% of his fellow citizens to buy into it.
The city of Davis acted quickly to fill the hole left by the PERB (Public Employment Relations Board) invalidation of their imposed labor contract on DCEA (Davis City Employees Association) by laying off nine employees and reducing the hours of three more.
The Vanguard spoke with DCEA President Dave Owen on Tuesday afternoon, prior to the city’s release of their contract but after the bargaining unit leader had learned of the PERB ruling.
A few weeks ago, the Vanguard, through a public records act request and a subsequent lawsuit against the city of Davis, obtained a less redacted version of the Davis Fire Report that was originally presented to the public in January of 2009.
The most revealing new detail was newly released accounts of the April 2007 promotional process in which the city would promote two employees to the position of captain. The Davis Enterprise on Wednesday covered this story and was able to get former Fire Chief Rose Conroy to speak on the record on this for the first time.
On Tuesday, the city of Davis learned as expected that they had lost their appeal of the PERB (Public Employment Relations Board) ruling invalidating the city’s imposition of impasse in 2010 on the Davis City Employees Association (DCEA) bargaining unit.
The city manager, in order to recoup the loss of around 800,000 dollars, announced layoffs the day after voters approved Measure D, the Parks Tax extension, of nine employees and the reduction of work hours of three more.
The Davis City Council unanimously granted the motion by the Water Advisory Committee (WAC) to extend their deadlines until August while postponing consideration of the ballot measure options until after the WAC meets this week to discuss these matters.
Elaine Roberts Musser, Chair of the Water Advisory Committee, was unable to attend the meeting, but Matt Williams read her statement to council.
City Shrugs Off PERB Setback and Keeps Going to Fiscal Solvency – The city suffered an expected but momentary setback when it learned, on Tuesday afternoon, that the Public Employees Relations Board had denied their appeal and made the Administrative Law Judge’s ruling from November 2011 its own, finding that “the City violated the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act by implementing its last, best and final offer without exhausting impasse resolution procedures set forth in the City’s applicable local rules.”
One thing was par for the course on Tuesday night, in that the budget discussion did not begin until nearly midnight, but it was a short and quick discussion, with the real discussion and work coming at the next meeting.
Superintendent Winfred Roberson would not commit to supporting Richard Harris’ radical and stunning proposal, which coupled with his surprise announcement not to run has turned the school district calculations on their head.
In 2010, the Yolo County District Attorney’s office, led by Deputy DA Clinton Parish, sought to put Robert Ferguson, charged with the theft of a package of shredded cheese, into prison for life under California’s three strikes law.
“I want to give people enough time to know that I’m not running,” he told the Vanguard. “I’m not running because I need more time with my family and my work, but I still want to accomplish what I wanted to accomplish when I first ran.”
It was termed the next generation of leadership in Davis, a young council, certainly the youngest in recent years, with Joe Krovoza and Brett Lee the eldest at 49 and 46 years of age respectively. Dan Wolk, the newly-elected Mayor Pro Tem and Lucas Frerichs are in their thirties,and Rochelle Swanson, as they said, is in the middle.
“I don’t know if we’re the youngest council ever,” Mayor Joe Krovoza quipped. “But we have two in their early thirties, two in their forties, and Rochelle’s in-between.”
By Steve PinkertonAs the City has faced tough economic times, the last four years have been a time of transition and restructuring. As the City faces a new era, the question has become “How can service model deliveries be improved to maintain the high level of service expected by the citizens, while staying within stagnant revenues and increased employment costs?”
Since budget year 2009/2010, the City has tried to reduce positions by attrition in order to avoid laying off employees. The City’s work force has dropped from 445 full time equivalents to 376 full time equivalents over the last four years, a 15.5% overall staff reduction.
On March 20, the Davis City Council approved a contract with Carollo Engineers to re-evaluate the issues associated with obtaining water from West Sacramento for the city, as well as for Woodland and UC Davis.
The idea was to provide a comparison to the project that was being pursued through the Woodland-Davis Clean Water Agency.
Last year about this time, on June 17, 2011, the Vanguard reported that the Santa Clara County grand jury called “for a wholesale rethinking of fire departments and emergency responses, arguing that sending firefighters to what are now mostly medical calls is outdated and wasteful.”
The Mercury News reports, “A report by the watchdog panel found that 70 percent of fire department calls are medical emergencies, and just 4 percent are fire-related. But even so, firefighters respond as if they are heading to a fire, sending a crew of three or more on a truck or engine costing an average of $500,000 — five times the cost of an ambulance.”
