A few weeks ago we had the pleasure of attending the Justice Summit put on by the Public Defender’s Office in San Francisco. They had three panels, and one of the most interesting spoke to alternative approaches to gang prevention efforts.
One of the most compelling speeches was the “keynote” by UCLA Professor Jorja Leap, author of Jumped In: What Gangs Taught Me About Violence, Drugs, Love and Redemption.
City Manager Steve Pinkerton has his playbook and is beginning to follow it. If PERB (Public Employment Relations Board) is going to force the city to return money to DCEA (Davis City Employee’s Association) – money that every other bargaining group conceded in the last round, the city is going to make up for it through layoffs.
We actually asked him if that was retribution for DCEA not going along with the city’s original budget cuts back in 2009.
Last year, during the heat of the debate on the budget in the city of Davis, there was a comment by Firefighters Union President Bobby Weist, comparing a proposed budget cut to Wisconsin. There were even signs to that effect. So it is ironic that the two issues come together, Davis and Wisconsin, this week.
The title of the editorial this week in the local paper was “Wisconsin governor wins and unions lose.” Now wouldn’t you think that we have had an historic election in Davis, and that the local paper in their Sunday edition might want something, I don’t know, local?
On September 6, 2011, the Davis City Council, after narrowly rejecting a more narrow measure, agreed 4-1 to approve the surface water project and accompanying rate hikes that would have taken place this year.
Further scrutiny would show that those rates were flawed and three months later, the council would rescind those rate hikes and put in place a process to evaluate the project, the details, the costs, and ultimately a new set of water rates.
Conventional wisdom will argue that a campaign attack mailer that intended to take out Sue Greenwald, and perhaps Stephen Souza as well, in fact worked. After all, the two long-time incumbents finished fourth and fifth respectively in the five-person field.
Woodland Daily Democrat Editor Jim Smith, from afar, wrote: “Candidates should have learned a lesson from Yolo County judicial candidate Clint Parish that it never pays to try and smear your opponent and then fail to say your sorry. Parish may have been a long-shot going against Judge Dan Maquire, but his filthy mailers proved toxic. Parish might have recovered had he simply apologized profusely, but he didn’t and was destroyed at the polls.”
It has been a long and eventful week, but the Vanguard finally caught up with Lucas Frerichs, who finished second in Tuesday’s Davis City Council election.
In a very stacked agenda, one of the critical issues that the council is scheduled to take up are the options for putting a ballot measure on the November 2012 ballot.
The day after the election, the city laid down the first gauntlet in what has been described by both sides as increasingly contentious discussion on new labor contracts across the board.
The layoffs involve nine positions within DCEA (Davis City Employee’s Association), the bargaining unit that the city originally declared impasse on in the winter of 2010 but had that impasse overturned by a state board (PERB) last November.
The good news is that the Yolo County Grand Jury did not find anything untoward about the operations of the Yolo County Jail, but they are concerned with issues of inmate overcrowding, recidivism rates and budget reductions.
“Only individuals arrested on felony offenses are detained,” they report. “Each detainee is interviewed to identify gang affiliation, history of sexual offenses, confidential informants, race, religious preferences, federal inmates, etc.”
On Election Night, Dan Wolk did what everyone expected him to do, as the Mayor Pro Tem-elect won by an overwhelming margin, winning every single precinct in the city of Davis. The other candidates were tightly-bunched, but in the end, two longtime incumbents ended up being defeated.
UC Davis School of Law is set to launch the state’s only law school clinic focused on litigating cases before the California Supreme Court.
The California Supreme Court Clinic, which will begin operating this fall, will give students the invaluable opportunity to work on actual cases pending before the state’s highest court.
Now that Yolo County has approved studying the formation of a Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) agency for the county, Davis must consider whether to join the movement. For Davis, the answer was “yes” for joining SMUD when that was on the ballot a few years ago. But Community Choice Energy is not exactly the same thing.
A public workshop will explore Community Choice Energy , which would amount to an independent electric utility for Davis, from 6:30 until 8:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 14, at the Davis Senior Center at 646 A Street.
The ChamberPAC might be proud to learn that other than the results themselves, there was no hotter topic of conversation than the involvement of the Chamber of Commerce’s Political Action Committee. However, unfortunately, it was largely in a negative sense.
If you recall, the involvement of the Chamber of Commerce and its PAC were actually applauded by the Vanguard at the beginning of the campaign. However, while we support the involvement of the PAC, its actual participation left a lot to be desired.
On Wednesday, Tomas Matzat was back in the Yolo County Court where he was finally arraigned on his felony and misdemeanor charges for vandalism.
Famed Defense Attorney Tony Serra made his first appearance in front of Judge Tim Fall – it was largely uneventful and a matter of formality. Mr. Matzat pled not guilty to the charges and they set, at least for now, a preliminary hearing for July 18.
Tuesday was a late night, particularly for the Davis City Council candidates who, because of the closeness of the election and the still unexplained phenomena whereby city of Davis precincts are slow to report, the final outcome was not sealed for anyone other than Mayor Pro Tem-elect Dan Wolk until 1 am.
One race that clearly lacked drama was the race for Yolo County Judge, where Judge Dan Maguire easily retained his seat defeating Deputy District Attorney Clinton Parish. With the latest update from the Yolo County Clerk Recorder’s Office, Judge Dan Maguire holds an overwhelming 55.4% lead in the election for Yolo County Superior Court Judge. Judge Dan Maguire currently has 20,543 votes (77.2%) compared to Clint Parish who has 6,054 votes (22.8%).
It was not supposed to end this way, or at least so we thought. In the end, perhaps the voters really had had enough. In June of 2010, the Council majority met for the final time, their legacy an uncertain one at best, punctuated by the failed Covell Village, a booming structural deficit, looming unfunded liabilities and of course the fight between Ruth Asmundson and Sue Greenwald caught on film.
Every member of that council will be gone from public office except for Don Saylor, who serves on the Board of Supervisors in Woodland.
As expected, Dan Wolk cruised to a first place finish and in July he will become the Mayor Pro Tem and eventually succeed Joe Krovoza as Mayor. It was not a huge surprise that Lucas Frerichs would finish second – after all, he has spent a decade in service to Davis and ended up raising the most campaign money.
The stunner is that both of the long-term incumbents lost – both Sue Greenwald, a three-term councilmember, and Stephen Souza who would finish fifth in the five-person race after winning both in 2004 and 2008.
The Davis ChamberPAC send out notification that it had purchased around 4000 door hangers that would be distributed throughout Davis today at around 9 am.
According to the notification, “These door hangers advocate for a ‘Yes’ vote on Measure D and for support of Davis City Council candidates: Lucas Frerichs, Stephen Souza and Dan Wolk.”
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has declined to review California’s Gay Marriage Ban passed by the…
