July 2012 - Davis Vanguard

RHNA Numbers Take Peripheral Growth Further Off Davis’ Table

By David GreenwaldJuly 31, 201233 comments

RHNP

SACOG (Sacramento Area Council of Governments) has released their draft of the Regional Housing Needs Plan (RHNP) for 2013-2021. Davis’ allocation is a relatively low number, 1065 units over the next eight years.

According to the cover letter: “SACOG is near the final steps in adopting its 2013-21 Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA), a state requirement to determine the number of housing units cities and counties must plan for in their housing element updates.”

Delta Can’t Be Restored On a Wink and a Promise

By David GreenwaldJuly 31, 20124 comments

By Senator Lois Wolk

Yesterday, Governor Brown and Interior Secretary Salazar committed to the construction of a massive two tunnel project in the Delta, without any certain plan to protect and restore the dying Delta ecosystem. They ask us to “trust” that sometime over the next 15 years, an extraordinarily complex and scientifically valid plan will emerge, along with the billions of dollars to pay for it.

The revised Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) released last week remains as unaffordable, unworkable and scientifically unjustified as the previous plan that took six years of effort and $150 million to produce.

A Short History of Police Lineup Reform

By uptownstudiosJuly 31, 20127 comments

By Gary Wells, Professor of Psychology, Iowa State University

More than ever, legislators and law enforcement are realizing the importance of adopting lineup procedures that are based on solid scientific research. A groundswell of reform to eyewitness identification procedures swept the country last year—from New Jersey to Texas and police departments nationwide. Still, the change has been gradual. My own career is a testament of that.

I have been conducting experiments on eyewitness identification since 1975, while I was still a graduate student in psychology at Ohio State University. Along with a fellow student, we designed this simple experiment where we staged a theft repeatedly and had people try and pick the thief out from a lineup. Not only did they make a lot of mistakes, but sometimes they were quite certain that they were right when in fact they were wrong.

Vanguard Receives Major Donation from Hathway Tech

By David GreenwaldJuly 30, 20126 comments

Today is the Vanguard‘s 6th anniversary, having been founded on July 30, 2006 at the davisvanguard.blogspot.com website. In March of 2009, we launched the current davisvanguard.org site – custom built by the folks at Hathway Tech.

Today, on our sixth anniversary, we would proudly like to announce that Hathway Tech has made a major donation to the Davis Vanguard.

A Move to Woodland JPA Re-opens United Water, DBO Unresolved Questions

By David GreenwaldJuly 30, 201289 comments

It appears we may be heading toward a decision on water – at least from the standpoint of the Water Advisory Committee (WAC). The committee voted to eliminate the three most expensive options.

That leaves us with two Woodland options and one West Sacramento option. Committee member Alf Brandt indicated at the meeting that he would be ready to make a motion at the August 9 meeting.

Berkeley Climate Change Skeptic, Funded by the Koch Brothers, Moves to the Other Side

By David GreenwaldJuly 30, 201267 comments

In a sweeping op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times, erstwhile climate-change skeptic Richard A. Muller writes, “Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct.”

Now Professor Muller, professor of physics at UC Berkeley, goes even further, arguing, “Humans are almost entirely the cause.”

Sunday Commentary: A Reminder to Chill Our Rhetoric

By David GreenwaldJuly 29, 201257 comments

Late this week comes the news that the wife of convicted killer Marco Topete was attacked last weekend, slashed in the face with a knife. The couple that attacked her were arrested and now face assault and mayhem charges.

I first heard about this on Thursday, and on Saturday it made the news in Woodland and today it makes the news in Davis.

Take the Time to Get the Water Project Right

By uptownstudiosJuly 29, 201231 comments

By Michael Harrington, Pam Nieberg, and Nancy Price

In November 2011, the Water Referendum successfully qualified for the ballot. If passed by the voters, the Referendum would have overturned the City Council’s attempt to replace our existing publicly-owned ground water system with a large, expensive, and privatized surface-water system under the Joint Powers Authority.

Rather than letting voters decide, the 2011 Council withdrew its plan, and empanelled the Water Advisory Committee (WAC) to study and recommend to the Council their preferred water project by type and size, timing, ecological sustainability, seasonal water availability, and fair and affordable rates for all ratepayers.

Gazing Into a Crystal Ball — Water Process Interest Groups — Looking Forward to a March Water Ballot

By Matt WilliamsJuly 29, 201223 comments

by Matt Williams

Let me start by saying that the opinions and perspectives presented here in this article are those of the author and not the opinions and perspectives of the Water Advisory Committee (“WAC”).

In the past week two events have taken place that have very interesting implications when looking forward to what might happen when Davis voters actually cast their votes regarding the conjunctive use water system and the water rates recommended by the WAC, approved by Council and distributed in a Prop 218 notice. Those two events were:

My view: Guns Kill People

By David GreenwaldJuly 28, 201254 comments

Politics is often boiled down to its most base and absurd, when simplistic slogans replace rational thought and respectful discourse. Every time we have a horribly tragic mass shooting – which is far too often in my mind – we get the interplay between the gun control advocates and the defenders of gun rights, including the NRA.

We often hear the slogan – guns don’t kill people, people do. That is a foolish, ill-considered, and counter-intuitive statement.

Water Project: How Much is Ownership and Joint Governance Worth?

By David GreenwaldJuly 28, 201227 comments

On Thursday night, the Water Advisory Committee (WAC) narrowed down the project options from six to three. The pattern was very clear and unequivocal. The WAC eliminated the three most expensive project options and kept on the table the three least expensive project.

Wrote Matt Williams in yesterday’s Vanguard: “The three projects still under consideration have current cost estimates of $130 million, $153 million and $157 million respectively. Each of those projects has a different risk profile, and some movement in the costs downward is expected as those risk factors are clarified, but it is safe to say that the citizens of Davis will not be spending as much as an additional $60 million as a result of the hard work of Staff and the WAC last night.”

WAC Narrows Down the Project Options

By Matt WilliamsJuly 27, 201213 comments

by Matt Williams –

The lyrics below are by John Fogerty . . . and the opinions hereafter in this article are those of the author, who is a member of the Water Advisory Committee, but is writing here as an individual citizen.

Left a good job in the city
Workin’ for the man ev’ry night and day
And I never lost one minute of sleepin’
Worryin’ ’bout the way things might have been

Commentary: Reisig’s Error-Filled and Inaccurate Polemic

By David GreenwaldJuly 27, 201238 comments

Last night at the Vanguard annual dinner and awards ceremony, Don Heller, a former prosecutor who helped to draft and write the 1978 Death Penalty Statute, argued that Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig’s op-ed released on Wednesday was so filled with errors and factual misstatements that its obvious intended purpose was to politicize the death penalty issue rather than bring forth honest discussion and debate.

Mr. Reisig, in his op-ed, wrote: “In fact, the only objective study on the issue of costs associated with the death penalty, conducted by the non-partisan Rand Corporation in 2008, does not even support the death penalty opponents’ claims. There is simply no solid evidence that eliminating the death penalty and replacing it with life in prison will save taxpayers money.”

Does Stop and Frisk Make Us Safer? Rights Defenders Say No

By David GreenwaldJuly 27, 201214 comments

One of the more interesting debates that is emerging is over the issue of stop and frisk as a crime control policy. The policy began in New York by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Depite the controversy and complaints from rights groups and minorities, the mayor continues to support it, arguing as he did in June, “that it had helped make New York the safest big city in the country, while acknowledging that the police needed to treat those whom they stopped with greater respect.”

Jerry Brown Has Little Basis to Claim Lack of Innocents on Death Row

By David GreenwaldJuly 26, 20124 comments

You will have to forgive us for focusing a bit on the death penalty this week. After all, this evening five of the leading spokespeople on the issue will be coming to Woodland for a Vanguard event.

In any event, Yolo County DA Jeff Reisig gave us a month’s worth of material. Mr. Reisig was making the argument that the system works, after all, as he writes, “Each of them received due process through the many checks and balances of the criminal justice system and were justly convicted and sentenced to death.”

Commentary: Trust, Local Government, and Water Glasses

By David GreenwaldJuly 26, 201214 comments

There are a couple of questions I have been asked a number of times over the last few months. One is the degree to which I trust various public entities and second, whether I view the water glass as half full or half empty.

I want to start with the trust issue. President Ronald Reagan developed a phrase as relations improved with the Soviets in the mid-1980s, trust but verify.

Guest Commentary: The Truth About The Death Penalty

By uptownstudiosJuly 26, 201213 comments

By Tracie Olson

I am writing as the Public Defender of Yolo County. Contrary to District Attorney Jeff Reisig’s recent opinion piece, there are numerous, overwhelming reasons to oppose the death penalty, and none involve dishonoring victims.

INNOCENT PEOPLE HAVE BEEN SENTENCED TO DEATH AND EXECUTED.

District Attorney Jeff Reisig laments the “endless delays in the criminal justice system, frivolous appeals, and a mountain of misinformation” caused by the “ACLU and its agents.” However, he conveniently ignores the fact that the National Registry of Exonerations has recorded over 920 exonerations across the United States since 1989, more than 100 of which had been sentenced to death.

DA Reisig Unleashes Unwarranted Attack on ACLU & Death Penalty Opponents on Eve of Vanguard Event

By David GreenwaldJuly 25, 201236 comments

On Thursday evening, death penalty opponents from across the state will be coming to Woodland to talk about the current state of California’s Death Penalty. It’s interesting, to say the least, that the DA, who has been quiet on this issue since the jury recommended death in the Topete case and Judge Richardson confirmed it, suddenly has an Op-Ed piece in the Woodland paper this morning with Guadalupe Diaz, the sister of slain Officer Tony Diaz.

The piece includes a passionate defense of the death penalty, an emotional appeal and a pointed attack on the ACLU, one of many organizations that have come together to support a ballot measure this November that would convert the death penalty to life without parole.

Southern California Officer Sentence to Four Years For Pepper Spray and Stun Gun on In-Custody Inmates

By David GreenwaldJuly 25, 201213 comments

Does Case Have Any Implications for Davis?

A federal judge sentenced former Desert Hot Springs Police Sgt. Anthony Sclafani to four years behind bars for abusing his powers by using a stun gun and pepper spray on “essentially helpless” suspects in custody.

The incidents occurred a day apart in February 2005. Seven years later, he was convicted in February of using force and violating the civil rights of two inmates under the color of law, in separate incidents a day apart.

CPUC to Investigate Complaints About PG&E Gas Pipe Leaks

By David GreenwaldJuly 24, 20124 comments

Vanguard Asks City to Independently Verify PG&Es Claims

Last week, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) agreed to investigate complaints filed by residents of Stonegate in Davis regarding a large number of gas leaks in west Davis from distribution lines operated by PG&E.

PG&E recently reported that 88 gas leaks have occurred in the distribution lines in the Stonegate subdivision since 2006, up from the 42 leaks reported in November 2011. Because of the severity of the problem, PG&E is conducting twice-monthly gas leak detection surveys in Stonegate.

Month: July 2012