The June 30 deadline for the expiration of bargaining unit contracts has come and gone. The budget has been passed, but a discussion of cuts to some positions re-opens next week. The new council will be seated this week.
The discussion of tree trimmers has distracted us from the central core of the arguments. Back in May, we got a bit of a taste of this as two members of the public came forward during public comment to defend the Davis firefighters.
Key Question Now: Is President Obama in Trouble?The local picture is bleak. A recent Field Poll has the governor’s tax initiative passing 54-35, but most analysts believe those numbers are not strong enough in a traditionally anti-tax state.
The loss of the tax measure would put more pressure on local voters to step up to avoid a catastrophic $7.5 million shortfall to the local schools. In the meantime, the city faces about $8 million in cuts at the same time it is pushing for at least a $100 million surface water project.
In a few weeks, Franky Carrillo will speak at the Vanguard‘s annual Dinner and Awards ceremony. His wrongful conviction, that cost him 20 years in custody, was based not just on the faulty memory of the witnesses but also intentional manipulation by law enforcement.
Carrillo was sentenced in 1992 to one life term and 30 years to life in prison after being convicted of one count of first-degree murder and six counts of attempted murder in a fatal drive-by shooting.
Maurice Possley, Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize To Speak at Vanguard EventIn November, California voters will be asked to decide whether to keep the death penalty in place or convert the sentences to life without parole. Proponents of the effort to repeal the state’s death penalty point to the fact that the state has only executed 13 people since the death penalty was reinstated at a cost of $184 million per year, according to a recent study.
From the very beginning, the school district was very clear that, while Measure C would close some of the ten million dollar funding gap, it would not cover all of it. Thus, when the voters passed Measure C in March, that gap was reduced down to 3.5 million dollars.
The district had hoped to avoid further layoffs, but when negotiations with the teachers union failed to achieve the necessary concessions, the district had to lay off 50 employees.
William McDonough is best known it seems for designing the Ford Motor Company’s plant with a vast green grass roof. But in the last ten years, with his book “Cradle to Cradle,” he has, according to Forbes Magazine, “unleashed a design revolution that began examining not just what things look like, but also the chemical makeup of things: water bottles, carpet, countertops.”He believes that “waste can be eliminated by making products that can be either recycled or re-used.”
A San Diego County Supervisor would criticize the state’s realignment process, arguing, “Since [the law] was passed, theft is up in this county by 16 percent, including autos. You can’t blame that on our budget. But it’s Sacramento’s budget that has presented us with this dilemma.”
Except for one problem, a San Diego news site reports, it is untrue.
We have spent a bit of time discussing on these pages whether the district ought to ask the voters one more time (or more) if they would approve yet another emergency parcel tax.
At the state level, the governor attached automatic trigger cuts to the budget so the voters know exactly what the consequences will be if the tax measure fails. They are immensely unpopular with the voters, but they serve a number of vital purposes.
A few years ago there was a proposal to change Davis’ campaign finance limit from $100 to $250. The argument at that time simply looked at inflation and the passage of time to argue that the $100 limit was unreasonable.
However, that would have been a big mistake. In Davis, the $100 limit works pretty well on a number of fronts.
If the governor’s tax measure does not pass this fall, local school districts like Davis figure to be hammered by automatic trigger cuts. For Davis that means the loss of about 3.5 million dollars in funding which, combined with the expiration of Measure A and the increased costs of special education, puts Davis in a catastrophic hole at negative 7.5 million dollars.
A Field Poll released today shows that the voters are largely mixed on the latest round of state cuts, with 37 percent believing the cuts went too far, 28% that they did not go far enough and 24% believing they are just right.
As local communities like Davis face devastating budget cuts, protracted labor strife, and even bankruptcy due to a retirement pension crisis, leaders in Sacramento are moving closer but have failed to reach an agreement on pension reform.
Last February the governor unveiled the statutory and constitutional language to implement the 12-point pension reform plan he presented last October.
A recent study noted that 15% of the wrongful convictions reviewed involved a false confession. A reasonable person would have to ask, “How can that happen?” Phil Locke, Science and Technology Advisor, Ohio Innocence Project, posed this question in a recent blog entry on the Wrongful Convictions Blog.
“Well, there are some quirky psychological reasons why some unique individuals might confess to a crime they didn’t commit, but in the more general case, there are reasons why people do this,” he writes.
On Saturday the Vanguard reported on a memo from Woodland City Manager Paul Navazio to Davis City Manager Steve Pinkerton, that effectively eliminated the regional option of a joint Davis-Woodland-West Sacramento project.
But other options remain on the board. As we indicated last week, delays in the release of the Carolla report have complicated an already tight timeframe. There was some thought that this may take the Woodland option off the table completely.
Last week, the Davis School board did what it never thought it would do – put yet another parcel tax on the ballot. However, under the best case scenario, the governor’s budget provides for flat funding if the November tax measure passes.
Even if that occurs, the district would still lose around three million dollars when Measure A sunsets.
The attorney general identified deceptive practices regarding loan modifications, foreclosures occurring due to the servicer’s failure to properly process paperwork, and the use of incomplete paperwork to process foreclosures in both judicial and non-judicial foreclosure cases.
Last week, Susan Lovenburg announced that she would run for a second term for the Davis Joint Unified School Board. Her decision followed Richard Harris’ announcement that he would not run and instead planned to support a parcel tax. Nancy Peterson has announced she will run for school board as well.
The Vanguard caught up with Ms. Lovenburg this weekend. Despite a tumultuous five years on the board, extended by a year due to budget considerations, Ms. Lovenburg told the Vanguard her decision reflected her commitment to education and this district.
By Alan PryorDavis Historical Per Capita Water Use and Future Targets
One cannot directly compare total per capita usage by some cities with that of Davis because many cities (e.g. West Sacramento) have a far greater percentage of industrial vs home users. That said, Davis has roughly equivalent use patterns seen in other local cities for single-family homes and multi-family apartments (which doesn’t include UC obviously)
Davisites used an average of about 200 gallons per capita per day (gpcd) from about 1990 to 2007. Over the past 5 years, though, consumption in Davis has steadily dropped each year to about 155 gpcd in 2011.
This week the Davis City Council passed a budget that, with very little attention or fanfare, made huge in-roads into making this community more sustainable.
The new budget proposes perhaps as much as eight million in cuts, in order to deal with increased costs for pensions and OPEB (Other Post-Employment Benefits), to shore up infrastructure expenditures, and to deal with future hurdles that will come our way.
At the local level, we were treated to stunning news that might have gone unnoticed by some. The Davis City Manager suggested that, in a few short years, the City of Davis will spend one-quarter of its payroll on health care for retirees.
At the same, national attention focused on seminal rulings from the Supreme Court, as it perhaps surprisingly bucked its conservative trends, siding with the Obama administration on both immigration and the health care reform.
Just a few weeks after Richard Harris decided not to run again and pushed the school board and district to support yet another parcel tax, Susan Lovenburg announced she would face re-election, and now we have the first challenger for the open position.
Nancy Peterson is no stranger to the school district, as she has three kids in the schools and has been a long-time volunteer and advocate.
