UC Board of Regents Approves Settlement Agreement
Agreement Expected to Be Publicly Released in Two Weeks –
The Vanguard has confirmed that the UC Board of Regents in closed session approved the financial details of a settlement agreement with the protesters who were arrested or pepper sprayed on the UC Davis Quad on November 18, 2012.
Steve Montiel, the Media Relations Director for the UC Office of the President, told the Vanguard that a federal court is expected to certify the agreement in roughly two weeks. At that time, the details will be released to the public.
Plaintiffs Allege Police Intentionally Inflicted Serious Bodily Injury on Brothers in 2005 Confrontation – 
In the city manager form of government, the city council has a limited role to play in the hiring and laying off of employees. They hire the city manager and city attorney, but the city manager hires and fires all other staff.
Tonight the Planning Commission will hear an application by developer Dan Ramos to revise the Development Agreement to allow for TJ Maxx to move into one of the four adjacent building pads at the Target site.
Tragedy – A Reminder That We Need More Proactive Attention to Mental Illness – 
The Davis City Council is back in action tonight with their first regular meeting following their summer recess.
Recently the war in Afghanistan reached a grisly milestone as the number of US deaths surpassed 2000. It was just under 11 years ago, months after the attack on this date, September 11, 2001, that the US launched what was euphemistically called Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.
Updated Study Indicates Five Billion Dollars in Costs if System Maintained
A few months ago, the Vanguard ran a story that analyzed the city’s water rates and found that they appear to be proportional and fair. However, that analysis may have been overly-simplistic if the work of two Water Advisory Committee members is correct.
The Sacramento Bee on Sunday wrote: “For most of its 162 years as a state, California has had laws on the books authorizing the death penalty. And for nearly all of its 155 years as a newspaper, The Bee has lent its support to those laws and use of capital punishment to deter violence and punish those convicted of the most horrible of crimes.”
Last spring, the voters of Davis once again stepped up to the plate and approved an extension of the district parcel taxes. They did so nearly at a 3 to 1 rate. However, as we warned at the time, passing Measure C was not going to be the cure-all. The district will still have 3.5 million dollars in the form of a persistent structural deficit to deal with.
When the City of Davis on Friday announced the official hiring of Yvonne Pimentel Quiring as the city’s new Finance Director, a position officially described as Assistant City Manager/Administrative Services Director, effective October 1, 2012, it seemed like a fairly typical hire.
We quickly forget our history in this country and we do so to our own detriment. It was, after all, not that long before my time that states used onerous poll taxes and literacy requirements to deny whole classes of people their franchise – the most fundamental of all rights in a democracy.
West Sacramento and Other Local Jurisdictions Need to Revisit Vehicle Pursuit Policies – 
Dominating the recent debate on water has been the question of which water project the city should opt for. However, a huge subcomponent of this is the question of the public water system we have now, versus the private operation we would have, per the JPA which appears to be set on using the DBO (Design-Build-Operate) bid method which the city’s advisers and analysts believe is the most cost-effective.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan was able to rhetorically turn a close election a week before the polls into a comfortable Election Day victory by famously asking, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
Many locales have used money from realignment to hire more prosecutors, more law enforcement officers, and even build more local capacity for the county jails. Reports the San Francisco Chronicle this week, “The state gave San Francisco $5.8 million for the first nine months of the program. While some district attorneys around the state hired more prosecutors, [San Francisco District Attorney George] Gascón hired Luis Aroche with a portion of his office’s $91,000 share.”
The decision by two leaders of Woodland – Mayor Skip Davies and Councilmember Bill Marble – to express their faltering patience with Davis and the water process by putting an op-ed in the Davis newspaper was ill-considered and misguided, much as their decision in December to come to the Davis City Council meeting with five councilmembers and their representative on the County Board of Supervisors.
