An Open Letter to City Council on Water Advisory Ballot Measure
by Matt Williams
GUEST COMMENTARY – First, the customary disclaimer. The author is a member of the Water Advisory Committee (WAC), but the opinions herein are his own and not those of the WAC.
As Council, Staff and the WAC have wended their respective ways through the last 10 months of the water system decision process, there have been a couple of situations where the WAC recommendation to Council and the Staff Report recommendation to Council have been at odds with one another. Until the events of last Tuesday night, in each case Council chose to defuse that WAC/Staff disagreement by returning the issue to the WAC for further consideration, where an updated recommendation was hammered out that both Staff and the WAC could support. In each case where Council followed that process, a good result happened.
For months we have known that the district has put a measure on the ballot, Measure E, that would renew the current Measure A parcel tax levy (204 dollars) while creating a contingency to raise that amount by 242 dollars should the state tax Proposition 30 fail next week.
For the second time this year, Yolo County Sheriff Ed Prieto finds himself the subject of a lawsuit from one of his employees. Victoria Zetwick, a 24-year veteran sheriff’s deputy working as a correctional officer, claims that over the course of 14 years (which dates back to Ed Prieto’s election in 1998, first becoming Yolo County’s Sheriff), she was subjected to sexual harassment which allegedly included “unwanted hugging and kissing.”
VANGUARD ANALYSIS – Polling last week showed support for Proposition 30 had dropped to as low as 46 percent – still technically ahead in the polls, but conventional wisdom is that measures with less than 50 percent support, especially tax measures, are in trouble.
Last week we reported that Thomas Randall, one of the co-leaders of the No on Measure E campaign, had filed an FPPC complaint against the Davis Joint Unified School District and Susan Lovenburg, over what he is calling their campaign on Measure E.
Same Poll Finds Three Strikes Reform Passing Overwhelmingly – Last week, the LA Times-USC Poll found that support by voters to repeal the death penalty has increased dramatically, which puts the measure in range, though not enough at this point to actually ensure its passage, as support still falls below the critical 50 percent threshold.
ANALYSIS: Climate Scientists Disagree on Impact of Climate Change – A week before a seminal presidential election, a powerful storm has already crippled a huge section of the east coast, bringing the nation’s financial markets to a halt, shutting down federal offices in DC along with public transportation across the east coast, and threatening the unthinkable if the storm damage is bad enough – altering the course of the nation’s elections.
Back in mid-June the Water Advisory Committee voted to pursue a binding measure rather than an advisory one. It was a close and contested vote, as it wound up 6-4.
A synopsis is here, of the legal advice provided to the Davis City Council by City Attorney Harriet Steiner, who also brought in a colleague to discuss her experience. The stunning part of this legal advice is how little actual legal advice was actually contained in the presentations by Harriet Steiner and Iris Yang.
Unfortunately, as we approach a critical election both nationally and locally, ’tis the season not only for sign stealing but also apparently threats and intimidation.
COMMENTARY: Council Ordinance Strikes the Right Balance Between Public Health and Privacy – The first time the issue of a wood burning ban came up back in January 2009, it became a tremendous point of controversy.
Former Davis Mayor Bill Kopper, one of the regular members of the Water Advisory Committee (WAC) writes on the recent decision to go forward with the Woodland-Davis project, by hammering home the importance of the cost-sharing component of the agreement.
The first ever academic investigation into the scope and cost of wrongful convictions revealed on Wednesday that California leads the nation in wrongful convictions.