An old face has reemerged in the past few weeks in the face of the discussion over the Draft EIR of the Cannery Project.
In 2005, the Covell Village project was rejected by voters by a 60-40 margin. Following that setback, the city has moved forward with consideration of rezoning the adjacent property at the old Hunt-Wesson site.
As the city manager describes in his first budget preview for the 2013-14 fiscal year, “There are both challenges and opportunities ahead as the City prepares its FY 2013/14 budget.”
Upon perusing the budget and the series of challenges, one quickly assesses that the city manager is actually putting a positive spin here. While there are positives in terms of the savings through the labor contracts, those positives are three years from being fully realized.
Earlier this week, we reported on a study from ProPublica that, in analyzing state and federal court rulings from 2001 to 2011, in particular “scrutinizing instances in which state or federal courts identified misconduct serious enough to throw out a conviction,” found that of 30 cases that met their very specific criteria, only one prosecutor would be disciplined in a meaningful way for misconduct.
Those findings mirrored earlier findings from the 2010 report from the Veritas Initiative, “Preventable Error,” funded by the Northern California Innocence Project, which documented more than 800 instances of prosecutorial misconduct, including 107 where the prosecutors were found to have committed misconduct more than once – two were cited for misconduct four times, two were cited five times and one prosecutor was cited for misconduct six times.
More than two months after the group originally filed the lawsuit in Yolo Superior Court, the first amended complaint was finally served on the city late on Thursday. Michael Harrington, a former councilmember and the attorney filing the suit, repeated claims of strategic considerations as reasoning for the delay in service.
The lack of serving the lawsuit led critics of Mr. Harrington and his suit to assert that the Vanguard should not cover the suit until it was served on the city. While the Vanguard can understand the sentiment, our belief has been that a lawsuit filed, and amended, against the city is news and it should be covered as such.
On Monday the Vanguard reported on the closure of Common Grounds. In the Oakshade Town Center, Common Grounds had been such a popular hangout for the last 12 years that often it was difficult to find seating.
However, when they could not reach agreement with the Florida-based property management company, Regency Centers, it closed on last Sunday night at 6 pm.
The Vanguard learned early on Thursday that the city was finally served with a lawsuit originally filed on January 31, 2013, with an amended complaint filed on March 29, 2013, by the Yolo Ratepayers for Affordable Public Utility Services.
In addition to the previous contention that the Prop. 218 process was unconstitutional under the provision’s proportionality clause, and the continued charge that the city has failed to pay for its own water use, the suit claims that in May of 2008, when the city established wastewater rates based on a “winter water usage” calculation, the rates established were “not rationally related to the amount of wastewater used by a particular property owner.”
Last week, the Davis Planning Commission listened to staff and the applicant for the Cannery project, in discussion of the Draft EIR.
The 100-acre property would see a project consisting of 547 residential dwelling units, with an average density of 9.5 units per acre. In addition, approximately 45 accessory dwelling units are proposed.
In 2010, the Veritas Institute, a project funded by the Northern California Innocence Project, documented more than 800 instances of prosecutorial misconduct, including 107 where the prosecutors were found to have committed misconduct more than once – two were cited for misconduct four times, two were cited five times and one prosecutor was cited for misconduct six times.
Of all of these cases, only six prosecutors were disciplined.
by John GaramendiWe need to think in a comprehensive way about water in California. The controversial Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP)1 is an outdated and destructive plumbing system. It does not create any new water nor does it provide the water and the ecological protection that the Golden State must have. California and the federal government must set aside this big, expensive, destructive plumbing plan and immediately move forward with a comprehensive approach that includes:
1) Conservation,
On Monday, a federal judge allowed Stockton’s bankruptcy to go forward, but most people agree that the fight is not over and the end game could see the US Supreme Court weigh in on the issue of how bankrupt cities are able to deal with their pension liability.
Assured Guaranty, the city’s bond insurer, has argued that the city of Stockton has failed to renegotiate its pension debt with CalPERS (California Public Employees’ Retirement System), unlike with all other creditors with whom the city has been working to restructure debts, and in some cases, make just partial repayments.
by Antoinnette Borbon On Wednesday, March 27, 2013, the jurors came back with a guilty verdict on almost all counts in the state’s case against defendant John Timothy Ganthner, who was charged with child abuse and sexual abuse of a child, among serveral other charges and enhancements.
Deputy District Attorney Robert Gorman even added a count of torture, the only charge the jury acquitted on.
The Assembly Public Safety Committee passed Assembly Bill (AB) 1006 on Tuesday on a 6-0 bipartisan vote. Authored by Assemblymember Mariko Yamada, the legislation is designed to enable former juvenile offenders to move into adulthood without the burden of juvenile records.
“Youth who have completed their court adjudicated ‘debts-to-society’ should have an opportunity to start over with a clean slate,” Assemblymember Yamada said. “Many former juvenile offenders are unaware that their records are unsealed until they are refused a job, credit or housing.”
After a period of silence following the setback in the Measure I election on March 5, it appears that the opposition will go forward after all, as Michael Harrington has filed an amended complaint and says he intends to serve the city this week. We will find out if that is the case shortly enough.
Clearly, Mr. Harrington believes he is onto something here. The amended suit alleges that the city of Davis is owed a substantial sum of money by the county because of the successful 2008 Prop 218 challenge by El Macero.
Supporters of Prop 8’s ban on same sex marriage want to have it both ways. On the one hand they will point to the expression of popular will in the Prop 8 vote, but at the same time they wish to ignore the sea change of public opinion, not just in California but nationwide, on this subject.
Last week, Nate Silver analyzed eight national polls on the same-sex marriage question and found, “The consensus of these polls is that support for same-sex marriage now exceeds opposition to it; on average, the polls have 51 percent saying they approve same-sex marriage, and 43 percent saying they are opposed.”
Two weeks ago, the Vanguard covered a story in which several members of the Davis community claimed that their names and identifying information were unlawfully misappropriated to purport support for the Davis GATE program.
A petition posted by the group Davis Excel on Change.org states, “We believe that there should be no significant changes to the (GATE) program without a demonstration that the current program is failing its students.”
At last week’s Davis City Council meeting, the city proudly introduced its brand new Chief Innovation Officer, Rob White, who has been recruited in large part to help with Davis’ economic development plan to bring in high tech and other research spin-offs.
The position is an innovative private-public partnership, funded in part through the non-profit, techDavis.
In yesterday’s local newspaper, local business owner Alzada Knickerbocker, citing a recent National Federation of Independent Business/California study on the impact of AB 10, which would increase California’s minimum wage to $9.25 per hour in the next three years, argued that the effect of raising minimum wage would be the loss of jobs and economic productivity in the state.
“It doesn’t make sense. Jobs are the need. Why is the state leading with a proposal that will kill jobs?” she writes. “I own an independent bookstore – The Avid Reader, in downtown Davis. I’ve been here 26 years. I have eight employees – four full-time, four part-time. Half are long-term staff and half are recent hires. Because I need staff with knowledge and work experience, my new hires are compensated above the minimum wage.”
In late 2009, I sat down with a friend in a café across from the Capitol in Sacramento and lamented the fact that there were a number of troublesome case, most notably the Ajay Dev case, but that we had no way to easily identify them before they went to trial and someone tipped us off.
Covering an already-completed trial proved difficult, if not impossible. A few weeks later the plan for the court watch program was hatched. The original idea would be to have interns go into the courthouse, take notes, get me to the cases that were problematic, and I would write stories.