The Davis Voice

Climate Action Team Public Forum

Ladies & Gentlemen, the CAT is In the Building.

If you're worried about global climate change, your carbon footprint, peak oil, and/or sustainability issues, then tonight is the perfect opportunity for you to share your ideas, comments, and suggestions with a group that has been tasked to help reduce our community's carbon footprint.

City of Davis Climate Action Team Public Forum
TONIGHT, Thursday, June 26th 2008
6:30pm-7:00pm - Background Presentation
7:00pm-8:30pm - Open House: Drop-in format to share your ideas
Veterans Memorial Center MPR

Click here for our first post on the CAT.  After the jump, a little more information about tonight's proceedings.

Election Roundup: 7 Days Later

Let them eat wedding cake and drink Shiner Bock.

Greetings and salutations from across the country.  Ten hours after the polls closed on Election Day I was safely ensconced in an airplane that took me quickly away from the exhausted environs of our Right & Relevant City.  Since then, the Gmail vacation responder has been on and I've ignored all calls from "Dirty 5-Thirty."

But, for those of you who don't read The Enterprise and are wondering what happened to all of those lawn signs around town... I have results, and a little commentary for you.  For those of you that are ecstatic, angry, morose or simply bored and want me to create some pithy punditry, tough luck.

My endorsements went 3 for 6 this time around.  Following are our new (or returning) elected officials.

State Senate: Lois Wolk (won the Democratic primary)
State Assembly: Mariko Yamada (won the Democratic primary)
Yolo County Supervisor, 4th District: Jim Provenza
Davis City Council: Don Saylor, Stephen Souza, Sue Greenwald

After the jump, find a very small amount of commentary (a couple of little ones are begging to go play on the swing set.)

This Weekend in the People's Republic

Did you know that there is something interesting going on every day of the week? Every weekend, there are at least a dozen activities that might interest any given person. There are so many resources at our fingertips (literally...it's all over the internet!). If you're into music like I am, undietacos.org and the Mondavi Center's and Sophia's music calendars are great places to check for performances. If you're into Davis politics and would like to attend Planning Commission and City Council meetings, dcn.org is the best place to check. My favorite place on the web for all things Davis?  The daviswiki.org Events Page! With all of these wonderful opportunities for entertainment and community involvement at such a close distance, what are you waiting for?

Stay with me until after the jump, and I'll tell you about my picks for this weekend.

League of Women Voters Forum

City Council Candidates are Questioned.

This is the fourth forum that I’ve covered for The Davis Voice.  This forum took place on May 8th. I would have liked to post it earlier, but as you can tell by reading the Sierra Club information, we are providing you with a lot of information. The format for this event was three questions to all of the candidates and some questions from the audience.

Also, by now you can see the forum on our local Davis Media Access station on Cable 15.  The election is on Tuesday, June 3rd.  Be sure to vote!

After the jump, find all of the details from this Candidates’ Forum.

Editor's Endorsement

It's my soap box & I'll shout from it if I want to.

CA Senate - Lois Wolk

CA Assembly - Christopher Cabaldon

Yolo County Supervisor - John Ferrera

Davis City Council
Stephen Souza, Sydney Vergis, Don Saylor

I have spent many years of my life advocating for increased civic engagement by younger voters.  From middle school thru college, I was an active force in student government.  When I turned 18, I began registering my fellow students.  In my 20’s, I helped start and lead a non-profit whose mission was to bring young voters become regular voters by engaging them on public policy matters in a non-judgmental and rational monthly forum.  Then, I worked for two years as a national staff member of the non-partisan, young voter registration group "Rock the Vote".

For the past four years, I have gladly given many of my nights to our City and School District by serving on the Open Space & Habitat Commission, the Grande Site 7/11 Committee, and the Climate Action Team.  To this day, I still encourage people to register and vote.  I started this blog because I think that our community needs to do a better job of engaging the citizenry about the facts, difficult decisions, and realistic consequences and benefits of our public policy choices.

So, my frame of reference for choosing candidates is focused on their ability to promote: positive civic engagement, open space protection, innovative measures to preserve our natural resources, a more diverse tax base, and affordable housing for young families, civil servants and seniors.

After the jump, find all of the reasons that I encourage you to vote for some candidates and also (gasp!) reasons to NOT vote for candidates.

Downtown Parking Madness

Sexy Meter Maids Probably Won't Solve Our Parking Problems.

Our very own mensch-about-town, Michael Bartolic, if often ahead of the curve when it comes to public policy issues in our fair little burg.  He submitted this piece about downtown parking over a month ago and, failing to recognize its importance, your editor left it languishing in the depths of the Davis Voice inbox.

Perhaps your editor failed to give credence to this piece because he no longer drives a gas-guzzling vehicle and the only parking problems he has stem from being unable to remember his bike lock combination.

Anywho, last week the City Council decided to institute paid parking in the E Street Plaza Parking Lot… Dollar Scoop Night at Baskin Robbins just got mroe expensive if you want a close parking space.  A total of 59 spaces will be part of a paid system that will allow you to park your gas-guzzler for as long as you want to pay.  Get all of the details here (pdf). 

The Davis Voice thinks that we should have paid parking everywhere downtown to encourage more bikers and to fund street calming and better biking infrastructure downtown.

After the jump, read Mike’s downtown parking horror story: one of many reasons to completely revamp downtown parking.

Earth Day Special

Live Blogging with help from Local Asparagus, the Davis Bike Czarina and Councilman Max Headroom

In case you were unaware, today is Earth Day (soon to be renamed "St. Al of Gore Day" because he invented the environment and protection thereof.)  This is the one day of the year that we are allowed to pat ourselves on the back for all of the new and exciting things that we are doing to create a more sustainable planet. 

Obviously, it is also a day of reflection for all of the things that we could be doing better.

This Earth Day, your Editor is attending an event at our Community Chambers.  We are currently celebrating Earth Day with a presentation from the Farmer's Market people and soon we will have a  Joint Meeting of the Planning Commission and the City Council to hear a presentation about the finalized report from the General Plan Housing Element Update Steering Committee (how, where, and when we should build new housing units in Davis until the year 2013.)

After the jump, find all of the fun liveblogging details from Community Chambers on Earth Day and our how Councilman Max Headroom and his colleagues are going to solve all of our housing needs.

City Council '08 Candidates, cont.

Three Down, Three to Go

The voters of The People's Republic of Davis will elect 3 members to our 5 person City Council on 03 June 2008.

On 04 March 2008, we introduced you to the first candidate to file in the Davis City Council '08 race, Sydney Vergis.  A total of six candidates filed for the election with the County Clerk: Sydney Vergis, Stephen Souza, Don Saylor, Rob Roy, Sue Greenwald, and Cecilia Escamilla-Greenwald (no relation). (Cecilia & Rob do not yet have campaign websites.)

In this post we'll introduce you to two more candidates: Don Saylor and Cecilia Escamilla-Greenwald.  In the near future, we'll interview all of the candidates.  If you have questions that you'd like to pose to the candidates in the forthcoming interviews, please send your questions (for one, some, or all candidates) to tips@davisvoice.com.

After the jump, read more about why two of our comrades think they're qualified to make decisions for us. 

Saving the City of Davis GEM Fleet

How the Davis GEM Cars are Getting Their Groove Back

Last Sunday, on a blog-free and car-free day that involved waking up late, reading a copy of the NY Times from Newsbeat, buying a burger  from Burgers & Brew, and then washing it down with some iced tea at the Delta of Venus, I was accosted by several friends and acquaintances who were concerned about the front page article in the Enterprise (weird that I can link for free to any article in The New York Times, but not the Enterprise...) that gleefully told of a used electric car sale.  This feature story was not a paid advertisement, although it read like one. 

The story detailed how the City of Davis planned on selling half of our GEM car fleet.  Those little white electric cars that make it so easy to spot Dalebrities are slated for auctioning to the lowest bidder in Arizona, or some such place.  I was demoralized, but decided to ignore the matter until I had finished my Sunday fun.

Now, I'm live-blogging from the Davis City Council meeting.  After the jump, find out how the GEM cars are going to be saved from a wretched and boring existence carting around golfers in Scottsdale.

This Week in YOUR Governemnt

The filing deadline for local elected office has come and gone, but there are no lame ducks in our beloved People's Republic this year.  Also, about 1/3 to 1/2 of all appointed Commission seats will be turning over in September, so take this opportunity to go and see what commissioners actually do (other than giving up prime time television.)

Of particular interest is a gathering at Freeborn Hall on Tuesday focusing on improving pedestrian, bike and transit infrastructure on campus.  Stop by Freeborn Hall, grab a huge marker, and make your suggestions for improvement on a gigantic campus map .

More details after the jump.