Yolo SPCA will be featuring pet-themed face masks for adults and kids to fundraise at this Saturday’s November 20^th Davis Senior Center Holiday Craft Fair at 646 A St. from 9am until 2pm. The masks have many new designs (see photos) and are 100% cotton with a soft tea-dyed muslin cotton liner. The kid’s masks come in two sizes, small for 3-5 year-olds, and medium for 5-12 year-olds, both of which are adjustable via 2 beads included on the elastic band.

The masks are $15 and are to help fundraise for the Yolo SPCA Community Cat Kindness Fund CCKF). For more information on the Community Cat Kindness Fund and how to donate, please see the Yolo SPCA website at  http://yolospca.org/community-cat-kindness-fund/ and to view the masks in the many patterns we have see  http://yolospca.org/winter-fundraiser-kitty-themed-masks/

 These face masks make great gifts for the holidays, birthdays or other events and are easy (and inexpensive) to mail for long-distance gifts. For more information or to purchase masks before or after this Saturday’s sale, please contact Eileen at (530) 756-5165 or email her at emsamitz@dcn.org.

G Street shown as closed on Apple Maps

By The Artery

G St businesses await clean up and reopening but the part of the City Council wants G St closed permanently it seems so their 5 year old can turn cartwheels in the street. How quaint. How ageist. In the meanwhile seniors with mobility issues find it too difficult to come into the area, as communicated to us by our customers.

At the 11/2/21 City Council meeting the council remained split 2:2 for partial reopening vs complete closure. The Downtown Business Association’s recommendation is for two-way traffic to resume with updated outdoor seating which is fair.

But the Council’s arguments to keep G St closed permanently revolved around an absence of logic and fair reason. Arnold’s consideration to keep G St closed as a concession because 100% of the streets downtown are open to traffic shows he’s more interested in that detail than if 100% of businesses in Davis recover from the stress of the pandemic or not. Where is the city’s fairness to support all businesses to recover? Roseville, Palo Alto, Walnut Creek and many other cities around the country are in the news saying they’re reopening streets to help retail before the busiest shopping time of year.

The Mayor of Davis also wants to keep G St permanently closed. She’s said she thinks we’re only concerned about aesthetics and parking spots. This isn’t all of it - she’s not listening. We’re looking at digital mapping systems which show G St as closed; not good. Look at what happened to K St in Sacramento in the 1960’s and again recently. Additionally, we see people urinating on the tree out front our business, vomit, graffiti and other signs of the worse side of humanity when they’re given access to areas not intended for recreation. This is “misbehavior”. Pledging to clean this up has proven a vapid promise - for four months. We see little follow through.

Patrick Hoover of Patrick’s Garden is just one of dozens of vendors who will be at the Davis Farmers Market’s expanded Pre-Thanksgiving Market, from noon to 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 24 in Central Park. (Wendy Weitzel/Courtesy photo)

The day before Thanksgiving, the Davis Farmers Market extends its hours. This year’s annual Pre-Thanksgiving Market will be from noon to 6 p.m. in Central Park, 301 C St., Davis.

On Wednesday, Nov. 24, the market will have a bounty of seasonal produce, table décor, flowers, olive oil, honey and wine. Several bakeries will have fresh-baked items like pumpkin, apple, pecan and berry pies and pumpkin cheesecake; breads, stuffing mix and cookies.

Year-round, rain or shine, the Davis Farmers Market is open from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays. Normal Wednesday hours are 3 to 6 p.m. November through March, and 3 to 7 p.m. April through October.

Other special holiday hours at the Davis Farmers Market are Fridays, Dec. 24 and 31, from 8 a.m. to noon. The market will be closed Dec. 25 and Jan. 1, but open from 3 to 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 29. For more information, visit https//davisfarmersmarket.org or visit it on Facebook or Instagram.

Does imagination require or at least benefit by transparency and a truly robust public process?

For a year or so the City of Davis, UC Davis and Yolo County have been working with the private consultancy Toole Design and the public to "Reimagine Russell Boulevard".  City of Davis staff plan to update the City Council at this Tuesday's Council meeting.

Following are comments I made on the survey which was planned to close on November 12th but is open as of this moment...

My comments are split into two parts: First I focus on the process, next on the design. Process, today. Design, tomorrow (or Tuesday morning).

*****

1 - The project inexplicably has two websites, one for "administrative" reasons. There's never been an explanation for this.

2 - On the admin. website there is a list of representatives of some sort from the city, the Community Steering Committee.  Two of them told me that they were not happy that it was only a sounding board and not really official - and there's no way specific way indicated to reach them. Additionally I was informed by a Committee member that they were not provided access to raw data from the first survey earlier this year. My impression is that the City learnt its lesson from the Downtown Plan process and decided to formally reduce democracy in the project. If no one visits the admin. website they won't even know about these people. At the very least the budget of nearly half a million dollars (!) didn't allow the consultants and so on to do more than a few public sessions over a year's time.

What should Davis's Climate Action and Adaptation Plan focus on?

By Roberta Millstein

In March 2019, Council adopted the Resolution Declaring a Climate Emergency and Proposing Mobilization Efforts to Restore a Safe Climate which states that “the City of Davis commits to taking significant action to move toward net municipal and community carbon neutrality in the short term with maximum efforts to implement carbon reduction actions by 2030; and accelerate the existing 2050 Davis carbon neutrality goal to a 2040 target. The City of Davis and City Council will…accelerate a robust update to the Davis CAAP and integration with the City’s updated General Plan.” (emphasis added). https://www.cityofdavis.org/sustainability/2020-climate-action-and-adaptation-plan-caap

The City has asked for our input into a set of 29 draft action items for the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan (CAAP) that City could take to achieve its Climate Emergency Resolution.  Which should our top priorities be?  Should any of the draft actions be modified, eliminated, or combined?  Should any of the proposed actions that didn't make it into the "top 29" be promoted? 

I suggest that in order to answer this question, we must "Think Like a Little Tomato."[1]  In A Sand County Almanac, conservationist (ecologist, forester, hunter, professor) Aldo Leopold famously urged us to "Think Like a Mountain." In that essay, Leopold was concerned with the consequences of focusing solely on preserving deer population numbers, something that turns out to be at the expense of everything else on the mountain (the wolves, the plants and trees, the mountain itself).  Instead, he implies, we need to think about the entire land community. 

Now in Davis and surrounding areas, deer and wolves are not so much in play, but tomatoes (and other agricultural crops) are, as well as the other plants and animals who live in and around our urban and agricultural areas, some with dwindling numbers, like burrowing owls and Swainson's hawks.  This land community – our land community, since humans are very much a part – is increasingly threatened by severe climate change impacts: hotter summers, hotter and bigger and longer-lasting fires, smoky air, drought, flood.  Arguably, ignoring our land communities and their habitats is exactly the attitude that has brought on our climate emergency, and as we address climate change, it is the attitude that needs to change.

By Nancy Price

On Wednesday, November 10, the Yolo County Planning Commission holds a public hearing on the Teichert Shifler Mining and Reclamation Project to make recommendations to the Board of Supervisors on the proposed 30-year Off-Channel Surface Mining Permit for industrial mining on the agricultural Shifler property. On December 14, the Board of Supervisors meets to consider final approval of the Permit.

At the time the Draft EIR was being prepared, on September 29, 2020, the Yolo County Supervisors passed Resolution 20-114 – A Resolution Declaring a Climate Crisis Requiring an Urgent and Inclusive Mobilization in Yolo County (“2030 Climate Emergency Mobilization Resolution”). This goal is stated in Yolo County’s 2011 Climate Action Plan and elements of the County’s General Plan.

A 6/31/2021 Press Release elaborates, the Supervisors “passed a resolution declaring a climate crisis requiring an urgent and inclusive mobilization of countrywide resources to initiate a just transition to an inclusive, equitable, sustainable and resilient local economy while also supporting and advocating for regional, national and international efforts necessary to reverse the climate, social justice, and economic crises. As an immediate goal, the Board voted to create a new Climate Action Plan for the County with the intent of reaching a carbon negative status by 2030.”

Given the magnitude of Teichert’s 277 acre industrial mining and reclamation project, the Supervisor’s must direct the new Yolo County Climate Action Commission to report on Teichert’s application and EIR documents, and that the ecological assessment called for in the “Climate Emergency Mobilization Resolution” be adopted and implemented.

Teichert must prioritize and commit to how they will achieve the county’s 2030 reduction goals such as solar-power generation at the Woodland Plant, conversion of vehicle fleets and other measures. The proposed carbon absorption capacity of reclaimed agricultural land on the Shifler property needs further study before this mitigation measure is considered viable. The proposed purchase of carbon credits to mitigate or offset Teichert’s GHG emissions is fraught with challenges in monitoring, reporting, and guaranteeing actual, quantifiable carbon reduction.

To conclude, the magnitude and scale of industrial mining for 30 years to 2052 runs counter to the County’s publicly stated climate actions goals and the process they have established to attain those goals by 2030.

By Aaron Wedra, Marketing Coordinator for the Hattie Weber Museum

In 1864 it was determined that the California Pacific Rail Road would extend eastward from Sacramento over the Donner Summit route to become part of the transcontinental rail line.

The “Cal-P”, as it was familiarly known to early-day railroad builders, was incorporated in January 1865, and was principally financed with British capital. Construction began at Vallejo in December, 1866, and the first rails were laid at the same place on April 10, 1868.

Planners for the California Pacific Rail Road Company decided to build a line from South Vallejo to Sacramento which would also connect Marysville and Woodland at a junction in Davisville. Construction and grading of the rail bed began in Vallejo in December 1866 and the first rails were laid in April 1868.

The construction of the first Davis depot began in July 1868 and the first passenger and freight service between Vallejo and Davis Junction began on August 24th, 1868. The fare was $3.00.

Myths and Facts about Impacts of Freeway Lane Expansions on Traffic Congestion and Adoption Rates of Electric Vehicles

By Alan Pryor

Executive Summary

Proponents of the proposed DISC project claim that the projected traffic congestion associated with the project will be solved soon in the future by the hoped-for I-80 freeway HOV lane expansion easing roadway congestion. The proposed freeway expansion project envisions the addition of one HOV lane on each side of the I-80 freeway freeway from from Hwy 113 on the west to the I-5/I-50 interchange in Scaramento and the I-80/Reed Ave interchange to the east.

Proponents also claim that the associated vehicular greenhouse gas (GHG) emission from the increased traffic to and from the DISC site will be substantially eliminated by the mass adoption of electric vehicles reducing tailpipe GHG emissions

Unfortunately, science shows us that the proposed addition of the two HOV lanes on the 20.8 mile stretch of the I-80 freeway expansion (one HOV lane on each side of the freeway) will actually induce further traffic and Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) on this stretch of the freeway. Methodology developed by the UC Davis National Institute of Sustainable Transportation (NIST) shows this phenomena is due to both short and long-term driver behavioral changes including taking longer and more frequent automobile trips, route shifts, and transportation mode shifts away from public transportation. The cumulative impacts will result in no relief from the current plague of I-80 freeway congestion.

Further, mass adoption of electric vehicles will take decades to substantially replace existing aging fossil fuel-powered vehicles resulting in no near term decreases of the additional GHG emissions resulting from new traffic associated with the DISC project. These emissions directly threaten the Davis goal of carbon neutrality by 2040 and Yolo County's goal of net negative carbon emissions by 2030.

Myth #1 – The Proposed I-80 Expansion will Greatly Reduce Freeway Congestion for DISC Commuters Leading to Decreased Congestion for Local Drivers on Mace and Covell Blvd.

As we "two steps forward, one step back" our way out of the pandemic, a number of people have been rightly praised for their contributions to the community. Today I write to thank Anne Ternus-Bellamy for her outstanding coverage of the pandemic. 

She has kept us up to date on all of the latest statistics; explained complicated facts about testing, vaccines, and best pandemic practices; and put that information into local, state, and national contexts.  She has explained a massive amount of information to us in a clear and accessible way. 

Having such a wealth of information available has meant that we could make informed decisions, decisions that may have even saved lives.  It hasn't always been good news, but there is nonetheless a comfort to knowing what is going on. 

I should add that she has found the time to fit in local political coverage as well, coverage that presents different perspectives on controversial issues in a fair and accurate way. 

The Davis Enterprise is lucky to have her and so are we.

Roberta Millstein

The City Council will address the G Street Closure / Re-Opening tonight. It’s item 8 on the agenda if anyone is interested to chime in.  https://www.cityofdavis.org/city-hall/city-council/city-council-meetings/agendas

Dear Mayor Partida, Davis City Council members, Liaisons and Managers,

Thank you for your attention and consideration to re-open G Street to traffic.

The city staff has published their recommendation for only a partial re-opening of G St, only one lane of traffic but the data from the DDBA’s survey contradicts their recommendation.  To their point of rescuing restaurants from failing during the Pandemic, they succeeded. It is a fact that a handful of restaurants are profiting with increased seating capacities that exceed the their TUP proposed usage. While still, retail and locally owned businesses are still teetering on closing. We’re wondering why the deadline for the street closure over shot the August 5th deadline without a word from the City. We were never asked about the street closure in the first place. I hope the City will try to help all businesses downtown from the economic effects of the pandemic to keep a diversified culture and serve the entire community. This should align with your goals for a vibrant downtown and thriving neighborhoods.

I would kindly ask the City Council review this statistical information on the advantages, disadvantages and effectiveness of full and partial street closures adapted from www.trafficcalming.org

UC Davis students protest in Davis on 9/24/21 demanding an end to fossil fuel use across the UC system. Credit: Stephen Wheeler

(From press release) As the United Nations-sponsored COP26 climate conference begins in Glasgow, UC Davis faculty, staff, and student activists today announced a petition and educational campaign asking the university to commit to ending fossil fuel use by 2030. The petition also asks that specific policies for doing this be adopted by the end of 2022.

Although UC Davis has made progress in improving the energy efficiency of its operations and buying cleaner electricity from off-campus, annual on-campus emissions from Davis and Sacramento campuses have remained steady at about 150,000 metric tons of CO2 since 2008. Most of these emissions are due to the university’s large methane-fueled heating and cooling plants. 56% of campus energy use continues to be generated directly from fossil fuels, mostly fracked methane. Climate activists ask that heating and cooling systems be electrified using renewably generated electricity.

UC Davis installed a 16MW photovoltaic array in 2015 which provides about 11% of campus electricity. The university is also converting campus heating and cooling pipes from steam to hot water in a program called the “Big Shift,” a step that will make electrification easier. But the campus has yet to commit to ending fossil fuel use. In a recent message to the Chancellor, activists said “The Big Shift is just one step in the right direction. Other steps need to be identified asap, and UCD commitment to ending fossil fuel use articulated.”

According to data released by the University of California Office of the President following a Public Records Act request, on-campus (Scope 1) greenhouse gas emissions have remained steady at most UC campuses since the late 2000s. Credit: Adam Arons and Eric Halgren

The UC system has committed to reaching carbon neutrality by 2025 for on-campus emissions and purchased power. But while purchased electricity has gotten cleaner, on-campus emissions have yet to fall at any UC. To meet the 2025 goal, campuses plan to buy carbon offsets, which claim to reduce GHG emissions elsewhere in the world.

However, there are major questions whether offsets would represent permanent and verifiable GHG reductions that would not have occurred otherwise.[1] The UC Office of the President has so far been unable to identify nearly enough offsets for UC campuses. Activists ask that campuses instead end fossil fuel use and commit to electrifying operations.

The following comments were shared with the Natural Resources Commission at its meeting last night and are reposted here with permission of the author.

This is Alan Pryor speaking as a former 12-year NRC Commissioner. I think it's telling to review a comment made by a Planning Commissioner at a hearing on this project last year.

"You want this to be the most sustainable, innovative tech campus in the United States. But you have come to us with a car-dominated, auto-centric proposal on the edge of town, far from the capitol corridor station, not linked to good transit, with huge parking lots and parking structures. Widening Mace to accommodate more traffic is not the answer. It's going to induce more traffic."

Nothing has functionally changed with this project since then except its size is been reduced by less than half but the applicant is now proposing transportation features that are even less conducive to non- automotive forms of transportation.

For instance the applicant is now refusing to construct the previously agreed upon off-grade crossing to allow arriving pedestrians and bicyclists to safely cross six lanes of Mace Boulevard during rush-hour traffic. How is that possibly welcoming to bicyclists and pedestrian employees arriving on the west side of the street or to school kids living at the project trying to get to school and back each day without a parent driving them.

Also, the original proposal was an environmental nightmare in that it projected over 83,000,000 lbs of CO2 equivalent emitted each year. The new estimate is about  45,000,000 lbs of CO2 equivalent per year - or about 4.5% of the City's current carbon footprint for this one project alone. All of these emissions would have to be later eliminated for the City to reach carbon neutrality by 2040 but the developer has not proposed how they will do this.

The following letter was shared with the Davisite this morning.

Project to provide 72MW of solar power, 36MW of battery storage for Valley Clean Energy customers

(From press release) Leeward Renewable Energy (Leeward) and Valley Clean Energy (VCE) announced today that they have entered into a 15-year solar-plus-storage Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) involving Leeward’s 72-megawatt (MW) solar and 36 MW (144 megawatt-hour) battery storage Willow Springs 3 facility in Kern County, California.

VCE’s board of directors approved the PPA on October 14. The Willow Springs 3 project will supply enough reliable, clean electricity for approximately 27% of VCE’s 125,000 customers in Yolo County, California, by the end of 2023. The agreement will also support VCE in achieving its goal of having a 100 percent carbon-neutral portfolio by 2030.

As part of the agreement, Leeward will contribute to VCE’s local workforce development and sustainability efforts in Yolo and Kern counties to support local hiring and training.

One of Davis's urban trees

To Davis Tree Commission:

In regard to the DISC proposal (Item 6B on your agenda this evening),  I support your subcommittee's recommendations and encourage you to recommend them as a "baseline feature".

Given that the size of the proposal is already known, recommendation of a specific number of trees should be achievable (as it was during the previous iteration of the proposal).

I understand that the developer is proposing to satisfy shade requirements via the use of solar panels or trees. Unfortunately, this type of "choice" will increasingly be used by developers, as we've already seen in regard to Sutter Hospital's expansion. It may be that developers generally prefer solar panels, to help them meet other requirements (and to claim that a given proposal is "green", while simultaneously eliminating "greenery" in regard to trees).

At some point, the city itself will need to come up with a clear policy regarding the use of solar panels vs. trees for given situations. While either can be used in parking lots, trees (unlike solar panels) require soil and space to survive. As such, solar panels are suitable for a wider variety of locations (such as rooftops), while trees are not.

Until/unless the city comes up with a clear policy (supported by the tree commission), I would encourage the tree commission to not be distracted by an "either/or" choice, and simply focus its efforts on recommendations regarding trees and the benefits they provide.

Sincerely,

Ron Oertel

By Larry Guenther

At Tuesday's meeting, (10/19/2021) City Council acted on recommendations made by a Council subcommittee, one of two subcommittees to look at the issue of "Reimagining Public Safety." Most of the discussion and credit for these changes was focused on the work the City Council subcommittee did. While the Council Subcommittee did do real work on producing these recommendations, there was a mere mention of the work done by a Joint Subcommittee of the Human Relations, Police Accountability, and Social Services Commission. Councilmembers and staff made almost no mention at all of the contribution from the rest of the Community.

The Joint Subcommittee did an enormous amount of work and research to make Nine Recommendations to City Council for changes that would create a more effective and just Public Safety system. Members of the Joint Subcommittee included: Cecilia Escamilla-Greenwald, Dillan Horton, Judith MacBrine, Don Sherman, Susan Perez, Bapu Vaitla, Matthew Wise, Sheila Allen, Emma O’Rourke-Powell, and Judith Plank.

Additionally, many community members put in countless hours of work, research, and thought that laid the ground work for the Nine Recommendations and, in fact, created the roadmap for the path the City is taking. Yolo People Power and the Yolo Democratic Socialists of America were two community groups that took the lead on this issue. Julea Shaw, Jordan Varney, Morgan Poindexter, and Francesca Wright of Yolo People Power stand out. These women were instrumental in analyzing Police Data, researching non-traditional and successful Public Safety programs in other municipalities, and educating and organizing community members. 

If you see any of the people mentioned in this letter, please thank them. Their work has been instrumental in moving Davis Public Safety to a more effective and just system.

Innovation and change comes from the Community.

by Colin Walsh

I delivered this comment to the Davis City Council on 10/19/21 and received a very unprofessional attack from Council Member Carson in return. The comment was given in relation to the "Affordable Housing Ordinance – Extension of Alternative Rental Housing Requirements and Preliminary Scope of Work for an Update of Affordable Rental Housing Requirements" agenda item in which the Council voted to extend the weak interim inclusionary affordable housing ordinance.

-----

On February 6 of 2018 the Davis City Council approved the 2^nd attempt at the Nishi project. This project had what has proven to be an unworkable exclusionary affordable housing that forces people accepted into the affordable housing to sharing a room. What’s worse is the combined cost of the two people who share the room is higher than that of market rate single room.  Worse there are only 264 affordable beds out of 2200 beds. Beds not units. Most of the market rate is not shared.

The following was emailed to members of the Tree Commission this morning.  The Tree Commission is scheduled to discuss the revised MRIC/ARC/DISC project, now dubbed DiSC 2022, at its meeting this Thursday, Oct 21.  If you wish to comment on the project yourself, see instructions on the agenda for the meeting, located here.

Dear members of the Tree Commission,

I am writing to you as a former commissioner (10+ years) and Chair of the Open Space and Habitat Commission (OSHC), having completed my term last December. I was involved in analyzing what is now being called the DiSC 2022 project in all of its iterations, so I hope you find my comments helpful in your discussions.

I think it's great that you appointed a subcommittee to review all the materials, given that the changes are more extensive than the City has stated – this is not just a project that has been cut in half, as your subcommittee's analysis shows. I endorse your subcommittee's recommendations and encourage you to adopt them as a body in the strongest possible language, remembering that the only way to guarantee that a promised feature will be in the actual project is for it to be designated as a "baseline feature." A cautious route would have you even recommend that the relevant ordinances be satisfied (this was something that the OSHC did last time), since there is a history of the City Council bending its ordinances, including ordinances concerning trees (it is my belief that they did this in the recent Sutter parking lot decision).

Tribe joins suit calling for changes to flawed Cannabis Land Use Ordinance

(From press release) In an effort to hold Yolo County accountable for developing fair and sound cannabis land use policy, the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation has partnered with the Sierra Club, Yolo County Farm Bureau, and local residents in a lawsuit to do precisely that.

The lawsuit does not seek to stop cannabis cultivation and related businesses in Yolo County, or to prevent County residents from profiting from the cannabis industry.  Rather, it would simply require the County to comply with California environmental law by evaluating the full and real impacts of cannabis cultivation, and mitigate those impacts, before adopting an ordinance regulating it.  Adhering to this process is what the California Environmental Quality Act requires, and indeed, these same requirements apply to every other regulated land use.

“The cannabis industry has a place in Yolo County, just as cannabis has a place in the medicine cabinets of many people in California,” noted the Tribal Council of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation. “But sensible cannabis permitting can’t happen until the County is clear-eyed about the problems overconcentration creates, especially in sensitive areas around schools, near cultural heritage sites, and in smaller communities like those in the Capay Valley.”