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enterprise THE DAVIS
FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 2020
Council approves wireless ordinance
Suspect in NorCal Rapist case will stand trial
BY ANNE TERNUS-BELLAMY Enterprise staff writer With comments reminiscent of last year’s discussion on switching to district elections, Davis City Council members voted unanimously Tuesday not to stand in the way of 5G high-speed internet deployment in Davis. City attorney Inder Khalsa had informed the council that trying to block installations of small cell facilities in Davis would open the city up to litigation that would be both costly and likely unsuccessful given current federal law. Council members had received similar advice last summer when they were threatened with a lawsuit if the city did not switch from at-large to by-district elections. In unanimously agreeing to make the change, all of the council members cited the legal consequences of failing to do so. Likewise Tuesday evening, several council members — after listening to nearly two-dozen residents plead with them not to
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Bicycling commission left without a quorum
BY LAUREN KEENE Enterprise staff writer
But local officials overseeing schools most affected by disasters say they don’t have the finances to make up the days — and sometimes weeks — of lost instruction. In a phone interview, Dodd said his bill would help alleviate the negative academic impact on students who miss school because of fires, disasters and power shutoffs. “This is something that I think does impact students adversely and we have to provide some sort of framework,” Dodd said. Though he does not yet have a cost estimate, he said the state needs to step up support for schools and students whose education, in some cases, is now being annually disrupted “through no fault of their own.” During the fall of the current 2019-20 school year, more than 360 schools closed for five school days or longer, with some students in Sonoma County losing as many as 15 instructional days – equivalent to three weeks of class time – due to mandatory wildfire evacuations and power shutoffs.
SACRAMENTO — Roy Charles Waller will stand trial for the NorCal Rapist crimes that included two attacks in Davis, a Sacramento Superior Court judge ruled Wednesday. Waller, 60, stands accused of 46 charges that accuse him of sexually assaulting and kidnapping young WALLER women in six coun- Accused serial rapist ties over a span of 15 years. He’s alleged to have assaulted three of his victims in Davis — two in 1997 and one in 2000. Judge Trena BurgerPlavan issued her ruling following a multi-day preliminary hearing held over December and January in Sacramento, where crimes that occurred in Butte, Contra Costa, Sacramento, Solano, Sonoma and Yolo counties have been consolidated into one case. The NorCal Rapist’s last known attack occurred in the Natomas area in 2006. Waller, a longtime safety specialist at UC Berkeley, was arrested in September 2018 after allegedly being linked by DNA evidence to multiple crime scenes. They included the July 16, 2000, attack of a
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ANNE WERNIKOFF/CALMATTERS PHOTO
Children play among the charred branches scorched behind the playground at Cobb Mountain Elementary near Middletown in Augst 2019.
Relief for fire-affected schools Bill would ease financial impact BY RICARDO CANO CalMatters As climate-fueled natural disasters and power shutoffs have eroded the school year in an unprecedented swath of California, a lawmaker in wildfire country is proposing making up the lost instructional time for the most severely impacted students by funding “disaster relief ” summer schools. Formally dubbed the “Disaster Relief Instructional Recovery Program,” Senate Bill 884 by state Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, would give schools the funding to make up instructional days lost to fires, natural disasters and attendant blackouts. School districts would not be required to participate in the program, and neither students or teachers would be required to participate in disaster relief summer school if their school district opts
into the program. District and charter schools would be eligible to participate if they lost five or more instructional days to disasters in one school year or, cumulatively, “at least 10 instructional days in two out of three consecutive school years,” according to the bill’s text. The legislation, introduced Thursday, follows reporting and data published last year by CalMatters that detailed the heavy toll that climate-driven fires — and the power shutoffs aimed at preventing them — have taken on students, teachers and public schools. This school year alone, fires and utility power shutoffs forced emergency closures in more than 1,500 public schools across 34 counties that affected more than 800,000 kids, according to schoolclosure data gathered by CalMatters. Though it isn’t required by state law, school districts can voluntarily budget emergency days into their academic calendars — a strategy the state Department of Education advised in the wake of this year’s widespread disruptions.
BY ANNE TERNUS-BELLAMY Enterprise staff writer The bicycling capital of the nation has a problem: The commission that oversees bicycling and transportation safety in the city of Davis doesn’t have enough members to hold a meeting. Three months after three members of the Bicycling, Transportation and Street Safety Commission told the City Council they would resign if one of their colleagues was not removed, all three are gone, the colleague they wanted removed has been suspended by the council for two meetings and the commission now lacks a quorum for future meetings. The BTSSC, which is supposed to have seven
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VOL. 123 NO. 14
Top-two primary tactics get ... creative Operatives use proxies to disrupt opponents BY BEN CHRISTOPHER CalMatters Kathy Garcia is not your typical Republican candidate for the California Senate. For one, she only just joined the GOP. A lifelong Democrat, she won election to the Stockton school board with the backing of the county Democratic party. She changed her affiliation to Republican in June 2019, six months before the deadline to enter the Senate race. She said the idea to run — under the banner of a party she’d opposed most of her adult life — was suggested to her by a Stockton
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lawyer and powerbroker who, records show, has helped fund the campaign of another candidate in the race. And that candidate, a moderate Democrat, incidentally stands a better chance if the Republican vote is divided. The 80-year-old Garcia, asked by CalMatters why she’s running under the GOP label, gave a series of distinctly un-Republican explanations. “I just decided I was going to try something new. And not because I like Trump,” she said, before making a retching noise. As for the Republicans that are running, she said, “I want to just put them under the bus.” Garcia might get her wish. That’s thanks to California’s unique “top two” election system, in which all candidates — regardless
WEATHER Sat Saturday: Mostly su sunny. High 64. Lo Low 46. B10
of party affiliation — are listed together on the same ballot in the first round “primary.” Only the first and second place winners March 3 move on to the general election Nov. 3, also regardless of party affiliation. The race for state Senate in this Central Valley district race is the latest oddball illustration of how the state’s decade-old electoral attempt at reform can distort the typical logic of campaigning, confuse voters and lead to mindbending results. Under the top-two system, Garcia’s unlikely candidacy as a Republican is — paradoxically — most likely to benefit moderate Democrat and Modesto Councilman Mani Grewal. By running as a Republican along with another long-shot GOP candidate, Jim Ridenour, Garcia could split the
local GOP vote three ways. If so, that could very well leave the two Democratic contenders — Grewal and Assemblywoman Susan Eggman — with the top two winning spots. And it would leave the most viable Republican candidate running, Stockton Councilman Jesús Andrade, who has been endorsed by the state party, flattened under that proverbial bus. Asked if her motivation was to undermine Andrade, Garcia demurred: “I can’t come out and say that.” Both she and Grewal say they aren’t working together. The Andrade campaign isn’t buying it. “It’s shameful that Democrat Mani Grewal would plant a Bernie
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