The ‘Ice Age’ gang is back
Pets
Sports
— Page B2
Jackie is ready to find a new family — Page A5
Movies
Aggies fall to the Titans
enterprise — Page B8
THE DAVIS
FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 2022
Council backs gradual shift to electric leaf blowers By Anne Ternus-Bellamy Enterprise staff writer
A volunteer barber cuts an unhoused person’s hair at Trinity Church in Riverside, which offers haircuts, clothes, food and a shower once a week. Raquel Natalicchio/ CalMatters photo
Worker shortage hits homeless plans By Manuela Tobias CalMatters In the middle of March last year, Los Angeles officials were gearing up to clear a 200person homeless encampment at Echo Park Lake. For Denise Velazquez, 53, then an outreach worker with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, her task was clear: Get 10 people indoors. She helped her clients —
who were cold, tired and desperate to shower — pack their bags and sign intake forms. She gave them hope that warmth was around the corner: Hotel rooms under Project Roomkey, the state’s program to shelter unhoused people most at risk of catching COVID-19.
“My stomach is feeling so uncomfortable and heart broken,” Velazquez wrote in an email to her supervisor on March 18.
But orders changed overnight. Her agency had access to only three beds, and when she
LAHSA spokesman Ahmad Chapman said various local service providers placed 176 of
told her clients, they yelled, spit and lunged at her partner. Velazquez says she broke their trust — and that broke her heart.
those at the Echo Park encampment in interim housing programs. In the weeks that followed, Velazquez said her health deteriorated. Her blood pressure spiked, her diabetes worsened, and her anxiety and depression spiraled. Her employer granted her a medical leave of absence, but therapy revealed that the only way to heal, she said, was
See HOMELESS, Page A6
COVID cases decline but hospitalizations up By Anne Ternus-Bellamy Enterprise staff writer Yolo County reported 754 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday and Thursday, a two-day total that would have been unheard of even during the worst of last year’s winter surge but now actually marks an improvement over the last several weeks. Daily new cases continue to drop on the UC Davis campus as well as in the city of Davis itself. The campus reported 264 new cases over the last seven days and a positivity rate of 1.47 percent. Over the last month, there have been 2,678 cases with a test positivity rate of 3.18 percent. And after more than half of
VOL. 124 NO. 12
INDEX
Arts ������������������B1 Events ��������������B4 Pets ������������������ A5 Classifieds ������B2 Forum �������������� A4 Sports ��������������B8 Comics ������������B5 Movies ��������������B2 The Wary I �������� A2
With passage of AB 1346 in the fall, the state effectively banned the sale of gas-powered leaf blowers as soon as 2024. The law directs the California Air Resources Board to adopt regulations prohibiting engine exhaust and evaporative emissions from new small off-road engines, including leaf blowers. The question now before the city of Davis — where leaf blowers have long been a source of controversy — is whether to move faster than the state in transitioning to electric leaf blowers, or even ban the use of all leaf blowers altogether. The consensus of Davis City Council members: No and no. During a discussion last week, council members expressed concern about the impact on sole proprietor and small landscaping companies if they were required to immediately swap out gas-powered blowers for electric or even ditch their leaf blowers altogether, especially if no incentives exist to help them pay for the transition. “These are typically very small
See BLOWERS, Page A7
Dodd bill would authorize mobile pharmacy van Special to The Enterprise
percent. Those numbers are still well above anything HDT saw before Omicron hit, but they are improvements over previous weeks when more than 1,000 new cases were being reported and the test positivity rate approached 10 percent.
SACRAMENTO — State Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, introduced legislation Monday that would authorize the creation of mobile pharmacy vans to bring medication and counseling to California’s hard-to-reach communities, improving health for homeless people and many others who have inadequate access to care. “Many people can’t get to the medication they need to lead healthy, productive lives, so we will bring it to them,” Dodd said. “We must be proactive if we want to address the underlying cause of many societal
See CASES, Page A2
See VAN, Page A2
Courtesy graphic
on-campus isolation and quarantine housing units were in use a week ago, just 14 percent were on Thursday. Healthy Davis Together also continues to see declining cases and test positivity. Over the last seven days, HDT’s testing has turned up 721 new cases with a test positivity rate of 5.33
WEATHER Saturday: Gradual clearing. High 61. Low 36.
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