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Volume 137, Number 18 — Locally owned since 1884
The hometown paper of Chris Hiller
Winters, Yolo County, California, Wednesday, May 27, 2020
City plans in-person Council meeting June 2
Dine-in service and indoor shopping can resume By Anne Ternus-Bellamy McNaughton Media Yolo County restaurants will be able to open for dine-in service and nonessential retail stores for indoor shopping within a day or two, followed closely by hair salons and barbershops reopening to clients, possibly by Thursday. Meanwhile, places of worship throughout the county will likely be able to open their doors by the weekend. All will be required to follow guidelines set out by the state related to safe practices and physical distancing in order to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus. That will mean fewer tables available to diners in restaurants and fewer customers allowed inside a store at any time. Churches and other places of worship will have to limit attendance to 25 percent of a building’s capacity or 100 people — whichever is less. Meanwhile, the county health order requiring residents to wear face coverings
when in public will continue. All of those changes to the current health order were supported by all five members of the Yolo County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday and county staff, over the next two days, will amend the existing health order to allow the activities to resume. “We’re open for business,” Yolo County Supervisor Gary Sandy said following Tuesday’s board meeting. “Let’s go.” Supervisors had been expected to support reopening restaurants to dinein service and retail to indoor shopping, both of which were released from the state’s health order last week and which resumed in Sacramento County already. Then, in the last two days, the state approved resumption of religious services and reopening of hair salons and barbershops for counties like Yolo that have been approved to move further into stage two of reopening.
Winters JUSD notice of Governing Board Member Election
By Crystal Apilado Editor-in-Chief
Crystal Apilado/Winters Express
Downtown Winters restaurants may soon be expanding their service from to-go only, to include in-door dining. Newsom’s an- cleared by the county nouncement on hair to reopen as early as salons came during Wednesday. Tuesday’s Board of For hair salons, “I Supervisors meeting. think we need anothUnder the tentative er day for that, so potimeline spelled out tentially Thursday,” by County Adminis- Blacklock told supertrator Patrick Black- visors. “And I think lock, restaurants and we want to spend a litnonessential retail in Yolo County would be See YOLO, Page 5
The growth initiative is planned to appear on the June 2 Winters City Council meeting agenda as a discussion item, and the City is making plans for it to be an “in person” meeting. City Manager John W. Donlevy, Jr. said the meeting location will be held at the Public Safety Facility, 700 Main St. starting at 6 p.m. “We plan to set up the area with appropriate social distancing, will require persons to wear masks and will also see what we can do about having the meeting on Zoom and YouTube,” Donlevy said in an email to the Express. In the event there is standing room only, Donlevy said the plan is to use the Fire Apparatus Bay to be set up both inside and with overflow outside. “With distancing
Budget workshop leaves out community-related items By Rodney Orosco
By Crystal Apilado Editor-in-Chief A notice regarding details of filing dates for school board candidates and requirements was announced at the May 21 Winters Joint Unified School Board meeting. The Board of Trustees unanimously approved Board Resolution No. 1122-20 – “Notice of Governing Board Member Election” in correlation with the upcoming November 2020 elections. On the ballot for the Nov. 3 election, voters will select candidates to fill the vacancies for the terms specified for the following Trustee Areas:
~ Trustee Area No. 1 (term timeline of 2020-2024). ~ Trustee Area No. 3 (term timeline of 2020-2022). ~ Trustee Area No. 5 (term timeline of 2020-2024). Filing dates for candidates are from July 13 through Aug. 7. Each candidate is required to file in person at the County Elections Office located within the trustee area boundary. Interested individuals must be 18 years of age and live within the specified zone for the Trustee Area seat they are running for. For more information contact the Winters School District Office at 530-795-6100.
Index Features ........................ B-1
Weather Rain
High
Low
May 20
.00
75˚
48˚
May 21
.00
77˚
52˚
May 22
.00
84˚
52˚
May 23
.00
79˚
61˚
Eventos hispanos ....... A-4
May 24
.00
86˚
53˚
May 25
.00
93˚
59˚
Opinion ......................... B-5
May 26
.00
97˚
66˚
Real Estate ................... B-2
Rain for week: 0.00 in. Season’s total: 13.37 in. Last sn. to date: 39.21 in.
Community .................. A-6
Athlete of the Week..... A-6
Staff Writer Rather than review proposed cuts to city services and the drastic budget shortfalls mentioned in the previous budget workshop, city staff spent the May 19 budget workshop portion of the regular city council meeting presenting the council with proof that department heads were sacrificing pay to help the city’s general fund. The columns of numbers Winters Director of Financial Management Shelly A. Gunby shared with the council were impressive—and misleading. For example, Gunby showed that department heads had not cashed out their Administrative Leave since 2010 (basically, paid days off). That action meant considerable savings to the city, since the city did not have to “cash out” leave to the
Winters rainfall season began 7/1/19. Weather readings are taken at 9 a.m.
Crystal Apilado/Wintres Express
The first Budget Workshop had the Community Center as a potential cut. employee. However, Gunby confirmed employees could still use that leave. Meaning, the city would still pay for the employee to take the day off. Gunby’s report did not disaggregate the amount the city paid to department heads who
opted to have the city pay for their day(s) off. The report also noted that department heads have not received a city contribution to their retirement account (also known as deferred comp) since 2010. The initial decision to forgo the city contribution was made during the previous recession in 2010 and the contribution has not been reinstated in the past decade. In her report, Gunby characterized the end of the city contribution as “staff members are continuing to donate the deferred comp to the general fund.” Gunby clarified that in the past the “City contribut(ed) seven percent of the employee base pay to the employee’s deferred comp account for de-
Staff Writer The Winters City Council approved new surveillance equipment for the police department at the May 19 council meeting, and once the department creates an approved policy on how that equipment will be used, responsibly, the council will let them turn it on. The unanimous vote to allow the Winters Police Department to purchase Automatic
License Plate Reader (ALPR) technology came with a caveat suggested by Mayor Wade Cowan: The establishment of a “good sound policy in place” that is approved by the council before the ALPR technology could be used. In his report to the board requesting the purchase of an ALPR system, Winters Police Chief John Miller mentioned his department has a policy. However, “it is a boiler-plate policy,”
he said, and not specific to Winters. If the ALPR is approved, then the policy would be tailored to Winters, he added. Miller’s suggestion of approval now, policy later, was in direct contrast to what the California State Auditor suggested in a recent report. “Law enforcement agencies must first create policies that set clear guidelines for how they will use ALPR data,” the February 2020 report stat-
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See BUDGET, Page 5
The public will get a say on new ALPR policy By Rodney Orosco
Date
Classifieds ................... B-4
(seats staggered and spaced six feet apart) we can probably have seating for up to 300 people,” Donlevy said. “We will have a speaker system to maximize volume and will try to use zoom for the key participants. People getting there late will need to stand (with social distancing).” Community members can submit a request to submit public input on meeting discussion items as usual. A Zoom link to the meeting will be made available on the City Council meeting page on the City website. Instructions on how to submit a Public Input request form are also available on the city website. Residents can access the agenda online (when available) at http://www. cityofwinters.org/ city-council-meetings_/.
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ed. The city council agreed ALPR was powerful and needed technology, and they agreed there needed to be clear rules on how the technology would be used and who would have access to the data. “ALPR is a good technology,” mayor pro tempore Bill Biasi said. “We need to make sure it is used properly.”
See ALPR, Page 5
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