Carlos Reales
Dominguez, who is charged with fatally stabbing two men in Davis and wounding a third victim, prepares to leave the courtroom after appearing before Yolo Superior Court Judge Samuel McAdam on Tuesday with court-appointed public defender Dan Hutchinson.
SAcr Amento Bee pool pHoto
By Lauren Keene Enterprise staff writer
WOODLAND — Attorneys
in a Davis homicide case sparred Tuesday over the potential release of the defendant’s jailhouse medical records, but a Yolo Superior Court judge tabled the issue pending the resolution of ongoing
competency proceedings.
The Yolo County District Attorney’s Office subpoenaed Carlos Reales Dominguez’s records, including mentalhealth documents, late last month after Dominguez’s public defender expressed doubts regarding his state of mind.
“It is my firm opinion that my client is not mentally compe-
tent,” Deputy Public Defender Dan Hutchinson said during a May 22 hearing, prompting Judge Samuel McAdam to suspend Dominguez’s criminal proceedings and order him to undergo a psychiatric assessment.
Dominguez, a 21-year-old former UC Davis student, stands accused of fatally
There are lots of thorny legal problems with filing kidnapping charges against a rival governor, but the most important one is simple: Proving that the chief executive of the other state is, in fact, responsible for luring migrants onto a plane under false pretenses.
But Gov. Gavin Newsom, on Twitter, is threatening to do just that after two recent flights delivered 36 people to Sacramento. The first flight arrived Saturday and a second arrived on Monday morning.
stabbing two people and attacking a third during a week-long crime spree in late April and early May.
Deputy District Attorney Matthew De Moura sought the medical records in order to prepare for a potential competency trial. Hutchinson responded
Enterprise staff
Antonio De Loera-Brust announced his candidacy for Yolo County Supervisor for District 4 on May 12. The primary election will be in March of 2024.
De Loera-Brust grew up in Davis, attending César Chávez Elementary and Harper Junior High, and graduated from Davis High School in the Class of 2013. He was a 2013 recipient of a Thong Hy Huynh memorial award from the city of Davis for his advocacy on behalf of minority students at Davis High School. He is a 2017 graduate of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and ran the afterschool program at the Madison Migrant Farmworker
Center on Highway 16 from 2013-2017 on behalf of the Yolo Interfaith Immigration Network.
DE
“I’m proud to have grown up in Davis,” he said in a statement “This is where my family found our American Dream. Thanks to my immigrant parents’ hard work and the support of Davis’ community, I have had extraordinary opportunities in national politics and government. But no matter how far I’ve gone,
I’ve never forgotten where I came from. I’ve seen firsthand the poverty, hunger, prejudice, and inequality that too many in our community experience, and I’ve always tried to do something about it.”
Since graduation, he has worked as a staffer in the U.S. House of Representatives for Congressman Joaquin Castro and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, as a policy advisor on the presidential campaigns of Secretary Julian Castro and Senator Elizabeth Warren, and most recently served in government as a political appointee of the Biden-Harris administration in the role
See RUNNING, Page A4
Though neither flight originated in Florida, California’s governor put the blame squarely on the Sunshine State, as he did last year when planeloads of migrants were flown into Sacramento and Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.
“You small, pathetic man,” Newsom tweeted at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday morning. “This isn’t Martha’s Vineyard. Kidnapping charges?”
Newsom then linked to the California criminal code statute on
See
What is typical for Neeraj Senthil of Sunnyvale, is extraordinary.
Between maintaining A-plus grades as a biomedical engineering major, earning a provisional patent and coauthoring a research paper at UC Davis, his weekly activities have included cuddling sick babies at the university’s medical center and teaching math at local schools.
Senthil will be awarded the University Medal as the top graduating senior when thousands celebrate
earning a bachelor’s degree at five commencements at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, June 16 to 18. He will receive the medal — for excellence in undergraduate studies, outstanding community service, and the promise of future scholarship and contributions to society — and be awarded a bachelor of science degree at the 9 a.m. ceremony on Saturday, June 17.
“I try,” he said, with characteristic humility. “It’s an attitude with which I approach a lot of things.”
See GRADUATE, Back page
Davis Science Café is back Wednesday, June 14, with “Using Nanoparticles to Stimulate Your Immune System to Fight Cancer,” from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at G Street WunderBar, 228 G St. in downtown Davis.
Each month, Professor Jared Shaw with the UC Davis Department of Chemistry hosts the Davis Science Café, featuring scientists who are studying some of today’s cutting edge topics.
This month’s speaker is Prof. Kit Lam from UC Davis departments of biochemistry and molecular medicine, and chemistry, who works on the development and application of combinatorial library methods for basic research and drug discovery including cancer drug development and drug delivery.
The event is free to attend, with complimentary soft drinks courtesy of the UCD College of Letters and Science. Contact Shaw for information at jtshaw@ucdavis.edu or https://twitter.com/ DavisSciCafe1.
YET ANOTHER VACANCY ... First it was Lucas Frerichs who gave up a Davis City Council seat when he left for Woodland as a newly elected member of the Yolo County Board of Supervisors. Where, by the way, he is representing our town’s interests well.
That vacancy eventually led to a special election over four months later to bring the council back to five members. Indeed, there was an extended period of time when the council muddled along with four members, but the town survived.
Now we learn that Davis School Board member Betsy Hyder has resigned, leaving the board with just four members.
As always, there will be discussion of having the remaining School Board members appoint a replacement, either permanent or as a temporary placeholder. Fortunately or unfortunately, appointing an “interim” gives that person a sense of incumbency, even if they promise not to run when the term expires.
Promises, promises.
In this case, however, it appears the board is willing to limp along with four members, hopefully
avoiding 2-2 votes, until an election can be held to fill Hyder’s seat.
Or maybe 2-2 ties would be a good thing, given that the board not long ago ungraciously decided not to renew the contract of a beloved faculty member at Davis High School. Maybe they should revisit that vote now that Hyder is gone.
The odd thing about a 2-2 vote with any governmental body is that the status quo always wins. If you want to keep things as they are, a tie vote will suffice. If you want to change things, you’ll need a majority. Seems to me a tie vote should be decided by a coin flip or a roll of the dice. No matter, ultimately letting the people decide who is on the board is invariably the right course of action.
Circulations
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SPEAKING OF SCHOOL MAT-
TERS ... I had the distinct honor, along with Davis High journalism guru Kelly Wilkerson, of presenting a journalism scholarship to Davis High School senior and HUB staffer Maria Anderson at last week’s DHS senior awards night at the Brunelle.
Maria has been accepted to the prestigious Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State, regarded as one of the best such institutions in the country.
However, as I told the assembled group that packed the Brunelle to see so many talented seniors honored, the No. 1 school of journalism and mass communication in the country is right here at Davis High School.
GET YOUR ICE COLD
PEPSI ... As if we don’t have enough division in this world, a group of UC Davis students is protesting UCD’s desire to give an exclusive “pouring rights” contract to PepsiCo.
According to Monica Stark’s piece in The Enterprise, UCD Preferred Partnership assistant director Ethan Shawlee says there are
staff writer
Yolo County sheriff’s detectives arrested two suspects last week in connection with a May 1 armed robbery.
The crime targeted two women driving through Zamora in northern Yolo County on their way home from providing vendor services at a Colusa County event, according to sheriff’s Lt. Juan Ceja.
At about 12:30 a.m., “the victims exited onto County Road 14, where they
unknowingly were being followed by two vehicles,” Ceja said. “The suspect vehicles flashed their highbeam headlights, giving the victims the impression that they intended to pass.”
When the victims pulled over, however, the other two vehicles blocked their car on the remote roadway, Ceja said. An armed man approached their car, robbing them of two purses containing large amounts of cash, as well as gold necklaces.
Using detailed descriptions provided by witnesses
to the crime, sheriff’s detectives traced the two suspects to the cities of Santa Rosa and Calistoga. They served search warrants in both cities last Thursday, seizing multiple firearms as well as three grams of methamphetamine.
The two suspects, identified as Alonso Molina Salas of Santa Rosa and Eduardo Enriquez Jaramillo Navarrete of Calistoga, were booked into the Yolo County jail on armed robbery, illegal gun possession and drug-related charges.
Police arrested a suspect in Sunday’s carjacking at a South Davis intersection.
Maurice Lamont Telfair, 35, was still driving the victim’s black Mercedes sedan when Sacramento County sheriff’s deputies stopped him at Howe and El Camino avenues shortly before 3 p.m. Monday, a
day after the alleged crime.
Davis police Lt. James MacNiven said the suspect forced the victim from his vehicle, which was stopped the traffic light on southbound Mace Boulevard at Chiles Road, shortly before 4:30 p.m. Sunday.
“The suspect ran up, opened the victim’s door, demanded the vehicle then grabbed the victim’s shirt, pulling them out,”
MacNiven said. Witnesses reported seeing the suspect flee eastbound on Interstate 80.
Davis police entered the vehicle information into a statewide database following the carjacking, leading to Sacramento deputies’ discovery of the stolen car, MacNiven said. Telfair was booked into the Sacramento County Jail.
Davis police made three drunken-driving arrests in a single shift over the weekend, with all three suspects allegedly having bloodalcohol levels more than twice the legal limit.
The first arrest stemmed from a vehicle collision in the 200 block of H Street at about 9:15 p.m. Saturday.
“The suspect’s vehicle struck multiple parked cars and then backed into an occupied car which had been traveling behind it,” the Davis Police Department reported in a Facebook post. An investigation resulted in a 26-year-old woman’s arrest on suspicion of DUI.
Officers made the second
and third arrests early Sunday at the In-N-Out Burger on Richards Boulevard and Olive Drive, where officers responded to a 1:30 a.m. report of a passed-out driver in the drive-through lane.
“While officers were dealing with that investigation, they were notified at there was a second passedout driver also in the same drive-through lane, a few cars behind the first one,” police said. Both drivers, 24- and 28-year-old men, ended up jailed on DUI charges.
“Thankfully, no one was injured in any of these incidents, but given that it was a busy weekend with many people out, things could have been much worse,” the Facebook post said. “With
all the other safe options available today to reach your destination safely, there is no reason to get behind the wheel after drinking excessive amounts of alcohol.”
benefits to such exclusive contracts, including “consistent pricing and availability and leveraging the school’s size to ensure the greatest benefits to students.”
Maybe so, but I certainly haven’t seen bargain-basement prices for Pepsi products sold on campus.
Apparently, Pepsi also provides significant contributions to various educational groups that provide programs that UC Davis supports, including scholarships, athletic activities and the Office of Sustainability.
However, the actual dollars and cents benefit to the average UC Davis student is hard to determine.
I know I’ve been frustrated about not finding my preferred soda on other campuses around the country that have an exclusive contract with Coke, which is not one of my favorite brands, so the desire for a variety of choices is understandable.
That being said, the very best soft drink on the market today is Pepsi Zero, hands down.
— Reach Bob Dunning at bdunning@davisenterprise.net.
SACRAMENTO —
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library in Yolo County, managed by United Way California Capital Region, will be growing this summer thanks to a statewide expansion.
The program that provides free books to children from birth to age 5 regardless of income has had a full waitlist in Yolo County, but that list will reopen this summer with opportunities for more Yolo County families to sign up. For more information or to sign up, visit www.yourlocalunitedway. org/our-work/help-kidssucceed/dolly-partonimagination-library/.
The statewide expansion was driven by legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Under the bipartisan bill — by Senator Shannon Grove, a Bakersfield Republican, and Senate President pro Tempore Toni Atkins, a
San Diego Democrat — the California State Library coordinates the Imagination Library of California’s statewide program and provides a dollar-for-dollar match to help Imagination Library local partners like United Way sign up children to receive free, high-quality books each month.
“Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is one of United Way’s most beloved programs here in Yolo County, and a critical tool for helping kids learn to read,” said Dr. Dawnté Early, president and CEO, United Way California Capital Region. “Reading is a key indicator of academic achievement, which we know is a ladder out of poverty. We are thrilled that this statewide expansion means more Yolo County families will have access to outstanding children’s books so kids can develop a lifelong love of reading and succeed in school.”
Late last fall, a Southern California developer dropped more than a dozen mammoth building proposals on the city of Santa Monica that were all but designed to get attention.
The numbers behind WS Communities’s salvo of proposals were dizzying: 14 residential high-rises with a combined 4,260 units dotting the beachside city, including three buildings reaching 18 stories. All of the towers were bigger, denser and higher than anything permitted under the city’s zoning code
City Councilman Phil Brock attended a town hall shortly after the announcement and got an earful. A few of the highlights: “Godzilla next door,” “a monster in our midst” and “we’re going to never see the sun again.”
“‘Concerned’ would be putting it mildly,” Brock said of the vibe among the attendees. “A lot of them were freaked.”
As it turns out, freaking locals out may have been the point.
WS Communities put forward its not-so-modest proposal at a moment when it had extreme leverage over the city thanks to a new interpretation of a 33-year-old housing law. Santa Monica’s staterequired housing plan had expired and its new plan had yet to be approved.
According to the law, in that non-compliance window, developers can exploit the so-called builder’s remedy, in which they can build as much as they want wherever they want so long as at least 20% of the proposed units are set aside for lower income residents.
Over the last two years, local governments across California have had to cobble together new housing plans that meet a statewide goal of 2.5 million new units by 2030. At last count, 227 jurisdictions home to nearly 12 million Californians, or about a third of the state population — still haven’t had their plans certified by state housing regulators, potentially opening them up to builder’s remedy projects.
That gives developers a valuable new bargaining chip.
WS Communities used its advantage in Santa Monica to broker a deal in which it agreed to rescind all but one of its 14 builder’s remedy projects in exchange for fast-tracked approval of 10 scaled-down versions.
“The builder’s remedy — the loss of zoning control, the ability of a developer to propose anything, Houston-style, whatever they want, no zoning regulations — that gets people’s attention,” said Dave Rand, the land-use attorney representing the WS Communities. “The builder’s remedy can be a strategic ploy in order to potentially leverage a third way.”
For the developer, the settlement — which still needs a final vote to fully be implemented — is a major win. But this use of a longdormant law also repre-
sents a shift in the politics of housing in California, reflecting a new era of developer empowerment bolstered by the growing caucus of pro-building lawmakers in the Legislature.
“The old games of begging municipalities for a project and reducing the density to get there and kissing the ass of every council member and planning official and neighbor — that’s the old way of doing things,” said Rand. “Our spines are stiffening.”
It’s hard to know just how many builder’s remedy projects have been filed across the state. YIMBY Law, a legal advocacy group that sues municipalities for failing to plan for or build enough housing, has a running count on its website of 46 projects, though its founder, Sonja Trauss, admits that it’s an imperfect tally.
Some of the projects, like those in Santa Monica, are towers with hundreds of units. Others are more modest apartment buildings. Whatever the total, Trauss said it represents a significant uptake for a novel legal strategy.
“There were a lot of naysayers who were like ‘it’s too risky,’ ‘nobody knows what’s gonna happen,’ ‘nobody’s gonna do it,’ blah, blah, blah,” she said. “I feel vindicated. You know, people are trying it.”
But counting just the units proposed under the law misses its broader impact, said UC Davis law professor Chris Elmendorf.
Multiple cities rushed forward their housing plans this year, with city attorneys, city planners and council members warning that failure to do so before a stateimposed deadline could invite a building free-forall.
“All the action is in negotiation in the shadow of the law,” said Elmendorf. The law “may result in a lot of other projects getting permitted that never would have been approved because the developer had this negotiating chip.”
If it’s possible for someone to unearth a forgotten law, Elmendorf can rightly claim to have excavated the builder’s remedy.
The Legislature added the provision to the government code in 1990, but no one used it for decades. In the one case Elmendorf found where someone tried — a homeowner in Albany, just north of Berkeley, who wanted to build a unit in his backyard in 1991 without adding a parking spot — local planners shot down the would-be builder. Elmendorf stumbled upon the long-ignored policy 28 years later while researching East Coast laws that let developers circumvent zoning restrictions in cities short on affordable housing.
He started tweeting about it. He even dubbed the California law the “builder’s remedy,”
borrowing the coinage from Massachusetts.
“I think it’s fair to say that people in California had forgotten about the builder’s remedy almost completely until I started asking about it on Twitter,” he said. “I think those twitter threads led some people to say, ‘huh.’”
Among those who noticed: staff at the state Housing and Community Development department who began listing the “remedy” as a possible consequence of failing to plan for enough housing.
Why was the builder’s remedy largely forgotten?
The text of the law is complicated and it’s only relevant once every eight years, when cities and counties are required to put together their housing plan. Plus, though it allows developers to ignore a city’s zoning code, it’s not clear that it exempts them from extensive environmental review, making the cost savings of using it uncertain.
But more importantly, up until recently, invoking the builder’s remedy — the regulatory equivalent of a declaration of war — was bad for business.
Historically, local governments have had sweeping discretion over what gets built within their borders, where and under what terms and conditions. Developers and their lawyers hoping to succeed in such a climate had to excel at what one land use attorney dubbed the art of “creative groveling.”
But in recent years, as the state’s housing shortage and resulting affordability crisis have grown more acute, lawmakers have passed a series of bills to take away some of that local control. In many cases, cities and counties are now required to approve certain types of housing, like duplexes, subsidized housing apartments and accessory dwelling units, as long as the developer checks the requisite boxes.
That’s all led some devel-
opers to rethink their approach to dealing with local governments — one that is less concerned with building bridges and isn’t so afraid to burn a few.
Santa Monica’s city council voted unanimously for the deal with WS Communities early last month — but grudgingly.
In exchange for the developer pulling its original proposals, the city agreed to a streamlined approval process for the new plans. The council also agreed to pass an ordinance to give the developer extra goodies on the 10 remaining projects.
If the city doesn’t pass the ordinance, according to the settlement, WS Communities has the right to revive the builder’s remedy for all 14 towers.
Brock, elected in 2020 along with a slate of development-skeptics, was hardly a fan of the deal. But as he saw it, the prospect of a lengthy legal battle that the city’s attorney insisted Santa Monica would lose gave the council little choice. That didn’t make what Brock viewed as a hard-knuckle negotiating tactic any easier to swallow.
“I don’t believe for a minute that they ever planned to build all those projects,” he said.
Councilwoman Caroline Torosis, who was elected last fall, laid the blame on the prior council for failing to pass a timely housing plan. Even so, she said the city had no choice but to reclaim control over its own land use from the developer.
“We were put in a difficult situation,” she said. “I think that this was absolutely the best negotiated
settlement that we could have reached, but of course, they had leverage.”
Both Scott Walter, the president of WS, and Neil Shekhter, the founder of the parent company, NMS Properties, refused a request to be interviewed through their lawyer, Rand.
But in true property kingpin fashion, WS was able to flip these builder’s remedy proposals into things of even greater value: ironclad plans that it can build out quickly or sell to another developer.
“The builder’s remedy projects were anything but fast and certain,” said Rand. “This has been parlayed into something with absolute certainty and front-of-the-line treatment.”
About an hour’s drive northeast of Santa Monica, the foothill suburb of La Cañada Flintridge recently rejected a builder’s remedy application.
During a May 1 hearing, Mayor Keith Eich stressed the city was “not denying the project.” Instead, they were denying that the builder’s remedy itself even applied to the city.
The argument: The housing plan the council passed last October complies with state law. California’s Housing and Community Development department rejected that version of the plan and has yet to certify a new one. But La Cañada’s city attorney, Adrian Guerra argued at the hearing that the agency’s required changes were minor enough to make the October plan “substantially” compliant.
That’s not how state regulators see it. In March, the housing department sent
the city a letter of “technical assistance.”
“A local jurisdiction does not have the authority to determine that its adopted element is in substantial compliance,” the letter reads.
Not so, said Guerra: “The court would make that determination.”
A number of cities across the state have made that argument. Among them are Los Altos Hills and Sonoma. Beverly Hills is already fending off a lawsuit contending that the law applies to that city, though it recently rejected a builder’s remedy project on extensive technical grounds.
It’s a question that’s almost certain to end up in court. A recent California’s Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal ruling offers legal fodder to both sides.
The April opinion ruled against the state housing department’s certification of the City of Clovis’ housing plan. That’s a point for those arguing that the word of state regulators is not inviolate. But the ruling also noted that courts “generally” defer to the state agency unless its decision is “clearly erroneous or unauthorized.”
Down the coast, the City of Huntington Beach isn’t relying on such legal niceties. In March, the city council passed an ordinance banning all builder’s remedy projects under the argument that the law itself is invalid. Days later, the Newsom administration sued the city.
But in Santa Monica, city council members didn’t see much upside in pushing back.
“You can’t just fight a losing battle,” Brock said. “I think anybody who decides they’re gonna be an all star NIMBY is up for failure.”
kidnapping, specifically the section on bringing someone into the state against their will.
Newsom also made noise last year when requesting the federal government investigate the previous flights, but so far, the U.S. Department of Justice has not made public any such investigation.
Immigrant advocates said on Monday that the human consequences of federal inaction last year are arriving tired and hungry in Sacramento this week.
“I think it was a mistake to dismiss these flights as a stunt in September,” said immigration and border consultant Chris Rickerd.
“It was a mistake not to stop the escalation then.”
A spokesperson for California Attorney General Rob Bonta told The Associated Press that the migrants were transported through a program run by Florida’s Division of Emergency Management and carried out by the same contractor paid by the state of Florida to fly migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in September.
“While we continue to collect evidence, I want to say this very clearly: Statesanctioned kidnapping is not a public policy choice, it is immoral and disgusting,” Bonta said in a statement.
Brian Hofer, an attorney and executive director of the Oakland-based nonprofit Secure Justice, which advocates against what the organization deems to be state and corporate overreach, said the legal ground is “messy” for determining charges, much less where to file them.
“You took people from one state, on flights which are funded by another state, dropped them off in a third state, and you’re going to say they were coerced or taken under threat of force?” Hofer said.
“What court do you bring that in?
“It’s just a mess. The legal ground is certainly messy.”
Mark Meuser, a San Francisco-based constitutional and election law attorney, disputed Newsom’s legal reasoning in a tweet on Monday.
“Can you please cite one Florida law that prohibits the transportation of individuals who are in this country illegally to a sanctuary state?” wrote Meuser, a Republican who ran against U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla in last November’s election.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the flights “dangerous and unacceptable” on Monday, but the Biden administration’s response to previous migrant flights has been, at the very least, out of public view.
Newsom in September asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate whether the flights could be considered kidnapping under state laws. If they could, he wrote, then the U.S. Justice Department should get involved because they could be considered violations of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
In September, Rachael Rollins, former U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, pledged to “look long and hard” at potential charges. But Rollins has since resigned, and it’s unclear where that investigation led. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts did not return calls from CalMatters on Monday.
DeSantis’s office also didn’t return calls and emails from CalMatters.
Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature has set aside $12 million for the migrant flights.
Bonta, as California’s attorney general, also didn’t file state charges related to those September flights, and it’s unclear what would be different this time. Bonta did not respond to requests for comment from CalMatters.
Newsom’s office released a statement late Monday that expressed support for Bonta’s investigation into the flights.
“As to specific charges and laws that may have been violated, that will ultimately be determined by the attorney general’s office,” Newsom spokesperson Daniel Lopez wrote.
It’s one thing to know the planes came from Florida and another to connect those flights directly to DeSantis. But at least one investigation into that connection is continuing, as the sheriff in Bexar County, Texas, has turned over the results of a criminal investigation into DeSantis for his alleged role in transporting 49 migrants from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard last year.
The Texas Tribune reports that the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office recently filed several counts of unlawful restraint, both misdemeanors and felonies as a result of the investigation, but didn’t name individual suspects. The investigation has been turned over to the Bexar County District Attorney.
Sacramento surprised California was caught unaware by the latest arrivals, who were diverted to a small airport in the city and met by local outreach groups and law enforcement.
Sacramento County spokesperson Kim Nava said the migrants left from Texas and changed planes in tiny Deming, N.M., before arriving in California.
“The county did not know the flight was coming
in,” she said. “We don’t have communication (with the state of Texas) at this time.”
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said the migrants were being used as “political pawns.” He said he’s focused on “making sure the people who landed here are cared for, and that’s our job.”
Steinberg, a Democrat who is considering a run for attorney general, said he supported a review of whether criminal charges should be filed.
“I mean, I think we ought to, you know, await the result of an investigation, but certainly, an investigation into potential criminal culpability is warranted,” he said.
Each of the migrants carried a clear plastic bag, inside of which were papers directing them to immigration courts, some as far away as Chicago, according to an advocacy group that has been supporting them. Landing in California could make it more difficult for those individuals to reach their court appearances.
“So they’re not even trying to get them closer to families or closer to their court,” said Lydia Guzman, national immigration chair for The League of United Latin American Citizens. “This is all politics.”
Guzman said the organization also demanded action from the federal government in September.
“We inquired with the (U.S.) Department of Justice, we wanted them to look at who was behind all of this,” Guzman said. “We never heard back from DOJ on this issue.”
of Special Assistant to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken.
“While serving in county government during the pandemic, I saw how Yolo County can come together to take care of one another and prioritize the most vulnerable – if we have the political will to do so,” De Loera-Brust. “But right now, it seems that some in our town are worse off than ever. Pandemic-era programs are expiring. Hunger is growing. Evictions are rising. Whole populations in our community feel excluded or unheard. Too many families are being priced out of their own American Dreams.”
In his federal government career he has worked on the second impeachment of President Trump in the aftermath of January 6th, on bipartisan immigration reform legislation and investigations into abuses of migrant children in Border Patrol custody, and on multiple foreign policy crises including the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
He also has experience serving in Yolo County government, serving as an emergency hire Latino Outreach Specialist for Yolo County’s Covid Response Operations Center (CROC) from March 2020 through April 2021. During this time he helped advocate for, plan, and implement Yolo County’s successful farmworker vaccination campaign which saw over 80% of Yolo County farmworkers vaccinated by April of 2021. He currently works for the United Farm Workers labor union and is involved in several ongoing farmworker unionization campaigns.
If elected Supervisor for District 4, he would be the youngest County Supervisor in Yolo County history as well as
the first Latino elected in this district.
De Loera-Brust identifies his top priorities as strengthening and expanding Yolo County’s social safety net, increasing the availability and affordability of housing, and making county government more attentive and responsive, especially to underserved and marginalized communities.
“Yolo County needs to change course,” he said. “I believe in smart growth, a strong social safety net, and in diverse and inclusive government. Above all, I promise to fight my heart out for workers, immigrants, families, and the most vulnerable among us — on every issue, every day, every time.
“From the high cost of housing, to the persistent and entrenched hunger and poverty, to the looming impacts of the climate crisis, Yolo County has big challenges. But I also believe there is nothing wrong with Yolo County that can't be addressed with what's good in Yolo County — our people, our values, our resources, and our belief in the power of government to make life better. Together, we can build a Yolo County in which nobody is left behind.”
The election will be to replace the retiring Jim Provenza, who announced in late April that after 45 years in public service; he will not seek re-election. Sheila Allen, Provenza’s current deputy, is also running for the District 4 position.
The district includes Davis east of F Street, the area north of Covell Boulevard and east of Highway 113, El Macero, and the unincorporated areas to the south and east of town.
Astronaut William Anders took a photo of Earth in 1968, a blue and white ball floating in black space, describing his experience as, “We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.”
The photo had an immediate impact.
Although everyone knew we all live on the same round planet, there was something about seeing it floating in a vast blackness that for the first time made it clear that we all share the same home. It was a unifying moment. Maps of the world generally distinguish nations from one another by borders, black lines that define territory.
One couldn’t but notice that there were no black lines in the photo, just a blue orb with a thin layer of white clouds. The photo was hailed as a turning point, away from thinking of ourselves as separate countries but instead sharing a common home. It was a hopeful moment.
Perhaps it would kickstart cooperation among nations in seeking common purpose.
Here we are a bit over 50 years later with a lot more confrontation and conflict than cooperation.
We find ourselves with the idiocy of a nuclear arms race. Our bombs are bigger than your bombs. We are divided between the haves and have nots, the fat and happy and the hungry and starving. Perhaps topping the list, conflict between economic ideologies seems more like children on a playground arguing about the rules of the game, but on this playground the sabers are real, and the rattling often results in war, or at a minimum massive misery and dislocation.
Religious leaders seem no better. Our god can beat up your god. Political leaders, almost uniformly men, hyper-propelled by testosterone, strive to obtain and exercise power, to be the top dog. Perhaps we need more women leaders.
Frankly, it appears that leaders, those vested with power to set policy and make decisions, are, instead of confronting and solving problems, leading us off a cliff, and not a little cliff; it’s a long drop.
Instead of embracing “globalization” as a path to cooperation and mutual benefit, a realization that no country can be completely self-sufficient, that that photo of our blue planet floating in space does really communicate our inter-dependence. We are instead stuck in ancient, outdated and dangerous paradigms.
I’m tired and frustrated that humans, the creatures on this planet with big brains, the ones that can create, innovate, understand problems and opportunities, seem hellbent on conflict and confrontation.
A recent article in
Bloomberg Businessweek asked the question, “Who Owns the Moon?” This is an example that describes our predicament. We’re elevating the mistakes we’re making on Earth to the surface of the moon. Harking back to what started this column, the picture of Earth from the Moon, we are switching to a picture of the Moon from Earth. It is also a singular object floating against the black void of space, thus far without black lines outlining who owns what.
It’s a blank slate, an opportunity for unity. But there’s a stampede to see who can get there first and exploit whatever minerals might be mined and claim strategic advantage over everybody else. Many countries, or countries with private businesses (U.S., China, Russia, India, Israel, Japan, Luxembourg, United Arab Emirates, the European Space Agency, New Zealand, etc.) look at the moon and see dollar signs. Thus far there’s no operational and enforceable Moon Agreement. In which case those black lines will soon appear, and, hooboy, there will be big trouble if anyone crosses those lines.
So, as regards the climate crisis. Here we are, in need of global cooperation, or even competition without conflict, of mutually effective globalization but nations are still siloed and pursuing self-interest. As an example, the rush is on to corner the market on lithium. We are without an effective mechanism to bring all these interests to the table and rationalize action to benefit everyone.
I’m sorry, but the Paris Agreement and the Conference of the Parties talks a big game, but the results are not impressive, or at least too slow and ineffective to build confidence.
I’ve been reading, “How the World Really Works” by Vaclav Smil. An extraordinarily detailed, cogent and compelling book, notwithstanding its selfimportant title. Paraphrasing one of the book’s conclusions, we will fail to effectively respond to the climate crisis unless, for the first time in history we manage to put together a global, binding, serious accord among at least the top five countries responsible for 80 percent of emissions.
The word “sustainability” gets bandied around a lot. Even at the local level. Our city. Our county. But it’s absurd to think any nation, state, county, or city can exist in isolation, grow all its own food, produce its own fertilizer, steel, and concrete. We can’t recycle what we use without overseas markets. We can’t mine the lithium
and cobalt necessary for our cars and devices. The interconnections are global. So, leaders, get it together. We need you to shut up about the conflicts. Think, and do, something about global networks that make the planet safe for everyone. Think globally. Act Globally. Please.
John Mott-Smith is a resident of Davis. This column appears on the first and third Wednesday of each month. Please send comments to johnmottsmith@comcast.net
Senthil said his parents, who immigrated from India, gave him “the greatest blessing” of not pushing him in any one direction for his education and career. “They just wanted me to apply myself,” he said. “That’s why I was able to explore so many different paths.”
Senthil, who holds a third-degree black belt in kickboxing, recounted three experiences that influenced his direction: teaching martial arts to children with neurodiversity; leading others as he rose through the ranks of the Boy Scouts to become a junior assistant scoutmaster; and taking rigorous science courses in high school.
Starting at UC Davis in fall 2019, Senthil sought out research opportunities and was working in the Immuno-modulatory Biomaterials Laboratory by that November.
“I found a lab that was prepared to take me with little more than curiosity and hard work,” he said.
Since then, Senthil has continued to work on two main projects in the lab. The first is developing an injectable system to correct the immune imbalance that propagates rheumatoid arthritis. The second is working toward targeted drug therapy by capitalizing on vomocytosis — a process by which a fungal pathogen can escape intact from immune cells without damaging most of them.
“Neeraj’s contributions to my lab have been nothing short of phenomenal,” said Jamal Lewis, an associate professor of biomedical engineering who recently relocated to the University of Florida in Gainesville.
In his independent project for the lab, Senthil developed an image analysis algorithm to more quickly and accurately quantify vomocytosis. He has a provisional patent for this invention, presented it at the 2021 annual meeting of the Biomedical Engineering Society, or BMES, and is first author on a research paper in review with an academic journal.
In his junior year, Senthil became
a Goldwater Scholar as a winner of the nation’s premier undergraduate award of its type in the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering.
He also interned at CytomX Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company that focuses on novel drug delivery strategies for oncology therapeutics, and Genentech, a leading biotechnology company, both in the San Francisco Bay Area. He earned the Genentech Outstanding Student Award for his work.
As director of research development for the campus chapter of BMES since 2021, Senthil helped more than 50 new students looking for research internship opportunities and organized nine lab tours to expose students to the variety of opportunities on campus.
After more than a year of remote studies due to the pandemic, Senthil said he threw himself into activities with greater human connection. That included teaching.
Courses he took through the CalTeach Mathematics and Science Teaching Program, or CalTeach/ MAST, led to teaching internships and then volunteer teaching at Robert E. Willett Elementary School and Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior High School, both in Davis.
“Mentoring and teaching are extremely important to me,” Senthil said. “I’ve been able to receive mentorship, and I feel a strong sense of
responsibility to pay that back.”
At the junior high school, teacher Kimiko Yamamoto said Senthil is known for “Neeraj’s Challenge Problem,” which pushes students to apply math concepts they are learning in new ways.
He concluded Pi Week by having 35 students — who he calls the “best seventh-graders in the world” — smash 13 pies in his face.
“Neeraj is 100% about helping, encouraging and supporting these amazing seventh graders,” Yamamoto said. “He dedicates so much of his time to promote positive learning, engagement and relationships.”
After working in research and development at a pharmaceutical company, Senthil plans to pursue a career as a pediatric doctor and researcher focused on immunomodulatory therapeutics — those that selectively stimulate or suppress the immune system — to treat various disorders.
To become more familiar with the hospital setting, Senthil has volunteered weekly with the Child Life and Creative Arts Therapy Department at UC Davis Children’s Hospital in Sacramento. There, he supervises playroom activities, provides bedside support for patients in isolation and holds infants when their families cannot be with them.
“He is now able to comfort even the most vulnerable newborn,” said Wendi Imagire, who supervises Senthil. “In this area, Neeraj has excelled.”
— UC Davis News
From Page A1
with a motion to quash, or set aside, that request, calling the medical records “privileged” and the subpoena “overly broad and premature.”
McAdam previously scheduled a June 20 hearing to rule on the competency issue. On Tuesday, he concluded that process should play itself out before deciding whether prosecutors should gain access to the jailhouse records.
“It would seem at that point that competency may or may not be in dispute,” McAdam said. “I think it’s prudent to wait until we see that doctor’s report.”
Dominguez, still clad in the anti-suicide “safety smock” he’s worn for each of his court appearances, did not repeat the request he made at his last hearing to forego an attorney represent himself in court.
McAdam briefly addressed that matter as well, saying the upcoming psychiatric evaluation should determine whether Dominguez understands the legal proceedings and can assist his attorney in preparing a defense.
“If those questions are
answered in the negative, then clearly he can’t represent himself,” McAdam said.
Both Hutchinson and De Moura declined to comment after the brief hearing.
Watching from the courtroom gallery were Nadine Yehya and Majdi Abou Najm, whose son Karim Abou Najm was fatally stabbed while riding his bike through Sycamore Park on April 29.
The UC Davis student’s slaying occurred two days after the killing of “Compassion Guy” David Breaux in Central Park, and two days before Kimberlee Guillory sustained multiple stab wounds in her tent at Second and L streets.
Yehya and Abou Najm declined to comment about the case itself but noted “we’re going to be here for every hearing,” Yehya said. “It’s always hard, but we’ll be here for Karim.”
“Karim, the beautiful soul that was taken away from us,” Abou Najm added. He said prosecutors in the case “have our full trust.”
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenter prise.net. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene.
SACRAMENTO — One of three passing tournaments are in the books for the Davis High football team.
On Saturday, the Blue Devils competed in the Sacramento State 7-on-7 passing tournament. The games were played at Hornet Stadium, plus other athletic fields near the stadium.
The Blue Devils posted an 0-4 record, which included three losses in pool play and the final in one Gold Bracket of the Sweet Sixteen.
“A lot of guys were able to play,” said Davis head coach Nick Garratt. “Reps count for a lot. Getting them exposed to this type of play is really important. That’s really going to be really helpful down the line when we start building the depth of our team.”
Most of the returning and starting players were not at the tournament due to various reasons, Garratt noted.
“We were not at full strength,” Garratt said. “ Davis played Pitman of Turlock, Woodland Christian and Casa Roble in pool play games.
In the Gold Bracket of the Sweet Sixteen, Davis played Logan of Union City, which eliminated the Blue Devils by an 18-8 score.
Davis entered bracket play as the No. 15 seed. Logan was the No. 2 seed.
Turnovers favored Logan in its game against the Blue Devils.
“I think that we learned that we can play
As the lowest-scoring team in the Golden Gate Conference, FC Davis’ attackers have felt the pressure to produce more consistently this season.
Forward Wumi Aladetimi rose to the occasion on Saturday, scoring twice to lead the Golden Lions (1-5-1) to a 2-1 win over Sonoma County Sol FC (2-5-1) at the UC Davis Dairy Complex.
“I told myself before the game I wanted to score two goals,” Aladetimi said. “I wanted to contribute rather than just dribble all the time to no end product.”
Aladetimi’s efforts helped FC Davis notch its first victory, a feat that has eluded the club for more than half of its season.
“It’s about time we won cause we’ve been losing,” Aladetimi said. “We knew we were a better team than them, so we just had the right mindset today.”
FC Davis came out aggressive and dominated possession for much of the first half. After a series of unsuccessful scoring runs, the Golden Lions had a breakthrough in the 18th minute when Aladetimi drilled a shot that deflected off a defender into the goal for a 1-0 lead.
The Sol responded quickly, tying the game up with a goal in the 21st minute.
However, what seemed like the beginning of a high-scoring contest turned into a defensive grind as the match progressed. With both teams
See VICTORY, Page B2
through difficult times,” Garratt said.
Garratt gave some examples.
Two Blue Devils who have not played football prior to the tournament played in all four games. Garratt liked their drive as competitors on Saturday.
“Their frustration came, but yet they knew that they needed to keep playing, even when it seemed impossible, but to keep working hard,” Garratt said. “They tried to get better, and they did.”
Other Blue Devil players, Garratt noted, who have played high school and youth football, see that there’s a process to improving over time.
“They were humble to the point where they know that they don’t know,” Garratt said. “I think, the process that it is devasting (but) it’s also humbling and get to the point where we have to come to practice every time and have to try to get better, and have a desire to try to get better.”
Garratt stressed the off-season workouts in the weight room, which continue during the spring and summer months, is essential in preparing for the upcoming season.
“Some guys have not been consistently been there in the off-season (weight training workouts) or during spring practices,” Garratt said. “A lot of guys have never really played together, and a lot of guys have never really played varsity (football).
“It was a good reality check to see where do we stand in terms of what kind of commitment we need to get.”
See KEY, Page B2
The White Sox were powered by dominant pitching and situational hitting in Saturday’s 8-4 victory over the Angels in the Davis Little League Majors Championship.
On the mound for the White Sox, Peter Prussel and Logan Wallace each handled three innings, combining for seven strikeouts while only allowing three earned runs.
Both pitchers had to work through major jams, including in the first inning when Prussel walked the bases loaded, but escaped the frame with a strikeout.
Wallace’s most strenuous inning was the sixth, which saw the Angels rally for two runs, before the right-hander induced a pair of fly balls that resulted in outs and ended the game.
While the Angels’ lineup posted their second-lowest run output of the season, the White Sox had their highest scoring game in over a month. The White Sox
registered eight runs on just eight hits, showcasing their ability to deliver with runners in scoring position.
The most potent hitter on the White Sox appeared to be Luke Nervo, who drove in a team-high four runs on two doubles to left field. His second runscoring knock ignited a five-run third inning to give the White Sox an 8-2 lead.
“He’s just tremendous,” said head coach Erik Prussel of Nervo. “He doesn’t have to get a lot of the bat on the ball for it to go far, but he was right on it, he wasn’t missing much.”
After building a massive lead, the White Sox were held scoreless for the remainder of the game. However, this didn’t surprise Prussel, who recognized the talent of the Angels.
“The Angels are a good team, they could have easily beat us,” Prussel said. “Davis Little League is very competitive, See MAJORS, Page B2
The Berryessa Open Water swim came back with a roar Sunday recording 532 total entries compared to 493 last year, reports Davis Aquatics Masters head coach Mat Zachan.
Brad Winsor, 52, was the DAM standout for men, disposing of the combination 1- and 2-mile category in 1 hour, six minutes, six seconds.
Followed by Brian Bolz 1:20:39 and David Woodruff 1:35:05.
For women the top performers were Hannah Jimenz, 1:18:22; Helen Nehrebecki, 1:20:59; Jane Russell, 1:22:30; Jennifer Phalen, 1:32:28; Karen Charney, 1:37:50.
This is a huge organizing effort which could not be pulled off without member volunteers like Kathy Gill, Jeff Heiser, Melanie Ellison, Pat Long, Pat Quinn, Lisa Fischer, Ernie and Stephanie Hoftyzer, Bruce
and On Braly, Joan and Vivian Crow, Mary Kahn, John Yoder, Erin Heiser, Sharon Blaha, Kevin Waterson, Laurie Warren, Jamey Wright and Alex May.
I put down $50 on Kevin Waterson, who came through for me. My wife wanted to know who got the winnings. DAM did. DAM wants to spread the joy of swimming.
The club is organizing classes for non-swimmers from 4 to 5 p.m. on Sundays, July 9, 16, 23 and 30.
From Page B1
struggling to finish opportunities, the score stayed even going into halftime.
The Golden Lions continued to attack their opponent’s defense in the second half, which eventually led to Aladetimi’s second goal in the 51st minute.
After receiving the ball on the right wing, Aladetimi drove past his defender on a cut toward the penalty area where he buried his fifth goal of the season.
The Sol had plenty of chances to answer, especially during the six minutes of stoppage time, but FC Davis goalkeeper Charles Janssen didn’t let anything past him for the remainder of the match.
“Charles definitely came up really solid in the end,”
said FC Davis head coach Kris Hall. “(Sonoma County) got three set pieces in six minutes of stoppage time and Charles made three or four fantastic saves that were needed for the team.
The Golden Lions, who played their third consecutive home match, will travel to face Napa Valley 1839 FC (5-2-0) next Saturday at 7 p.m.
Fresh off a 2-1 victory over Sacramento Gold FC, Napa Valley is riding a three-game winning streak and is No. 2 in the Golden Gate Conference standings.
The club has tallied a league-best 19 goals this season, with 11 coming from forward Dario Pavon. The Madrid, Spain native scored twice against the Gold.
Classes are full with no more than three learners, but they are looking for DAM swimmers who would like to volunteer as instructors for these classes. You can attend a training session on Saturday, July 8.
For more information or to sign on to help with the class, contact Kathy Gill at kmgill135@gmail.com
I will say this to non-swimmers. The water is the only place I am completely free of joint pain. Try it.
Masters water polo: Davis Water Polo masters will be practicing on Wednesdays, at Grant Union High in Sacramento from 7 to 9 p.m.
— Mark Braly’s Masters Swimming column is published the first Wednesday of each month, except this month. Contact him at markbraly@sbcglobal.net.
From Page B1
especially in majors.”
The final out was followed by a ceremony to honor the effort and commitment of both teams. Each player was announced and given a ring from DLL.
The postgame festivities ended with Prussel holding up the championship trophy and his players cheering with excitement.
It was a special moment, but Prussel maintained that he gets the most satisfaction from watching his players improve and have fun playing baseball.
“Winning is fun, but as a coach, I just try to stay focused on the details as far as if someone makes a great play, that’s awesome,” Prussel said. “You can’t dwell on the negatives because things happen, balls get dropped, so you just have to focus on the positives.”
— Henry Krueger is a Gonzaga University and working as a correspondent for The Enterprise this spring and summer. He was an intern at the newspaper in 2022. Follow him on Twitter: @ henrykrveger.
From Page B1
Davis will be hosting Yolo County high school football teams, plus Dixon, in a 7-on-7 passing tournament at Ron and Mary Brown Stadium on Tuesday, June 13 and Tuesday,
June 20. Times for both tournaments is slated from 5 to 7 p.m.
— Contact Mike Bush at mike@davisenterprise.net. Follow on Twitter: @MBDavisSports.
For the first time in this drought-stricken century, a new price for water in the West has been set — and it’s 25 times higher than what farmers have paid for the last 75 years.
Arizona, Nevada and California recently agreed to reduce their water consumption from the Colorado River by 13% through 2026. The federal government will pay their irrigation districts, Native American tribes and cities $521 for each acrefoot of water they don’t use.
This agreement is the start of the end of agriculture as we know it in the West, but not just agriculture. For every drop of water used, industries — from farms and ranches to data centers and power plants to ski resorts and golf courses — must determine whether it pays more to use the water, or to avoid using it.
And the price of using it will only increase. Some businesses will become more water-efficient. Some will move.
Some will close.
What was the price of water, anyway? It depends on both the source and the use. If water comes from a river or lake, it’s zero. If water comes from an aquifer in the ground, it’s the cost of pumping the water up. And despite the enormous infrastructure required, water delivered from reservoirs behind large dams (as promised by the federal Bureau of Reclamation) has historically cost farmers no more than $20 per acre-foot, which is enough to cover a full acre one foot deep.
This water costs much more to deliver, with the difference subsidized by federal taxpayers. For example, in the Imperial Water District, the destination for 80% of all Colorado River water delivered to California, water for irrigation costs farmers that $20 per acre-foot even though the water is stored (in Lake Mead, behind Hoover Dam) and transported (through the All-American Canal) by mega-projects paid for by federal taxpayers.
In the Westlands Water District of central California, taxpayers subsidize farms at $2,200 per acre. For California farmers who receive water from the Central Valley Project, taxpayers contribute $416 million annually.
With the price signal of water now reset to $521 per acre-foot, the math for water users will change, starting with agriculture. Food generates more than $50 billion annually across the lower Colorado River basin states, and the industry rests on the foundation of $20 water promised by the Bureau of Reclamation.
With this new agreement, every use of water must exceed the value of not using it. Take the most-grown crop in the Colorado River basin: alfalfa. This grass is exported worldwide and fed to livestock, mostly cows. Alfalfa sells for $230 per ton in California. With 3 acre-feet of water, an acre of alfalfa will yields around 6 tons of product. So, at $20 per acre-foot of water, a farmer would spend $60 in water for $1,380 of alfalfa, leaving plenty of money for labor and equipment and profit. At $521 per acre-foot of water, the farmer pays $3,126 for water alone for that same $1,380 in alfalfa, losing over $1,700 per acre.
By contrast, the farmer could make $3,126 from the federal government for growing nothing and avoiding the water consumption altogether.
The math for most other crops is not much better.
Although the agreement only runs through 2026, water price signals are here to stay. And the price of water — or the value of avoided water use — will only increase. Because of global warming, the flows of the Colorado River will drop by half by 2100, making the current cuts almost seem painless.
The price of a water credit is now set, with the avoided consumption of one acrefoot of water worth $521. Over the next decade, similarly, water-intensive industries will reexamine the water liability of their businesses. For every use of water, they will have to consider what will happen if the price of water doubles, triples or more.
The water reckoning is here, and the West will never be the same.
Grayson Zulauf is the CEO of Resonant Link. He holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University.
It looks at times as if Gov.
Gavin Newsom is trying to imitate Jerry Brown as he tries to gut California’s main environmental protection law, at least for large infrastructure projects like reservoirs, road and bridges.
Brown certainly did reduce the clout of the 1970 California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA, usually pronounced “see-qua”) during his fourth and final term as governor, mainly clearing the way for large spectator sports facilities like the Golden State Warriors’ Chase Center in San Francisco, the Inglewood SoFi Stadium that’s now home to both the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers and the rapidly rising Inglewood basketball arena under construction for the Los Angeles Clippers.
“We have proven we can get it done for stadiums,” said Newsom, “so why…can’t we translate that to all these other projects?” It’s clear he doesn’t want the very people who figure to be most affected by these changes to have any voice in their fate.
This all is a facet of the years-long domination of Sacramento by developers and their allies in the building trade unions. Over the last three years, they have moved politicians whose campaigns they help finance to eliminate virtually all single-family residential zoning around the state, make permitting of small
“granny flats” or additional dwelling units almost automatic, allowed creation of six dwelling units on lots formerly occupied by just one and eased the building of high-rises near light rail stops or major city bus routes.
Newsom’s several-pronged attempt to ease CEQA takes this farther, seeking a ninemonth limit on legal actions under the law. He also wants more funding for planning departments and other agencies that review large-scale plans and other exceptions to the current law. The presumption is this would speed up their work.
CEQA would have few teeth if Newsom gets his way. One pet plan is a long-stymied version of the old Peripheral Canal project, rejected overwhelmingly 43 years ago by state voters. That has now morphed into a plan to bring Sacramento River water south to customers of the state Water Project via a tunnel under the Delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers.
Lawmakers seem prepared to go along. Said Democratic
Davis needs more housing. However, peripheral development that intrudes into our agricultural buffer is not a wise approach. Instead, a thoughtful examination of our current buildout reveals available sites for additional housing that can solve the housing shortage while avoiding the environmental impact of expanding our boundaries. Maintaining compact development keeps our overall GHG emissions lower as the needed biking and busing infrastructure is already in place.
Given the worsening threat of climate change, Davis needs to move in a direction that cuts our greenhouse gases and avoids our dependence on fossil fuels. Currently, transportation accounts for 65% of our city’s greenhouse gas emissions, predominantly from autos. However, if we build infill housing wisely, we can deliberately encourage bicycle and transit use while avoiding sprawl.
The city's recent housing element provides such a path forward. It identifies properties that can accommodate 3,341 units. In addition, the Downtown Plan can produce at least 1,000 residences. The Covell Boulevard infill site across from Nugget Markets that was once in the City's General Plan can accommodate 1,400 residences. The city property along Fifth street at L Street has the potential for 290 more residences. Property on Fermi Place and Montgomery Avenue can accommodate 204 apartments. Redevelopment of several shopping centers could produce 400 or more apartments. Altogether, infill could provide 6,635 new housing units.
Rather than considering several proposals for peripheral development on our eastern side, the city should help owners of infill sites create viable visions for their properties. Such a choice would kick off implementation of Action TR.11, “Develop sustainable housing,” in the city’s adopted Climate Action and Adaptation Plan.
Climate change is bearing down on us. We must move beyond business as usual. This will require using our creative abilities to provide compact, mixed-use,
President
state Senate President Toni Atkins of San Diego, “The climate crisis requires that we move faster to build and strengthen critical infrastructure.”
Both she and Newsom give lip service to the environment while working steadily to denigrate it.
It was much the same under Brown. The onetime seminarian called his efforts to ease CEQA “The Lord’s Work.”
In his time, this meant interpreting the law to let developers qualify initiatives OKing their projects for local ballots and then have city councils adopt the initiatives without public votes.
That’s what enabled building both the Chase Center and SoFi Stadium, plus approval for a former SoFi rival stadium once planned in nearby Carson.
This tactic could be repeated as Los Angeles gets set to host the 2028 Olympics, with some competitions to be staged in various other parts of the state.
All this essentially leaves out the folks most affected by big projects, just like it did in Inglewood, where citizens had nothing to say about razing the Hollywood Park racetrack and replacing it with SoFi Stadium’s much more imposing presence.
Wrote attorney Aruna Prabhala of the Center for Biological Diversity, “CEQA offers
necessary protections for communities and the environment. We should be wary of exaggerated claims by development interests that suggest otherwise.”
A housing shortage, she said, “does not give us free rein to build recklessly. It’s not clear that the governor has fully considered the unintended consequences of fast-tracking infrastructure projects.”
Added Barbara BarriganParilla, head of the Restore the Delta group that opposes Newsom’s tunnel plan, “(He) does not respect the people in communities that need environmental protection,” she said, citing alleged examples from the coronavirus pandemic era.
What’s clear in all this is that if the people most affected by the potential changes in CEQA don’t speak up to their legislators now, Newsom’s plan will pass, developers will have an even freer rein and those affected by new projects will have even fewer ways to protect themselves, their homes and their lifestyles.
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It,” is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www. californiafocus.net
transit-oriented, and affordable housing options, and avoid climate-unfriendly peripheral expansions. Hopefully the newly formed Community Action Network, organized for the purpose of tackling Davis's housing and climate issues together, can be of assistance in producing sustainable infill housing opportunities.
Michael Corbett DavisI happened to see a letter today regarding detransitioners in The Enterprise, and thought you might like some data to go with it: Detransition is exceedingly rare-around 1% of adults who had transaffirming surgery expressed any regret at all, and some of that was temporary. Other research has found that the detransition rate maybe between 1-8%, but does not capture the "degree" of detransition (there's a world of difference between changing your closet out for a new one, and attempting to reverse surgery and hormones), and does not capture people who go on to retransition. Even at 8%, though, trans-affirming care could still be considered wildly successful, when you realize that some other procedures such as knee replacement (20% regret rate) or gastric banding (8 to 20%) are notably less controversial and yet sport much higher rates of regret.
Allie Snyder seems to be repeating sev-
The Hon. Joe Biden, The White House, Washington, D.C., 20500; 202-456-1111 (comments), 202-456-1414 (switchboard); email: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
U.S. Senate
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, 331 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., 20510; 202-224-3841; email: https://www. feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/ e-mail-me
Sen. Alex Padilla, 112 Hart Senate Office
eral talking points that come to us courtesy of various anti-trans thinkers. The careful framing of her thoughts as concern for others' well-being while criticizing medical care as an intentional and "homophobic" effort to turn children into lifetime medical patients, the conspiracy theory of a nefarious "gender medical industry" that is preying on defenseless LGB people, the dismissal of decades-old treatments as "experimental," even the meticulous phrasing of "the LGB and TQ communities" (designed to separate LGBTQIA communities into smaller, more easily targeted groups) are all commonplace tactics. The goal of these efforts is never clearly explained, of course, because then we get into the awkward process of determining which aspects of being trans such people feel should be allowed.
Regardless, those people who truly do detransition deserve our sympathy.
Nobody should have to deal with living in a body that feels foreign to them, and people whose journey has taken them into and then out of the transgender community are almost certainly hurting.
I would counsel caution, though, on the motives of those who would seek to prioritize the needs of detransitioners above those of the much larger trans community. It often seems as though those who lift up such stories are doing so for more than mere altruism.
Jessica Carroway DavisBuilding, Washington, D.C., 20510; 202224-3553; email: https://www.padilla. senate.gov/contact/contact-form/
House of Representatives
Rep. Mike Thompson, 268 Cannon Office Building, Washington, D.C., 20515; 202225-3311. District office: 622 Main Street, Suite 106, Woodland, CA 95695; 530-753-5301; email: https:// https:// mikethompsonforms.house.gov/contact/ Governor Gov. Gavin Newsom, State Capitol, Suite 1173, Sacramento, CA 95814; 916-4452841; email: https://govapps.gov.ca.gov/ gov40mail/
For the first time in this drought-stricken century, a new price for water in the West has been set — and it’s 25 times higher than what farmers have paid for the last 75 years.
Arizona, Nevada and California recently agreed to reduce their water consumption from the Colorado River by 13% through 2026. The federal government will pay their irrigation districts, Native American tribes and cities $521 for each acrefoot of water they don’t use.
This agreement is the start of the end of agriculture as we know it in the West, but not just agriculture. For every drop of water used, industries — from farms and ranches to data centers and power plants to ski resorts and golf courses — must determine whether it pays more to use the water, or to avoid using it.
And the price of using it will only increase. Some businesses will become more water-efficient. Some will move.
Some will close.
What was the price of water, anyway? It depends on both the source and the use. If water comes from a river or lake, it’s zero. If water comes from an aquifer in the ground, it’s the cost of pumping the water up. And despite the enormous infrastructure required, water delivered from reservoirs behind large dams (as promised by the federal Bureau of Reclamation) has historically cost farmers no more than $20 per acre-foot, which is enough to cover a full acre one foot deep.
This water costs much more to deliver, with the difference subsidized by federal taxpayers. For example, in the Imperial Water District, the destination for 80% of all Colorado River water delivered to California, water for irrigation costs farmers that $20 per acre-foot even though the water is stored (in Lake Mead, behind Hoover Dam) and transported (through the All-American Canal) by mega-projects paid for by federal taxpayers.
In the Westlands Water District of central California, taxpayers subsidize farms at $2,200 per acre. For California farmers who receive water from the Central Valley Project, taxpayers contribute $416 million annually.
With the price signal of water now reset to $521 per acre-foot, the math for water users will change, starting with agriculture. Food generates more than $50 billion annually across the lower Colorado River basin states, and the industry rests on the foundation of $20 water promised by the Bureau of Reclamation.
With this new agreement, every use of water must exceed the value of not using it. Take the most-grown crop in the Colorado River basin: alfalfa. This grass is exported worldwide and fed to livestock, mostly cows. Alfalfa sells for $230 per ton in California. With 3 acre-feet of water, an acre of alfalfa will yields around 6 tons of product. So, at $20 per acre-foot of water, a farmer would spend $60 in water for $1,380 of alfalfa, leaving plenty of money for labor and equipment and profit. At $521 per acre-foot of water, the farmer pays $3,126 for water alone for that same $1,380 in alfalfa, losing over $1,700 per acre.
By contrast, the farmer could make $3,126 from the federal government for growing nothing and avoiding the water consumption altogether.
The math for most other crops is not much better.
Although the agreement only runs through 2026, water price signals are here to stay. And the price of water — or the value of avoided water use — will only increase. Because of global warming, the flows of the Colorado River will drop by half by 2100, making the current cuts almost seem painless.
The price of a water credit is now set, with the avoided consumption of one acrefoot of water worth $521. Over the next decade, similarly, water-intensive industries will reexamine the water liability of their businesses. For every use of water, they will have to consider what will happen if the price of water doubles, triples or more.
The water reckoning is here, and the West will never be the same.
Grayson Zulauf is the CEO of Resonant Link. He holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University.
It looks at times as if Gov.
Gavin Newsom is trying to imitate Jerry Brown as he tries to gut California’s main environmental protection law, at least for large infrastructure projects like reservoirs, road and bridges.
Brown certainly did reduce the clout of the 1970 California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA, usually pronounced “see-qua”) during his fourth and final term as governor, mainly clearing the way for large spectator sports facilities like the Golden State Warriors’ Chase Center in San Francisco, the Inglewood SoFi Stadium that’s now home to both the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers and the rapidly rising Inglewood basketball arena under construction for the Los Angeles Clippers.
“We have proven we can get it done for stadiums,” said Newsom, “so why…can’t we translate that to all these other projects?” It’s clear he doesn’t want the very people who figure to be most affected by these changes to have any voice in their fate.
This all is a facet of the years-long domination of Sacramento by developers and their allies in the building trade unions. Over the last three years, they have moved politicians whose campaigns they help finance to eliminate virtually all single-family residential zoning around the state, make permitting of small
“granny flats” or additional dwelling units almost automatic, allowed creation of six dwelling units on lots formerly occupied by just one and eased the building of high-rises near light rail stops or major city bus routes.
Newsom’s several-pronged attempt to ease CEQA takes this farther, seeking a ninemonth limit on legal actions under the law. He also wants more funding for planning departments and other agencies that review large-scale plans and other exceptions to the current law. The presumption is this would speed up their work.
CEQA would have few teeth if Newsom gets his way. One pet plan is a long-stymied version of the old Peripheral Canal project, rejected overwhelmingly 43 years ago by state voters. That has now morphed into a plan to bring Sacramento River water south to customers of the state Water Project via a tunnel under the Delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers.
Lawmakers seem prepared to go along. Said Democratic
Davis needs more housing. However, peripheral development that intrudes into our agricultural buffer is not a wise approach. Instead, a thoughtful examination of our current buildout reveals available sites for additional housing that can solve the housing shortage while avoiding the environmental impact of expanding our boundaries. Maintaining compact development keeps our overall GHG emissions lower as the needed biking and busing infrastructure is already in place.
Given the worsening threat of climate change, Davis needs to move in a direction that cuts our greenhouse gases and avoids our dependence on fossil fuels. Currently, transportation accounts for 65% of our city’s greenhouse gas emissions, predominantly from autos. However, if we build infill housing wisely, we can deliberately encourage bicycle and transit use while avoiding sprawl.
The city's recent housing element provides such a path forward. It identifies properties that can accommodate 3,341 units. In addition, the Downtown Plan can produce at least 1,000 residences. The Covell Boulevard infill site across from Nugget Markets that was once in the City's General Plan can accommodate 1,400 residences. The city property along Fifth street at L Street has the potential for 290 more residences. Property on Fermi Place and Montgomery Avenue can accommodate 204 apartments. Redevelopment of several shopping centers could produce 400 or more apartments. Altogether, infill could provide 6,635 new housing units.
Rather than considering several proposals for peripheral development on our eastern side, the city should help owners of infill sites create viable visions for their properties. Such a choice would kick off implementation of Action TR.11, “Develop sustainable housing,” in the city’s adopted Climate Action and Adaptation Plan.
Climate change is bearing down on us. We must move beyond business as usual. This will require using our creative abilities to provide compact, mixed-use,
President
state Senate President Toni Atkins of San Diego, “The climate crisis requires that we move faster to build and strengthen critical infrastructure.”
Both she and Newsom give lip service to the environment while working steadily to denigrate it.
It was much the same under Brown. The onetime seminarian called his efforts to ease CEQA “The Lord’s Work.”
In his time, this meant interpreting the law to let developers qualify initiatives OKing their projects for local ballots and then have city councils adopt the initiatives without public votes.
That’s what enabled building both the Chase Center and SoFi Stadium, plus approval for a former SoFi rival stadium once planned in nearby Carson.
This tactic could be repeated as Los Angeles gets set to host the 2028 Olympics, with some competitions to be staged in various other parts of the state.
All this essentially leaves out the folks most affected by big projects, just like it did in Inglewood, where citizens had nothing to say about razing the Hollywood Park racetrack and replacing it with SoFi Stadium’s much more imposing presence.
Wrote attorney Aruna Prabhala of the Center for Biological Diversity, “CEQA offers
necessary protections for communities and the environment. We should be wary of exaggerated claims by development interests that suggest otherwise.”
A housing shortage, she said, “does not give us free rein to build recklessly. It’s not clear that the governor has fully considered the unintended consequences of fast-tracking infrastructure projects.”
Added Barbara BarriganParilla, head of the Restore the Delta group that opposes Newsom’s tunnel plan, “(He) does not respect the people in communities that need environmental protection,” she said, citing alleged examples from the coronavirus pandemic era.
What’s clear in all this is that if the people most affected by the potential changes in CEQA don’t speak up to their legislators now, Newsom’s plan will pass, developers will have an even freer rein and those affected by new projects will have even fewer ways to protect themselves, their homes and their lifestyles.
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It,” is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www. californiafocus.net
transit-oriented, and affordable housing options, and avoid climate-unfriendly peripheral expansions. Hopefully the newly formed Community Action Network, organized for the purpose of tackling Davis's housing and climate issues together, can be of assistance in producing sustainable infill housing opportunities.
Michael Corbett DavisI happened to see a letter today regarding detransitioners in The Enterprise, and thought you might like some data to go with it: Detransition is exceedingly rare-around 1% of adults who had transaffirming surgery expressed any regret at all, and some of that was temporary. Other research has found that the detransition rate maybe between 1-8%, but does not capture the "degree" of detransition (there's a world of difference between changing your closet out for a new one, and attempting to reverse surgery and hormones), and does not capture people who go on to retransition. Even at 8%, though, trans-affirming care could still be considered wildly successful, when you realize that some other procedures such as knee replacement (20% regret rate) or gastric banding (8 to 20%) are notably less controversial and yet sport much higher rates of regret.
Allie Snyder seems to be repeating sev-
The Hon. Joe Biden, The White House, Washington, D.C., 20500; 202-456-1111 (comments), 202-456-1414 (switchboard); email: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
U.S. Senate
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, 331 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., 20510; 202-224-3841; email: https://www. feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/ e-mail-me
Sen. Alex Padilla, 112 Hart Senate Office
eral talking points that come to us courtesy of various anti-trans thinkers. The careful framing of her thoughts as concern for others' well-being while criticizing medical care as an intentional and "homophobic" effort to turn children into lifetime medical patients, the conspiracy theory of a nefarious "gender medical industry" that is preying on defenseless LGB people, the dismissal of decades-old treatments as "experimental," even the meticulous phrasing of "the LGB and TQ communities" (designed to separate LGBTQIA communities into smaller, more easily targeted groups) are all commonplace tactics. The goal of these efforts is never clearly explained, of course, because then we get into the awkward process of determining which aspects of being trans such people feel should be allowed.
Regardless, those people who truly do detransition deserve our sympathy.
Nobody should have to deal with living in a body that feels foreign to them, and people whose journey has taken them into and then out of the transgender community are almost certainly hurting.
I would counsel caution, though, on the motives of those who would seek to prioritize the needs of detransitioners above those of the much larger trans community. It often seems as though those who lift up such stories are doing so for more than mere altruism.
Jessica Carroway DavisBuilding, Washington, D.C., 20510; 202224-3553; email: https://www.padilla. senate.gov/contact/contact-form/
House of Representatives
Rep. Mike Thompson, 268 Cannon Office Building, Washington, D.C., 20515; 202225-3311. District office: 622 Main Street, Suite 106, Woodland, CA 95695; 530-753-5301; email: https:// https:// mikethompsonforms.house.gov/contact/ Governor Gov. Gavin Newsom, State Capitol, Suite 1173, Sacramento, CA 95814; 916-4452841; email: https://govapps.gov.ca.gov/ gov40mail/
When Paul and Pam Sotherland celebrated their 40-year wedding anniversary in December 2022, they decided to extend the celebration to an entire year by visiting bikefriendly communities to soak up inspiration and bring it back to Kalamazoo, Mich., their hometown.
They kicked off their Anniversary Cycling Tour in April 2023 with a fiveday visit to Davis, where their two-wheeled perspective provided a lot of a-ha moments that they hope will help their Midwest community become even more cycling conducive.
After disembarking from the plane at Sacramento airport, and taking the Yolo County bus to Davis, their adventure began as soon as they set foot on the UC Davis campus. As they walked late in the evening to their downtown Davis hotel, they saw cyclists rolling by everywhere and convenient bike racks full of bikes. Instantly, they knew that they were in a cycling community.
They attributed some of that feeling to the Davis cycling infrastructure, which they studied carefully to learn how to replicate aspects of it back in Kalamazoo. Their hometown, along with Portage, its neighbor to the south, is becoming a haven for bike riding. But the region needs to develop a more
robust and interconnected infrastructure inside the cities as well as in the surrounding rural areas. Hence the desire to visit similarly sized communities in the United States to inform the conversations happening in their area among city engineers, the Kalamazoo Bicycle Club (of which they are longtime members, volunteers, and leaders), and community members. Paul noted that some aspects of the Davis cycling community cannot be replicated when building an infrastructure for cycling back in Kalamazoo. “Davis has a relatively flat topography and it has weather that invites year-round cycling.” But other aspects may be easier to imitate, including pervasive bike lanes, traffic calming techniques, and more. “It’s one thing to hear Kalamazoo’s traffic engineer advocate for these things; being immersed in it in a community like Davis really helps solidify whole-body feelings for what a cycling conducive community can be. So powerful!”
Pam added, “Davis feels like a human-level city where cyclists and people roll and walk, and motorists defer to people. That was reinforced throughout our visit. Davis has a very calm feeling to it; relatively low speed limits, a lot of stop signs, and not many traffic lights all seem to contribute to this perception. Motorists simply can’t go too fast.” When they arrived back home,
they said it was shocking how much faster the cars traveled and how many more traffic lights there were. “Even with zillions of bikes zooming by in Davis, everyone and everything flowed. It felt very welcoming to be a cyclist -like an open invitation to ride your bike, like you belong there. That feeling was immediate.”
Where did they get their two wheels while in town?
They connected with Maria Contreras Tebbutt of The Bike Campaign, who provided bikes for them to use during their
visit. They enjoyed riding on the 12-mile Davis Bike Loop, visiting the US Bicycling Museum, and joining the Davis Bike Club for a donut group ride. But the highlight of their trip was seeing so many children riding their bikes to school. “That was a revelation! We were so surprised to hear that there aren’t any school buses. Riding a bike to and from school helps kids develop a sense of independence and confidence.”
They loved attending one of The Bike Campaign’s Bike Skills Training Programs for the fifthgrade class of Korematsu
Elementary School. They were very impressed with that program and how quickly the volunteers from The Bike Campaign got the kids geared up and riding. Pam and Paul shared how they watched two boys, who appeared to be nervous about riding, become more confident about riding a bike after the volunteers worked patiently, gently, and persistently with them. After only a brief session of mentoring, one of the boys had a big grin on his face and exclaimed, “I can ride a bike!”
Recalling their own childhood, Pam and Paul
shared that they both started riding bikes when they were kids. Pam remembers getting her very first 10-speed Schwinn. “It was green!” Paul grew up riding bikes with his brothers. One of those brothers, John, has owned a bike shop in Wisconsin for over twenty years, where he builds bikes under the name Sotherland Custom Bicycles. So now Paul and Pam get to ride bikes with “Sotherland” emblazoned on the down-tube of their bicycles. Both of Paul’s and Pam’s sons are avid cyclists, and their eldest son is the Active Transportation Coordinator of Orange County, California, a role which includes promoting bike-friendly infrastructure. You might say cycling is in this family’s DNA!
Where are they off to next on their Anniversary Cycling Tour? They plan to stay in the Midwest so they can drive and take their own bikes while visiting Madison and Milwaukee in Wisconsin, and Carmel and Bloomington in Indiana. They hope to learn even more ways to build a bike-friendly community that provides a safe, pleasurable cycling experience for the entire Kalamazoo region.
— This article was written by Lisa Montanaro, commissioned by The Bike Campaign. For more information about how to “Drive Less. Ride More,” contact Maria Contreras Tebbutt at funmaria@sbcglobal.net or www.TheBikeCampaign.com.
When I was a young man in Britain, I was already well connected to the brewing industry. The university department that housed my major also housed the British School of Malting and Brewing.
As a result, I shared many first-year classes with brewing students who were on a one-year study at the brewing school. Many of those students were scions of families whose names were the who-is-who of the British brewing industry of those day. Their days were numbered, but we did not know that then.
We spent a lot of time in pubs, many owned by our classmates’ families, because we liked drinking beer at a discount, and we liked learning about owning a pub from those who owned a lot of them.
Turns out a major problem for some pubs at some times was something called “dispense.”
This is the crucial art of putting beer into a glass and exchanging it for money across the bar; there is no table service at pubs. That problem arose when the pubs were crowded, and a lot of glasses needed filling in a short time.
The practical problem was that the barrels of beer were in the cellar below the bar and had to be drawn some distance through tubing up into the glass.
This required a good deal of energy to be applied to a large lever (handpump) on the bartop that activated a suction pump (beer engine). The process (dispense) was often much too slow for the demand of thirsty customers.
Those, of course, were the days of cask ales, aka cask-conditioned beers, in which the final preparation of the beer for sale happened in the cellar of the pub. This clumsy arrangement could not last, and such beers are now hard to find.
They have been replaced by chilled and filtered and carbonated beer in kegs that leaves the brew ready to be sold through
modern dispense systems that contain electric or gas-powered pumps designed to dispense a specific volume of beer quickly.
The legal age for buying beer in Britain is 18 years old. Youths who are 16 or 17 may legally drink beer or wine in a pub if they are with an adult and have a meal, but they may not buy alcohol.
However, busy British pubs often contain such a mixed bag of people of all ages, especially on weekends, that it is literally impossible to know exactly who is eating, buying or drinking what at any given time, and there is no mechanism for knowing that information.
In all my years of going to pubs I have never known any person, including my underage grandsons, asked for age verification by a barmaid. I suppose that is because nobody is really interested and is willing to let the customer make sensible decisions.
Nothing could be further from the truth in the USA, of course, where we have a ridiculously high age bar (21 years of course) for pur-
Special to The Enterprise
Nicole Duncan of Woodland received a master’s degree in Creative Writing from Wilkes University on May 20. The degree was one of over 650 bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees at its 76th spring commencement ceremonies at the McHale Athletic Center in the Simms Center on Main, 169 S. Main Street in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
Wilkes University is a private, independent, non-sectarian institution of higher education dedicated to academic and intellectual excellence through mentoring in the liberal arts, sciences and professional programs. Founded in 1933, Wilkes is on a mission to create one of the nation's finest doctoral universities.
Eric Nephi Shumate of Woodland was among a record 3,669
graduates who received degrees from the University of NebraskaLincoln during commencement exercises May 19 and 20.
Shumate earned a Master of Science from the Office of Graduate Studies.
The graduates are from 59 countries; 47 states, the District of Columbia and Guam; and more than 240 Nebraska communities.
Stanislaus State University celebrated its Class of 2023 during the University's Commencement ceremonies in the University Amphitheater on May 25 and May 26.
Vaddhana Chhun of West Sacramento graduated with a bachelor of science in nursing.
Jenna Newman of West Sacramento graduated with a bachelor of science in nursing.
chase of alcohol and bar owners are paranoid about losing their license, I presume, to undercover agents. Slow dispense therefore happens here, too, and slows getting money across the bar as it does in Britain. But it has a very different cause: paperwork.
A recent piece in the Sacramento Bee caught my eye: “Amazon’s newest invention could change the way we drink beer for good.” Wow! Thank Goodness this turns out to be less revolutionary than I thought; we shall still imbibe and swallow beer in the same old way — orally.
(Whew!) Amazon’s Amazon One device can read palms, and in general application, would allow enrolled customers to identify themselves and pay for goods and services in one easy and quick operation. The program is being installed at Coors Field where, as far as I can tell from the article, it will only manage the age verification paperwork in a new and efficient manner: the bartender will see a photo and a 21-plus confirmation for those enrolled. Coors Field will thus enable “… a friction-free experience for Colorado
Cisely Arriaga-Garcia of Woodland graduated with a bachelor of arts in psychology.
Glen Wilcox of Davis graduated with a bachelor of science in nursing.
Eva Zapien of Davis graduated with an MBA.
California State University, Stanislaus serves a diverse student body of more than 10,000 at two locations in the Central Valley — a 228-acre campus in Turlock and the Stockton Campus, in the city's historic Magnolia District. The university offers 43 majors, 41 minors and more than 100 areas of concentration, along with 16 master's degree programs, seven credential programs and a doctorate in educational leadership.
— Do you know of someone who has won an award or accomplished something noteworthy? Email it to newsroom@davisenterprise.net.
Busy British pubs often contain such a mixed bag of people of all ages, especially on weekends, that it is literally impossible to know exactly who is eating, buying or drinking what at any given time
Rockies fans so they can grab a drink and get back to the game faster.”
To gain access to this frictionfree boon customers will have to enroll in Amazon One’s age verification feature. A lot of information needs to be uploaded with which not everyone would be comfortable. Good luck with that.
Reach Michael Lewis at waleslewis792@gmail.com.
By Andy Jones Enterprise staff writer1. Newspaper Headlines. With a population of almost 13 million, what U.S. state recently passed HB 2789, a bill whose terms dictate that state funding from public or school libraries that remove books from circulation will be withheld. Hint: The state’s name ends with the letter S.
2. Anagrams. Who is the most famous educator whose name is an anagram for the phrase IN BELLY?
3. Film. What Oscarnominated 1999 film featured acting by four Oscar-winners: Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Cate Blanchett?
4. Italian Culture. The Spanish Steps (in Italian, Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti) are found in what Italian city?
5. Countries of the World. As of 2023, León de Los Aldama is the fourth most populous city in what country?
Answers: Illinois, Bill Nye, “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” Rome, Mexico.
— Dr. Andy Jones is the former quizmaster at de Vere’s Irish Pub and author of the book “Pub Quizzes: Trivia for Smart People.” His pub quiz is now seeking a new home. Meanwhile, Dr. Andy is also sharing his pub quizzes via Patreon. Find out more at www.yourquizmaster.com.
Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman
Charles M. Schulz
After being cancelled or held virtually during the COVID-19 lockdown, the annual Davis High Senior Awards Night returned to the stage on Tuesday, May 30.
“We didn’t know how many recipients and audience members would show up, but we got so many ... and it’s wonderful,” Career Center specialist
Julie Clayton said.
The night recognized DHS seniors who received scholarships, school awards and honors. These awards were presented by DHS faculty and staff as well as representatives from numerous scholarship foundations.
Many scholarships were awarded in memory of individuals who were involved in Davis and the surrounding area, such as the Jacob Cole Schneider Memorial Scholarship. 29 DHS students were awarded this scholarship.
Born in Davis, Schneider attended St. James Elementary School and later moved to Dixon High. Unexpectedly, Schneider passed in a tragic accident and is remembered for his silly and loving personality.
“I am honored to have received this scholarship in Jacob’s memory, and grateful to make a mark on the world just as he had,” Emma Brayton said in the program.
At the end of the night, Athlete of the Year awards were presented to two multisport athletes — Holt Klineberg and Malaya Wright.
Klineberg was a captain of varsity men’s lacrosse as well as varsity men’s soccer. Wright excelled in both women’s water polo and swim.
“I honestly think some other athletes would have been more deserving, but I am definitely honored to receive it. I worked hard for it, so I’m definitely glad that I got it,” Wright said.
Wright also received the Heather Carr West Memorial Scholarship. West was a passionate multi-sport student athlete who attended DHS and was diagnosed with cancer during her last year of graduate school.
“Receiving this scholarship is an immense honor, especially since I knew Heather. I am determined to keep her memory alive,” Wright stated in the program.
The most prestigious award of the night was the Gordon H. True Service Cup. These honors were awarded to two seniors who represented the qualities of school spirit, contributed to a positive school climate and outstanding citizenship at DHS, nominated by their teachers and fellow students. The cups were presented to Mollie Dyer and Max Davis-Housefield.
“I am just really grateful to receive it, especially with the amount of amazing people on our campus. It’s just really awesome,” Dyer said.
As seniors pack their bags and get ready to move away from home, they have to leave one thing behind: their pets.
It can be hard having to move away from a best friend after they have been with you for, in some cases, your entire life. “They’re my rocks. I love them very dearly and it’s like they are constants even when every other part of my life is fluctuating,” senior Claire Miller said about her dogs Cala and Bu.
Her sister felt similarly when she was leaving for college. “I’m really sad to leave them behind. My sister says it was the hardest part about moving and she’s always the most excited to see them when she comes home, so I feel like that’s going to be me,” Miller said.
Senior Sawyer Spann is also having trouble coming to terms with moving away from his cat Hazel. “I’m very emotionally attached to Hazel and I don’t know what I’d do without her. She’s been really comforting to have as I have bad anxiety and it’s nice just to hold her. I don’t know how I am going to do it next year,” he said.
However, their attachment to each other is mutual. “Hazel is so weird. She has attachment issues and whenever I’m not home, she will scream. If I’m in my room and my door is closed, she will yell
and bodyslam my door until I open it for her,” he said.
Yet some pets don’t quite have the same emotional connection with their owners. Senior Marley Michel has had her crested gecko, Tigger, for seven years.
“I’m a little sad to leave him behind, but honestly he’s a reptile so I don’t think he actually cares about me that much,” she said.
Besides the coldhearted lack of connection, having a gecko comes with interesting entertainment. “Crested
geckos don’t have eyelids, so he licks his eyeballs instead of blinking. Also he can climb up vertical walls which is cool,” she said. Even though Tigger isn’t the most involved in Michel’s life, he is still her pet that she will have to say goodbye to. “It’s fun holding him because he’s very soft and squishy and he’s really cute so looking at him makes me happy. I’m gonna miss him,” she said.
Some students, like senior Mayah Moore, live on farms with animals they call their pets. Moore has two dwarf
goats named Henley and Nala.
Living on a farm, Moore has become accustomed to living with her pets, making next year’s transition difficult. “It sucks because I’m so used to seeing them every morning before school and it’ll be weird not to and not having to take care of them,” she said.
Though her goats are part of the farm, Moore says most of the time, “they’re kind of just fun animals to have and hang out with.”
