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Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Tuesday Midday Briefs

Council continues backtracking on Senior Citizens Commission merge

It has been fascinating to watch the hasty retreat by Souza and Asmundson on the merging of the Social Services Commission with the Senior Citizens commissions. The plan was first introduced in mid-September. However, the Senior Citizens forcefully rejected idea of the merger.

Now staff is recommending that they delay a final decision for two years. Sue Greenwald is rightly suggesting that it be killed all together. But realistically, it is best to just fight other battles. In two years, if the council majority remains with Souza and Saylor, it probably would be brought back anyway. And if the Progressives take control, the proposal will die whether it is delayed or not. So we might as well move on. The Senior Citizens have won this battle.


Dixon Downs will likely go to the ballot

The Davis Enterprise reports today that the racetrack may have enough signatures to send the decision to the voters. The group has collected over double what they need to get the measures on the ballot. The measure would go to a special election in April if approved.

Meanwhile both the city of Davis and Campbell’s Soup Company have sued over traffic concerns.

Letter to the editor on the Junior High Incident

Hey, "Letters to the Editor" are always fair game. Especially if you write on one of my hot topics.

Kayla Birt writes the Davis Enterprise today:
"If the district were to lose $100,000, every student in the Davis School District would be affected."
I agree. All the more reason to put pressure on the school district to do their job and take care of these problems. This has been a consistent problem with the school district over the years. They are slow to respond. If it takes a $100,000 hit to the school district to wake up the community to what they are doing, then it's well worth it.
"But suing the district does absolutely nothing to solve the problem and harms about 7,000 innocent students along the way."
I disagree, first of all, money was only a very small part of the suit and most of the suit involves simply involves putting policies into place that will help the district stop this from happening in the future and at the same time help Zachary Fischer to go back to school.

Second, as I recall, some of the students are not innocent, so maybe the number should be 6,980.

Third, at $14 per student, perhaps this can prevent someone from going through this, then that's a small but worthwhile cost.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting