City News

Fundraisers such as the Dollar-A-Day campaign and Schoolapalooza, as well as the passage of PropositionW in November (a parcel tax specifically aimed at maintaining school programs), have helped to maintain funding for teachers, librarians and science programs.

Mike Genest, director of the California Department of Finance, calls this the most challenging fiscal crisis California has ever faced. The California State Controller is projecting that California will be out of cash by February and the California Department of Finance is estimating a $40 billion budget deficit through the fiscal year of 2009-2010.

If all goes according to plan,the Davis Joint Unified School District may soon sell its surplus property at the Grande School Site in North Davis. After decades of ownership,DJUSD has finally achieved a tenable design for the8.83acre property in collaboration with City Council and surrounding neighbors.

JAN.3 Santa came late A purse was dumped on a rooftop onValdora Street. Reforesting Davis Four male teenagers were placing Christmas trees in the middle of the road on J Street andDrexel Drive.

With extremely limited on-campus housing at UC Davis,the Office of Student Housing keeps an eyeonthe local rental market.Student Housing’s33rdannual survey of the state of the rental market was released late last month. In the city of Davis,the vacancy rate increased slightly from0.7to0.8percent and the average cost of rentincreased4.36percent in2008.

The reuse of the Hunt-Boyer mansion downtown has become a topic of much discussion among the Davis City Council and local groups. The Hunt-Boyer mansion is located on the corner of Second and EStreetsand is currently used as office space for city staff,but the city wants to put it to better use.City staff are currently working on an analysis of the building and its potential uses.

As construction workers prepare to pour the foundation for a new Target store in Davis,a citizens oversight group is sounding the alarm about a recent discovery of a hazardous substance nearby.

OnTuesday night,the DavisJointUnified School District schooldistrict held its first “virtual town hall meeting.” Superintendent James Hammond,Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Bruce Colby and School Board President Sheila Allenaddressed questionsparents,teachers and members of the community submitted beforehand.

Though Proposition5was defeated in November by a margin of20percent,there are still other state-run programs that use drug treatment as an alternative to prison. Prop36is one such program.Voted into law in2000,this proposition gives a limited number of people sentenced to shorter prison terms the option to receive drug treatment instead of prison.

The owners of the largest plot of undeveloped land in Davis want to develop it into a mix of housing and industrial office space.The Davis City Council,however,is not so keen on the idea of giving it up for housing.The roughly100-acre site,known as Cannery Park,is located north of Covell Boulevard and east of F Street.For38years it was the site of a cannery operation but has been vacant since1999.Lewis Planned Communities,the current owner,has been working for four years on a plan to construct610residential units and20acres of business park offices.

A missing UC Davis professor was found dead Monday after an apparent suicide in Sonoma County,police said. The body of Richard Walker,Jr.washed up at a campsite on Salmon Creek State Beach in Bodega Bay on Monday evening,said Davis policeSergeant Scott Smith.

A thick and lingering fog blanketed Davis and most of the Central Valley on Monday and part of Tuesday,drastically reducing visibility and marking the start of “fog season” in the region. Widely known as“tule fog,“ the fog in Davis is different from the kind of fog seen in San Francisco and the Bay Area.While the fog there blows in from the ocean,fog in the Central Valley is a“radiation“ fog,said atmospheric science professor Kyaw Paw U.