What started as efforts geared toward benefiting the students and faculty of UC Davis has now transformed into a complex issue, on which different sectors of the community are having difficulty coming to an agreement.

On Feb. 2 Davis City Councilmembers discussed the possible annexation of West Village housing development, along with the implementation of a special assessment district to bring participants into agreement.

Councilmembers Sue Greenwald, Lamar Heystek and Stephen Souza are interested in creating a special assessment district that would allow members of West Village to vote on taxes and fees imposed by the university. Councilmembers hope the design of this district, along with annexation, will make the situation more financially motivating.

While the city, county and university all originally supported annexation at the beginning of the project, the three groups failed to agree on the execution of taxes and authority. UCD is willing to annex West Village only if both Yolo County and the city of Davis come to agreement upon terms.

The inability to reach fiscal neutrality, as well as negotiating short and long-term costs are creating issues, according to the city’s staff report.

Mayor Ruth Asmundson and Mayor Pro Tempore Don Saylor are primarily concerned with the amount of time being dedicated to annexation. Other issues are authorization of land-use and whether or not residents of West Village can vote in city elections.

“The discussion of the annexation is unfortunately a distraction from the collaboration we need to be focusing on,” Saylor said. “Annexation is not a feasible option at this time. The financial realities that face all three entities and the need to treat similarly situated persons in similar ways undermine the desire to annex at the moment.”

Due to recent budget cuts, Yolo County would prefer to collect the $232,000 per year in property taxes that it would receive if West Village were not annexed.

“Further, the current West Village fiscal studies indicate a significant difference in revenue to the county under annexation versus no annexation that would have to be addressed. Given these and other concerns, it is the consensus of the subcommittee that the county would prefer at this time the West Village project not be annexed to the City of Davis,” said Robyn Truitt Drivon, Interim County Administrator in a Sept. 29, 2009 letter addressed to city Manager Bill Emlen.

However, if the city does choose to annex West Village, there will be a surplus of $240,000 in vehicle license fee money given by the state to the city. The city has about one year left to make the decision before residents will move in and the state will withhold this money.

Greenwald said annexation doesn’t pencil out right now. She encourages students to mobilize around this issue. If discussion ends and annexation does not occur before residents move in, then the city loses $240,000.

“The city just wants to be fiscally neutral with this project,” Greenwald said. “The county wants to make a profit. Personally, I think they should also be striving for fiscal neutrality because it’s offering affordable housing and helping students. Fiscally, as well as in terms of doing the right thing, in a civic sense, it makes sense to annex.”

West Village is a 220-acre mixed-use community west of Highway 113 and south of Russell Boulevard that will soon offer affordable housing to students, faculty and staff. Developers of the project approximate that the new site will house about 4,350 people. Planners expect to begin construction of the homes in spring 2010 and have them available for purchase in fall 2011.

The West Village was designed based upon housing affordability, environmental awareness and a network of open spaces and parks. Smaller units are priced at around $400,000 and will fluctuate over time depending on the salaries of faculty and staff, rather than the local market.

The meeting concluded with a 3-1 vote to continue annexation efforts, with Saylor voting against the decision.

“What I hope we can do now, is we need to work to assimilate the new residents into the community, into the life of the community,” Saylor said.

SAMANTHA BOSIO can be reached at city@theaggie.org.

Los Angeles and San Francisco roads may conjure up images of traffic nightmares, but according to 2007 state traffic data, the worst place to take a drive in California is in the city of Sacramento.

Based on population, Sacramento had the most fatal and injury-inducing collisions in 2008. Almost 4,000 people were injured or killed. The data for 2009 has just been released and will be analyzed by the end of 2010, said Wayne Ziese, spokesperson for the California Office of Traffic Safety.

Comparatively, Davis – in a smaller population group than Sacramento – saw just over 200 car injuries or fatalities.

Traffic data also shows 10 percent of Sacramento collisions are alcohol-related.

“Sacramento relies heavily on vehicles,” said Silas Miers, program specialist at Mothers Against Drunk Driving. “[There is] a high concentration of bars and people travel all the way to downtown [Sacramento] from suburbs and don’t think about how they are going to get home.”

Despite high accident numbers, Sacramento police have upped their efforts in the past year to keep drunk drivers off the road, Miers said.

“Statistics take a while to catch up,” he said. “As we continue to see these numbers we’ll see a significant decline in [DUI cases] in general. [Enforcement] has been very successful, but one death is just too many for us.”

City of Sacramento traffic engineer Hector Barron said Sacramento is tackling the city’s low ranking, though it may take more time for changes to be seen.

“Changing those numbers will take some time,” Barron said. “The city of Sacramento has really changed over the years and how we build our roadways.”

The city has developed a multi-faceted plan to create safer roads and made various policy changes, he said.

“[There’s a] big shift to how we design our roadways,” Barron said. “[Plans] ensure there’s space for cars, pedestrians and bikes.”

New street standards are part of the city’s bigger goals, but on a day-to-day basis Barron said engineers keep safety a high priority.

“The approach we take these days is, ‘Let’s try to improve traffic safety,'” he said. “Even when we are doing maintenance we see it as opportunity to improve safety.”

Improvements include reducing number of lanes or adding lanes, changing lane widths and maintenance.

In a different statewide study of traffic safety, the Highway Loss Data Institute looked for improvements in California collision rates after the state, along with Washington D.C., Connecticut and New York, implemented a ban on hand-held cell phone use while driving. In California, the ban took effect in July 2008.

The study found there has been no change in traffic patterns since the law took effect, said Russ Rader, spokesman for the Highway Loss Data Institute.

“Our role is do research to guide lawmakers in enacting sensible policy,” Rader said. “It makes sense to look if these laws are effective.”

The research is preliminary and based on insurance reports of every 100 cars. The next step in researching California traffic safety is to look at the effect of text messaging bans in vehicles, Rader said.

Distracted driving may be part of Sacramento’s safety problems along with drunk driving, but Barron and Mier both said a key way to improve driving is through enforcement. Sacramento only has about 20 traffic enforcement advisors, said Barron.

SASHA LEKACH can be reached at city@theaggie.org.

The mortality rate of California women who die from causes directly related to pregnancy has nearly tripled in the past decade.

This is prompting doctors to worry about the dangers of obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes in expectant mothers and about medical complications such as hemorrhaging from Cesarean sections.

A study on pregnancy mortality rates conducted by the California Department of Public Health has doctors trying to figure out why pregnancy death rates are increasing.

Although the CDPH declined to release a report outlining the trend, investigators working on the study provided statistics from the report.

According to the investigative journalism web site Californiawatch.org, in 1996, the California maternal mortality rate was 5.6 per 100,000 live births, and rose to 16.9 in 2006. This is higher than the national maternal mortality rate of 13.3 per 100,000 in 2006.

Al Lundeen, deputy director and Office of Public Affairs at the CDPH, explained that the report cannot be released because it is still in preliminary stages.

“The maternal mortality report is in the review stage. Like all other reports at the CDPH, it is reviewed by other scientists and experts,” Lundeen said. “There is no set timeline for completion because it is impossible to predict what other changes or additional reviews may be necessary. CDPH standard review procedure is to produce a report that is complete and optimizes the health and well-being of Californians. That review is thorough and is not taken lightly. CDPH is committed to sharing this information with the public when it is completed.”

Dr. Elliott Main, the principal investigator for California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative, the public-private task force investigating the problem for the state, talked to Californiawatch.org.

Scientists have started to ask what doctors are doing differently, Main said. He added that it is hard to ignore the fact that C-sections have increased 50 percent in the same decade that maternal mortality increased.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics researchers, in 2006, 31.1 percent of births were by way of C-sections.

Tosi Marceline, a midwife in Davis for Birthstream Midwifery, believes the move toward more C-sections and hurried births is the primary reason for the increase in the death rate.

“You can’t increase the C-section rate without increasing the maternal mortality rate,” Marceline said. “Nobody knows what’s normal anymore. We live in a microwave generation culture. Everything is faster, but people have to realize that babies don’t come any faster and that our bodies work the same way they always have.”

Marceline disagrees with many of the reasons some are giving for the rise in deaths.

“The first article I read about it tried to do the classic thing and blame women for being too fat, old or diabetic,” Marceline said. “These reasons really can’t be used to explain the problem.”

Sacramento County Health Officer Dr. Glennah Trochet said there has to be more to the problem than C-sections, such as sexually transmitted diseases such as chlamydia, which can scar a woman’s fallopian tubes.

Teresa Forfythe, a labor and delivery nurse at Davis Sutter Health’s Birthing Center, said she believes it is difficult to tell the reason for the increase without looking at statistics of what is happening to individual mothers at the times of their deaths. She said an increase in illnesses could be contributing to this trend.

With so much concern for the issue, a national effort was developed to draw public attention to the maternal death rates and to underreporting of maternal deaths in the United States. The Safe Motherhood Quilt Project was created to honor women who have died of pregnancy-related causes since 1982.

The California task force is not waiting to determine the ultimate cause of these deaths. It has started pilot projects to improve the way hospitals respond to hemorrhages to better track women’s medical conditions and to reduce inductions.

ANGELA SWARTZ can be reached city@theaggie.org.

Two people were arrested on Super Bowl Sunday for driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Increased patrol was a part of the state’s Avoid the 8 program, which sets up DUI checkpoints during weekends with an expectation of a higher number of drunk drivers.

During a six-hour period, the taskforce of nine officers patrolled Yolo County. Officers conducted 42 traffic stops. Of those stops six field sobriety tests were administered, one vehicle was impounded and two people were found driving without valid licenses.

According to research by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 2008, fatalities in alcohol-impaired-driving crashes accounted for 32 percent of all motor vehicle traffic fatalities. On Super Bowl Sunday 2008, 49 percent of the fatalities occurred in crashes where a driver or motorcycle rider had a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) level of .08 or higher.

Statewide, 11 people were killed Super Bowl Sunday in 2009 and another 133 were injured in alcohol-involved collisions. This figure is three times the daily average killed in California with alcohol as a factor, and those injured were over twice the daily average.

Rod A. Rifredi, Traffic Sergeant for the Davis Police Department, said this year’s Super Bowl weekend was mellow compared to other years.

“We didn’t have many problems with intoxication this year,” Rifredi said. “I think we’re getting the message across that drunk driving is not going to be tolerated. People are either finding alternatives or not traveling far to watch the game.”

Chris Cochran, Assistant Director of the California Office of Traffic Safety, said funding more programs to prevent alcohol related driving issues has made a real difference in the last few years.

Davis Police Chief Landy Black expressed the importance of designated drivers before the Super Bowl began.

“We want to pass our safety message to everyone who will be drinking this weekend, Real Fans Don’t Let Fans Drive Drunk,” Chief Black said in a press release, referring to the community slogan. “Please act responsibly, designate a sober driver before the Super Bowl party begins and leave your car keys at home.”

William Aiken, Internet Publicist for the drunk driving prevention advocacy group Remove Intoxicated Drivers, said police departments should not announce the saturation periods to the public in advance.

“When you compare the regions that announced they were increasing police presence during these weekends, you find that there are less drunk drivers found in these areas,” Aiken said. “It’s better for people not to know, so they will not change their normal behavior for just one weekend.”

Aiken also believes that even though there is higher alcohol consumption, this does not necessarily equate to a higher number of drunk drivers during this weekend.

Funding for Avoid the 8 program is provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety, through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The program has been running since 1973, and other weekends that have increased enforcement include Halloween, the Fourth of July, Labor Day weekend, St. Patrick’s Day and Cinco De Mayo.

ANGELA SWARTZ can be reached city@theaggie.org.

Two U.S. defense officials have called for an end to the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, taking a step toward allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the military.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates testified before a Senate panel last week, seeking an end to the 16-year-old policy, which allows gay people to serve in the military under the condition that they do not reveal their sexuality.

“No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens,” Mullen told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

There was a negative reaction from many Republicans on the committee, especially from Sen. John McCain of Arizona. He asserted that Gates’ testimony was biased, and though the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy is not perfect, repealing it would put too much stress on the military.

The possible negative impact on the military is one of the main arguments against ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Mullen acknowledged.

“I just think we need to be mindful of the fact that we’re in two wars and that any kind of change like this be done in a way where it has absolutely minimal impact on those who make such a difference for our country,” Mullen said in a speech.

Sergeant Frederick Lau of the UC Davis ROTC is also concerned not necessarily with the values behind ending the policy but with its effect on the military.

“I don’t necessarily agree that it’s an acceptable lifestyle, but I’m tolerant of it,” Lau said. “The question is how the change is going to be implemented.”

Many gay men and women continue to serve in the military despite “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

“I have served with homosexuals since 1968,” Mullen told the committee. “Everybody in the military has, and we understand that.”

The policy prevents some people from serving, however. Approximately 428 people were discharged from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines last year for violating the policy, according to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. The total is about one-third lower than in 2008, when 619 people were discharged.

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” establishes conduct, not orientation, as the grounds for separation from the military. According to the Department of Defense website, a person is discharged if they “engage in or attempt to engage in homosexual acts, state they are homosexual or bisexual or marry or attempt to marry a person of the same biological sex.”

“We don’t discriminate against someone who is gay,” Lau said. “There aren’t witch hunts going on in the military for gay people.”

Though many people in the gay community believe that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” should be ended in order to achieve greater equality for gays and lesbians, that is not the extent of the issue.

“I think that the intentions behind this fight to end such a policy come from a good place but with little critique on the military itself,” said Mark Yanez, a senior women and gender studies major at UC Davis and intern for the LGBT Resource Center.

“The U.S. Military is institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic,” Yanez said. “The scary reality is that there are more army recruitment fairs at high schools in low-income urban areas than college fairs. It is scary that about 50 percent of women serving in the U.S. Military have been sexually assaulted. Lifting the ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ policy will not end homophobia in the military.”

Any definitive action is unlikely to happen soon. Adm. Mullen and Gates said there will be a Pentagon review, which could last up to a year, to study how best to implement the change.

SARAH HANSEL can be reached at city@theaggie.org.