Sports
Brothers find farming is in their blood.
Two Blue Devils place at Masters, advance to state meet — Page B6
— Page B3
Forum
Food
When things go wrong, try to learn from mistakes — Page B2
enterprise THE DAVIS
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2023
Supervisors OK grant for South Davis library
Hundreds of Cal Poly Humboldt students and campus community members protest at the campus quad on Feb. 8. against a housing policy change that left continuing students unsure where they would live next semester.
By Anne Ternus-Bellamy Enterprise staff writer
The university became a
The Yolo County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to accept a state grant of $8.78 million for construction of a new library in Walnut Park in South Davis. The two supervisors representing Davis — Lucas Frerichs and Jim Provenza — were joined by Supervisors Gary Sandy of Woodland and Angel Barajas of the rural 5th District in voting to accept the award (which comes with a 100 percent local match requirement) while Supervisor Oscar Villegas of West Sacramento abstained after expressing concerns about remaining funding gaps for both construction and operations. Since the county received that grant in October, city and county officials have identified several funding sources to help close a remaining $12.7 million gap for construction after accounting for the state grant. Those sources include $3.1 million in library development impact fees as well as $5.68 million in Mello Roos Special Library Taxes generated in
See GROWING, Page A4
See LIBRARY, Page A5
Oden Taylor/ CalMatters photo
Growing pains: Homeless on campus? By Oden Taylor CalMatters When students decide to attend Cal Poly Humboldt, they likely see themselves living in the forest among the state’s largest redwood trees, high enough on a hill that they can see Humboldt Bay and the ocean in the distance. They probably don’t picture studying from a motel or a floating barge. But that could be the reality
for hundreds of returning students next academic year as the university prepares for an influx of enrollees drawn by its recent transformation from Humboldt State to Northern California’s first polytechnic university. When the university revealed Feb. 4 that incoming first-years would have priority for all oncampus housing — likely locking out returning students — the move sparked protests, a
petition, and the founding of a new organization, Cal Poly Homeless, to fight the change. In response to the backlash, Cal Poly Humboldt partially walked back its plans, saying it will now find on-campus beds for about half of the estimated 1,000 returning students who were set to be displaced from the 5,700-student campus. But the uproar illustrates how central student housing has
become to just about any major higher education initiative in California, where skyrocketing housing prices have students living in cars and state lawmakers have set aside more than $2 billion over the next few years to build new dorms and on-campus apartments.
County winds down COVID declarations By Anne Ternus-Bellamy Enterprise staff writer Yolo County’s local COVID-19 emergency declarations will end on Feb. 28 — nearly three years after they were enacted — but that doesn’t mean the virus itself has gone away, the county’s health officer said Tuesday. In fact, said Dr. Aimee Sisson, wastewater levels of the virus in Davis are moderate and rising, likely driven by XBB.1.5, a “highly infectious Omicron variant (that) is now dominant in California, representing 70 percent of new COVID-19 cases.” But those levels are well below what was seen during their peak in December,
VOL. 125 NO. 23
INDEX
Business Focus A6 Forum �����������������B2 Obituary �������������A3 Classifieds ���������A3 The Hub �������������B1 Sports ���������������B6 Comics ���������������B4 Living �����������������B3 The Wary I ���������A2
and other metrics used to evaluate community transmission also remain low, including COVID-19 hospitalizations. Meanwhile, said Sisson, “as we consider ending the local COVID-19 emergency declaration, it’s helpful to reflect on how far we’ve come since the COVID emergencies were declared at the local, state and federal levels in March of 2020. “In March 2020, the world was turned upside down by a novel coronavirus that we knew nothing about, for which the only testing available was through the CDC and took days to get results, for which there was no vaccine,
WEATHER Thursday: Rain, chance of snow. High 49. Low 38
nor any specific treatment, and we didn’t have enough gowns, masks, gloves or goggles to protect healthcare workers, let alone masks for the general public. “Contrast those dark early days of the pandemic with today’s COVID-19 reality,” she said. “We’ve learned a lot about (the virus). Antigen tests are widely available and provide results in 15 minutes; safe and effective vaccines are available; safe and effective oral treatments available; and we have enough PPE for healthcare workers, along with high quality masks for the general public.
See COVID, Page A5
Gregory Urquiaga/UC Davis photo
UC Davis students pass grazing sheep outside Bainer Hall on campus.
Sheep trick: Urban grazing benefits landscapes, people By Karen Nikos-Rose Special to The Enterprise Bicycles whirr by, students rush to class, staff and faculty are grabbing lunch or coffee on the go — and sheep graze the grassy knolls among the traffic, bleating every now and then. The grazing is their job. The 25 wooly sheep who seasonally — for the past two years — leave their UC Davis barns to nibble on lawns at various central campus locations, are doing much more than mowing, fertilizing and improving the ecosystem. The sheep also are improving people’s mental health. The sheep — four breeds of Suffolk, Hampshire, Southdown and
HOW TO REACH US
www.davisenterprise.com Main line: 530-756-0800 Circulation: 530-756-0826
Dorset — first took on this role in 2021, when COVID-19 masking and social-distancing protocols were in full swing. The goal was to determine whether sheep could benefit urban lawn landscapes and make a case for increasing their usage. The program is growing and exploring additional benefits sheep provide. “This started out as experiment to test their mowing abilities, and we have now published research on how they make people feel peaceful,” said Haven Kiers, the lead author of a new study, director of the sheep mowers project
http://facebook.com/ TheDavisEnterpriseNewspaper http://twitter.com/D_Enterprise
See SHEEP, Page A4
WED • FRI • $1