enterprise THE DAVIS
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2020
UCD student identified in Sac shooting BY CALEB HAMPTON Enterprise staff writer
Elections are different in Davis with the advent of the district system, and one of the big changes is how mayors will be selected. OWEN YANCHER/ ENTERPRISE PHOTO
Council will pick future mayors BY ANNE TERNUS-BELLAMY Enterprise staff writer Davis City Council members want to decide for themselves who will serve as mayor in the future. Under a proposal approved unanimously Tuesday, the council will vote in a new mayor for an 18-month term in June 2022. Between now and then, Mayor Gloria Partida will serve out the rest of her mayoral term and beginning in January 2024, a new mayor will be selected by the council every year. A mayor could be re-elected by his or her colleagues to serve
a second one-year term but no mayor could serve more than two years. How to choose a mayor became a topic of discussion after the city switched to district-based elections last fall. Previously mayors were essentially selected by voters, as the candidate with the highest vote total in each at-large council election became mayor pro tem for two years, followed by a two-year stint as mayor. But with the switch to district elections, that process is no longer possible. Voters are only choosing one
council member to represent them and vote totals will be different in each district, based on the number of residents and how many cast votes. Among the options for choosing a mayor going forward was simply rotating the position through the five council districts on a yearly basis. Such a method is used by the Yolo County Board of Supervisors, for example, with the position of board chair rotated annually. Last year, Councilman Dan Carson proposed another method, namely, having the position of mayor rotated each
year to the council member with the longest tenure on the council who has not yet served as mayor. (If two or more council members have equal tenure, the order by which they would serve as mayor would be chosen by lot). At the time, Carson expressed concern that “the selection of mayors after we shift to district elections poses a serious risk of dividing our council in factions. “I believe that establishing clear-cut selection rules for mayors under a new district
SEE MAYORS, PAGE A4
UC Davis student Hassibullah Shams Hassib, 33, was identified Wednesday by the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office as the man suspected of fatally shooting two people and injuring a third before killing himself Saturday at an Afghan grocery store in Sacramento. Hassib died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after opening fire around 3:10 p.m. Saturday at the East Market & Restaurant on El Camino Avenue in the Arden-Arcade area, law enforcement officials said. He was a current student at UC Davis and graduated from Sacramento’s Mira Loma High School in 2005. Shujauddin Omarkheil, 27, of Natomas, was shopping with his 4-year-old daughter for fresh bread to take home for dinner when he was shot in the head, according to Farhad Yousafzai, a family friend who started a GoFundMe page for Omarkheil’s family. “Omarkheil’s wife received a call to pick up her daughter as her husband had been taken to the Emergency room,” Yousafzai said on the fundraising page. Hours later, Omarkheil
SEE SHOOTING, PAGE A5
How to track your ballot BY ANNE TERNUS-BELLAMY Enterprise staff writer
‘Totally inadequate’ Wildfire alerts not reaching residents BY JAMES BIKALES CalMatters Tracey Aldrich had never heard of CodeRED, Butte County’s opt-in emergency notification system, until she came upon a roadblock leading up to her mother’s house in August. At the roadblock, police told her a firestorm was bearing down on her mother’s neighborhood in Berry Creek. Neither she nor her mother had received any evacuation warnings.
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Aldrich’s 70-year-old mother needed help escaping but the only road was closed, so Aldrich asked sheriff ’s deputies to escort her mother off the mountain. Her home survived with minor damage from the flames. But the harrowing experience last month left both mother and daughter shaken and frustrated that they were never alerted to the fast-approaching North Complex Fire, which killed 15 people in Berry Creek. “She had no warning,” Aldrich said. “If I wouldn’t have been on my way to her house, she would have never known, and the fire would have ripped
INDEX
SEE ALERTS, PAGE A6
SEE BALLOT, PAGE A5
ANNE WERNIKOFF/ CALMATTERS PHOTO
Taylor Craig stands on the edge of his family’s property outside of Vacaville on Oct. 2. Charred trees and ground on the adjoining property were caused by the LNU Lightning Complex Fire in August. through there.” A CalMatters review reveals that the systems that warn
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Californians about emergency
Whether you drop your vote-bymail ballot in a drop box or a mail box, you can check whether it’s received by county elections officials by signing up for “Where’s My Ballot.” The service offered by the California Secretary of State’s Office and Yolo County’s elections office provides voters with automatic updates when their ballots are mailed out, received and counted. Visit https://california.ballottrax. net/voter/ to sign up to receive notifications by email, text or phone. Vote-by-mail ballots were sent out this week to all active registered voters in the county. Once filled out, they can be mailed back to the county elections office in the postage-paid envelope or deposited (also in the signed envelope) in
Sat Saturday: Mostly cloudy. High 75. clo Low 55. Page B8 Lo
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