Provenza gave a lot to this community

ATRUE MAN OF THE

PEOPLE

... I was sorry to hear that Yolo County Supervisor Jim Provenza has decided not to run for a fifth term.

The good news is that he still has 20 months left on his term and has no plans to step down early.

His accomplishments have been many, but above all else, he was incredibly accessible and always willing to listen to other points of view. He was driven by finding solutions to everyday problems, not by an unyielding ideology.

I looked up "Public Servant" in the giant Merriam-Webster unabridged dictionary my dad gave me when I graduated from college and there was Jim's photo smiling back at me. He will be missed.

ON THE OTHER HAND ... The good news here is that great candidates have emerged to replace Provenza, with Sheila Allen and Antonio DeLuera-Brust both announcing their candidacies.

It will be an interesting race, to say the least, with more candidates likely to emerge.

Electoral Nonsense

In the recent Davis City Council special election, we all learned about the state law that dictates the order of how names appear on the ballot.

Presumably, there's a Ph.D. thesis somewhere that concluded having your name first on the ballot enhances your chance of winning.

The California Secretary of State draws letters of the alphabet, with the first letter drawn placed next to the number 1. This is done until all 26 letters have been assigned a number.

You then go to the first letter of the last names of the candidates