 You are tuned into the COVID-19 community report here on KDRT 95.7 FM in Davis, California. I'm Autumn Labbe-Renau and today is Friday, May 8th. We're sharing local news and resources focusing on what's impacting Davis and nearby cities in Yolo County during the COVID-19 pandemic. The show airs live at noon on Tuesdays and Fridays and repeats at 5pm both days and at noon on Sundays. And you can also listen online anytime at kdrt.org. My guest today is Senator Bill Dodd, and we will get to that interview shortly. First, I want to focus on a couple of very positive things. If you weren't following yesterday, the big day of giving happened. And as of this morning, the totals on their website stood at in excess of $11.6 million raised for regional nonprofits. That's an increase of more than $3 million over last year's record-breaking figure. So thanks to everyone who was generous and supported nonprofits, and thanks to all those who supported Davis Media Access and KDRT yesterday. I want to share a few uplifting things today. Since the beginning of the show, I've talked about how I was inspired by the COVID-19 Yolo Response Group on Facebook. And in an early episode, I interviewed its founder, Kate Mellon, Annie Baba. The group grew exponentially in the early days of the pandemic, and they announced last week the transition to a new website. And here's the URL, CCIRG.org. Organizers said they were astonished at how the community stepped up to help each other out, and the website still serves all the functions that the Facebook group did, but it's available more widely to those not on the social media platform. And a new section on the website is called the Yolo Isolation Support Project. The intention of this project is to check in with individuals who are feeling isolated in the community and could use help or support in some way. Again, it's, and this is all caps CCIRG.org. And I think they're fine tuning it, but it is live, and I want to offer up thanks to everyone who's been involved with this remarkable community effort. The 51-year-old student-run Whole Earth Festival at UC Davis, a Mother's Day staple for up to 30,000 people each May, is, of course, not happening in real time this year. But here's another link for you. Twitch.tv slash revshanks. R-E-V-S-H-A-N-K-Z. At 10 a.m. this Saturday, May 9th, gets you a virtual Whole Earth Festival with a lot of the musicians playing. So if you click on that, the account belongs to one of Wes' longtime MCs, Peter Moyes. And again, that link is twitch.tv forward slash revshanks. S-H-A-N-K-Z. I want to tell you that there are amazing online things happening through our local arts organizations. Here's a few examples. Davis Art Center is creating weekly arts mail to spark creativity. Penn Scallery has a series of art-making videos up on its YouTube channel. YOLO Arts is offering a series of live online classes. Pam Letrokansky Dance Workshop is offering video instruction exploring how movement and music work together. And KDRT will produce Make Music Day Locally and virtually on June 21st. Folks, I can't say this enough. Every musician you love, every artist whose work you admire, every arts organization you support, everyone is trying to figure out how to stay relevant and keep providing content that can help our community survive and thrive at this time. Please check out what they're up to, support when and where you can. And finally of note, this week on KDRT is new programming from Independent and Local, Davisville High Country Music, Meraki Radio, Davis Music Collections, Jazz After Dark, Davis Garden Show, That's Life, A Constant Grin, Reaper Radio, Golden Road, and Folk Brothers. And you can see that list is growing by the week and we're thrilled. The way folks are willing to experiment with new ways to produce content is exciting, and it's challenging as heck and hats off to them for making it work. I think I'm going to be taking this show down to just Tuesdays starting in June, but I encourage you if you want to see a schedule, listen to a show, discover something new, get involved. Maybe there is a radio programmer inside of you, you never know, kdrt.org. We'll take a moment for music here and then we'll take our call. Well, we are still waiting for that call to come through. I'm going to go ahead and read a few more announcements I had written up for the day. I recently interviewed Brett Moraska of the Davis Downtown Business Association about the first and very successful downtown gifting stimulus program. The program reopens for a second and final round today, Friday, May 8th at 3pm. Businesses must be members of the DDBA and must register for the program, but basically if you buy a $5 gift card for a participating business, the stimulus program matches it up to a cap. The first round injected more than $130,000 into the downtown economy. It's just really great effort all the way around, davisdowntown.com for more info. And our friends at the Yellow County Library invite you to join the library's virtual summer reading program running from May 18th through August 28th. Although all Yellow County library branches are closed until further notice, children's teens and adults can celebrate this year's theme, Dig Deeper, Read, Investigate, Discover. By logging on, they're reading, earning prizes and participating in special virtual programs and activities that will get everyone digging deeper. Thanks to funding from the Yellow County Library Foundation summer reading program, participants can register online using Beanstack, a web and mobile application that allows users to engage in reading challenges and so on. And everyone who signs up for the summer reading program will also receive a free book. And parents heads up Yellow County Library is also offering a free read-off your finds program as part of their summer reading program. You can choose to have up to $10 in late fees removed from accounts in place of their finishing prizes. The summer reading program is free and sponsored by the various friends of the library groups. For more information or to sign up, visit your local Yellow County Library branch or yellowcountylibrary.org slash summer. So folks, I'm a bit at a loss here because we were expecting a call, so I'm going to put some music back on and try to figure out what's going on there. Okay, he represents the third Senate district in California, which encompasses the northern San Francisco Bay Area and the Sacramento San Joaquin River Delta regions. If you think about that, that's a pretty diverse area. It includes parts of the North Bay, the wine country in the Sacramento Valley and us here in Yellow County. My guest today is Senator Bill Dodd. Welcome. Well, thanks for having me on. It's been a while since I've had you in for election programming and talk to you, but I noticed on your website you're now rocking a full-on quarantine beard. How are you? That's the truth. You know, look at it. I'm fine. My family's fine now, but we've had some ups and downs over the last seven to eight weeks. But, you know, hey, we're struggling through it a little bit. Yeah, yeah, I think that's true for all of us. So, you know, my son-in-law ended up with COVID-19. Oh, no kidding. Yeah, his wife's a labor maternity nurse. They all both went and got tested. He first and went because he had had symptoms and then she went in and she did not. She was tested negative and all for their kids test tested negative. So he stayed in the back room. It was really hard in a small home. We were bringing over meals. But these are stories that, you know, lots of people have been through. Yeah. But they're all AOK right now. He's, you know, back to work. She's back to work and hopefully stronger for it. Well, that's good to hear. Yeah, so I've been interviewing many elected officials on the show. We've talked a lot about stimulus programs. We've talked about reopening from the local and federal perspectives. But we really need to talk about things here in California. So I'm really happy you're here. There's been a lot of state money poured into feeding and housing people and shoring up our safety net. And it's on the news of the educational funding shortfall that was that came out this morning. It's hard to believe that, you know, that's going to be sustainable over time. Although I recognize and appreciate that the state has really stepped up to provide a lot of life-saving measures. So how do you see us beginning to move on to this road to recovery? What are your thoughts on that? Well, it's going to be difficult. I think it was going to be, even with our, you know, even with our rainy day fund, the budget surplus that we had, I still think our local school districts in some of our areas throughout the state of California, we're going to have difficulties. You know, they're having to pay higher, higher percentage of the money that the state has given them, you know, on pensions. The governor has done an outstanding job in the legislature of helping fund, you know, big-time contributions towards the PERS fund, which is helpful, but it's something that's been needed now for a long time. But now that we're going to have the type of, you know, budgets that we have, the $20 billion rainy day fund, probably will not be enough to stand up education anywhere near what we had prior to the pandemic. And to me, that's very, very concerning. What does that mean? What does that mean, higher tuition that's already too high for our college students? What does that mean that we start seeing some of our school districts? I know Dave has unified school districts, very strong school districts, and probably this might not, wouldn't apply to, but I think there's a lot of school districts throughout the state of California in my district that are on the edge. And so what does that mean? Does that mean bankruptcies? I know small cities are, it depends so much on sales tax for the general fund are very, very worried. So we've got our work cut out for us. Yeah. The Associated Press report this morning said that instead of $3 billion more in funding next year for K-12 and community college, they're now projecting possibly $18 billion less over the next two years. So that, it feels almost insurmountable, but, you know, there has to be a way forward out of this. Here in Davis, by the way, and in the Davis-Durant Unified School District, the thing they've been wrestling with is declining enrollment. And that's a real factor for a community because it affects their daily attendance monies, it affects them programmatically and, you know, how they can plan over time. It's a real conundrum. Well, it really is. And, you know, a lot of, well, that's the way the demographics are moving today. I know, you know, I live in the community of Napa and they're facing the exact same thing. You know, there's not as many kids. So, you know, they're finding ways of trying to save money by shutting down schools. Of course, a lot of parents don't like that. Yeah. When they're in fantastic neighborhood school, no longer exist. But it's, I'll tell you what, I think a school board member today over the next five years is probably one of the toughest jobs, public jobs, in terms of elected jobs that there is. You know, we're going to all have tough jobs no matter where we are, no matter what level we are. But I'll tell you, they're the closest, you know, to the people and having to make difficult decisions that impact parents and their children. Right. And that's why it's really even more important for us to be able to find creative solutions to get money there to help them. Yeah. Well, let's talk about reopening for a minute. We've got a lot of things going on in the country with some states reopening, you know, partially some more fully than others. Here in California last week, Governor Newsom talked about us entering stage one of what's essentially a multi-stage plan for reopening the state. So where are we with that and what are your concerns about that? Well, you know, I again, you know, I commend this Governor and his team for I think the incredible job they've done. And I think it's important that we are guided by science and data. That said, I do believe that there is some room for dissent. And I believe that they are starting to get some, you know, particularly in a lot of these regional areas, you know, that are way outside the, you know, the urban centers, for example, big counties. I mean, not big counties, but, you know, counties to the north in the central valley that don't have, you know, that really don't have the virus. But even here, you know, we know our assembly members, Cecilia, you got Curry and I are getting a lot of calls from a lot of people even throughout Yolo County that say, hey, you know, take a look at our infections, take a look at our deaths, take a look at our hospital capacity. Why can't you guys get messages into the Governor's team that, you know, help us, you know, get more into stage two? And the reality is, I think it's going to happen anyway. I think what this Governor is doing, reading between the lines, this thing's going to probably be another couple of weeks. And I think the reality is doing all that we have done and all the people have having sacrificed what they have had to sacrifice for their businesses, for their employees, for their families, for workers not being able to, you know, to be on unemployment and all these just, you know, horrific things that nobody could have ever thought this would have happened to be in 2020, just two months ago. To pull out of this thing and treat it as a light switch instead of the dimmer switch as the example that's been used would just be criminal to be back in the same place in, you know, in a couple of weeks, you know, if we don't do it right. So while I do believe that some of the criteria is kind of suspect, for example, you know, right now in order for local counties to be able to change the state orders, there can't be any more than one case per 10,000 people over the last, you know, 14 days in no COVID-19 death in the last 14 days. Well, those metrics are pretty darn hard, particularly when the governor all along has been saying that, you know, COVID-19 deaths are a lagging indicator. What's really more important is the hospitalizations and the intensive care beds. And then the minimum daily testing of 1.5 per 1,000 residents. At 1.5 per 1,000 residents, a lot of these communities could qualify to get deeper into, you know, into Stage 2 a little bit deeper, but you know the more, you know, if all of a sudden the minimum daily testing because you're doing it better and better and better and that's really what we should be incentivized to do, you know, if you went to 3 per 1,000 residents, all of a sudden your cases per 10,000 people in the last 14 days could rise beyond the maximum cap. And I know I'm kind of getting complicated there, but it seems like we've got some rules and regulations that could be perverse in terms of, you know, having communities do the right thing. And the other thing is, I think the governor's even saying it, nobody's ever done this before. This was like the analogy of a plane being, you know, re-engineered while it's in mid-flight. They've got some really quality people there that are looking at all these things every single day. So I have confidence that in the next couple of weeks people are going to feel a lot better about what's going on, but it just can't be done overnight. Yeah, I hear that. We're also going to see, you know, after another 14-day period after some reopening happens, we're going to get a very visceral reminder when we see, you know, what has happened during that, that's an incubation period for the virus. So I think this is just going to continue to unfold, you know, over time. Totally agree with you. I want to switch gears for a minute because I'm on your press list. So I see, you're a very effective legislator. You've gotten a lot of stuff passed, and you've focused a lot on wildfire, legislation around wildfires and protecting homeowners and consumers and businesses. And, you know, I had a really disturbing thought last night where I realized that by the time we're really beginning to, you know, move into stage three, maybe stage four and come out of this, we're going to be in wildfire season again. And I don't know how our poor beloved California is going to cope if we have another season like the ones we've experienced. Oh, exactly. And then, you know, as we move into that time, even if we're, like last year, we were most fortunate, you know, we had a couple of fires in Southern California that they did not turn. Last year we had, you know, like a fire of, you know, over 50,000 acres that had no death. So that's a positive indicator. It was the first time that we had big fires that didn't take hundreds of thousands of homes. And while that can't be, you know, the total goal, it's certainly a lot better. But then, towards the end of the season, we had how many, you know, power safety, public safety power shutoffs. And those became problems for people. I can't even imagine people, you know, right now, let's just say you had a two-day power shutoff while everybody's at home. No. I mean, we, these are things that we're already thinking about that we're, you know, we're meeting on Zoom calls right now, talking about this, the Cal Fire, who, you know, is led by Tom Porter, is just doing a phenomenal job, you know, working on, okay, how do we stage people in terms of distancing, physical distancing in this day and age of COVID-19 while they're on a fire line, for heaven's sake. Oh, goodness. So, you know, there's a lot of work to be done, but, you know, that's the one thing I really believe in, that we've got a lot of great people here in the state of California that really work hard to try to keep this out. Yeah. And you serve on the insurance commission. So I'm willing to bet that you have heard just endless stories these last few years who have lost everything in fires. I know it's hit areas in your district hard, too. It really has. I wasn't on the insurance committee at all, but I was so incensed. I had an insurance bill that just said, you know, essentially what I wanted is living expenses for people that were, you know, in a federally and state-declared disaster emergency to be for three years instead of two years. Yeah. And when you have a surge demand like we did of two to 3,000 homes burning all at once, there's no market scenario that you can get your house rebuilt in two years. Here we are right now at year three, and I don't think we're at 50%. Wow. And that's because we don't have enough, you know, there's not even like enough building materials and labor to be able to do it that quickly, let alone getting it through the insurance. And also because of escalating costs, you know, even being able to afford it. So I was able to get that bill across, but it wasn't retroactive. It was just for the future, so it helped the, you know, the Butte County fires up there, the campfires. But it should have been retroactive to the people, you know, in Sonoma County and, you know, in Napa County. I was really disappointed. The area that I saw that was, you know, in insurance that there needs to be changes to California state law, and I was really honored that Senate Pro Tem Tony Atkins appointed me to the insurance committee after. I wasn't even on the Energy, Utilities, and Communications Committee, but because of my experience with the fire she appointed me to, that committee as well. Yeah. And I hope, I'm going to switch gears once again. We have just a couple minutes left, but on that note, the committee you just mentioned, I hope that there are real, sincere conversations happening around our awareness of broadband as a utility moving forward, because we've seen, I'm talking to every single elected official at every level about this particular topic. We've seen, you know, what happens when everyone needs to be at home and use that for Zoom, as you said, or for distance learning. And we've also, it's highlighted the inequity in the system where there's the haves and the have-nots in a way that, you know, we knew that was there, but it's really been highlighted. So I just, this is me encouraging you to really make sure those kinds of discussions are happening. Please. I totally appreciate that, because we had a digital divide long before COVID-19. Absolutely. And in areas that, rural areas, communities of concern, low income, communities of colors, just don't have access. And then even while we have this, let's just say we are fortunate, we're no one near that right now, of getting everybody broadband. There still is that, you know, there are people that have the technical capabilities to do that, and not the, you know, but there are others that don't have the technical abilities, the kids that parents don't, you know, maybe English is the second language, obviously, and they don't have the ability to figure out so we need to get help, we need to get the technology and everything. So I'm with you. This is something that for, for in 2020, for everybody not to have connectivity and equality in this area is just striking. Well, I hope you will come back at some time and we can talk about that further. I want to thank you for sharing some of your valuable time with us today. It's been insightful and I really appreciate it. Well, I'd love to come back and I thank you very much. All right. All right. Senator Bill Dodd, thank you so much for joining us. All right. I will be back on Tuesday and I'll have City Council, Davis City Council member Dan Carson with us on Friday. We'll have, with us on Friday, we'll have, with us on Friday, we'll have City Council member Dan Carson with us on Friday.