Bob Dunning: Maybe if we built the water plant at a school …

VOTING FOR DOLLARS … yes, we needed only 50 percent plus 1 to pass our $113 million water project, but we needed two-thirds on the nose to pass the Measure E parcel tax for approximately $110 million less … does that make any sense? …

Actually, we didn’t even need 50 percent for the water project … nope, that one was put on the ballot through the goodness of our dearly beloved City Council, which could have proceeded with the project even without our express permission … clearly, if things were reversed, there’s no way the water project would have approached a two-thirds majority … conversely, every school parcel tax in this town would pass with ease if only 50 percent plus one were required …

SPEAKING OF VOTING … no way to know if the outcome would have changed one way or the other if we were able to achieve 100 percent voter turnout on the Surface Water Project, but any way you slice it, 39 percent is embarrassing for the Second Most Educated City in America …

As I understand it, our pathetic turnout was front-page news in the Chapel Hill Daily Bugle, which keeps track of such things … given that there are about 50,000 people in town who are constitutionally old enough to vote, the 8,000 votes the Yes side pulled in represents less than 1 in 6 of the voting-age population … even worse than that, of course, for the No folks …

Shockingly, that leaves 35,000 of our fellow Davis travelers in the Don’t Care category, a stunning number given that both sides claimed this was the most important election in city history with the exception of the time we agreed to drop the “ville” from Davisville …

ENROLLMENT SOLUTION … given that the state sends us money for every student who attends our public schools, part of the solution to our fiscal crisis is for everyone to have more children … failing that, when and if the Davis City Council approves Cannery Park, it needs to grant priority to those newcomers to town who are likely to produce the most children …

Given that the fertility rate in California is a lowly 1.947, we need to recruit new residents from Utah, where the fertility rate is 2.449, or half a kid more than the California average … as they say in the District attendance office, every half a kid counts … if we wish to move beyond the other 49 states and recruit new residents from U.S. territories, a good choice would be the U.S. Virgin Islands, which, despite the name, has a fertility rate of 2.487 …

Better yet, American Samoa checks in at 3.110, by far the highest fertility rate of any U.S. state or territory … and, given the track record of certain talented Samoans in the NCAA football wars, recruiting from Samoa would no doubt give a boost to the fortunes of our ever-improving Blue Devil football program …

THE FAITHFUL FOUR … in another first, our new Jesuit Pope filled out his own NCAA brackets in the Vatican’s office pool … his Final Four: Gonzaga, Creighton, Saint Louis and Georgetown … his Elite Eight: the previous four, plus Villanova, Marquette, Notre Dame and St. Mary’s … habemus Big Dance …

— Reach Bob Dunning at bdunning@davisenterprise.net