90 CANDLES FOR A DAVIS LEGEND … they say it takes a village to raise a child, and during my youthful days in what was then the very small town of Davis, a guy named Milt Silva did his level best to impart life lessons to a whole bunch of Davis kids … Silva, who turns 90 today, was my Babe Ruth League manager, and I’m not alone when I say that every member of that team is better today for having known him … yes, Milt wanted to win as badly as the next guy, but sportsmanship, fair play and respect for one’s opponent were much higher values in his playbook …

Milt coached the Medlock Dusters, named for the outfit that sends crop dusters over our fields, and one day we were locked in a 2-2 extra-inning affair with the dreaded Steelers … we were up last and I drew a leadoff walk, moved to second on a wild pitch and to third on a balk … no outs … home plate — and victory — just 90 feet away … unfortunately, speed on the base paths was not one of my strengths … I was unlikely to score from third even if someone crushed the next pitch off the center field wall …

Milt called time-out and came over to third base … not wishing to hurt my feelings, but certain that I was a liability at that point — both to the team and to myself — he gently called for a pinch runner by telling me it was time to let one of the kids on the bench play … one pitch later, that kid scored the winning run on an infield grounder … I would have been thrown out at the plate … a few years later, as an undergraduate at UC Davis, I landed a part-time job in plant pathology and the professor in charge of my schedule sent me down to the greenhouse to “meet Milt.” …

Turns out it was the same Milt who had coached my Babe Ruth League team … who knew he had a day job supervising all the plant path greenhouses and those of us working there, a job he ultimately held for 33 years … he quickly showed me how to transplant beans without killing the roots and walked me through the difference between Yolo sandy loam and plain old dirt … if I needed advice on world affairs — or my personal life — Milt was always there … turns out he was always there for a number of people in town …

And then one day I was hired as a sportswriter at this very newspaper, gingerly walking into the cramped Toomey Field press box for the first time, where I encountered Milt once again, this time as a volunteer scorekeeper … he quickly made this shy rookie feel at home in those strange surroundings … no wonder the Cal Aggie Athletic Hall of Fame honored him one year with its Special Volunteer Award …

Milt came to Davis in the 1940s to attend UCD after returning from the war … fortunately, he decided to stick around … and even more fortunately, he’s still here … still an inspiration to all of us … many, many folks — some who have never met Milt Silva — have benefited from the groundwork he helped to lay as Davis transitioned from a small town to a small city … we’re lucky to have had him here all these years …

Happy birthday, my friend … may this town have you for 90 more …

WORD FOR THE WATER-WISE … it seems there may be a message in the senior exemption on the schools parcel tax for those trying to figure out a way to include household size in figuring a fair way to bill for water use in this town … under the senior exemption on the parcel tax, nothing is automatic … no, the senior who wishes to be exempted must affirmatively file simple paperwork before it is granted …

If the city continues to use the “tier” system for water use, but wishes to base those tiers on size of household — which is the fair thing to do — it can model the program after the parcel tax exemption … in other words, require those who wish to have household size considered in their “tier” calculation to file an appropriate form with the city declaring how many residents there are in the household … sure, some people will cheat, but people cheat on their taxes, too, yet no one has suggested household size shouldn’t figure into our tax computation …

Just another thing for the dedicated citizens on the Water Advisory Commission to consider …

PAY FOR PARKING, PAY FOR WATER … borrowing a page from the city of Sacramento’s playbook for building a new palace for the Sacramento Kings, our own Westside Walt suggests that maybe the mayor “could franchise out the on-street parking in Davis” to finance the Woodland-Davis Siphon-the-River Project … don’t know if that requires Prop. 218 noticing or not … but if it works in Sacramento, maybe it’ll work on this side of the river as well …

AN OLD-FASHIONED SOLUTION … given that the river water project forces Davis to pay for an extra eight miles or so of pipeline to bring the water to Davis, why don’t the residents of this can-do community form a bucket brigade instead? … figuring that one person can cover approximately five feet before handing a bucket off to another, that means about 1,000 people will be necessary to cover a mile, or 8,000 to cover the entire distance … with 64,000 people in town, your 24-hour shift on the bucket brigade would come around only once every eight days … and think of how fit we’d all be … a true win-win …

— Reach Bob Dunning at [email protected]

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