the great fluoride debate??

At tonight's Finance & Budget Commission meeting, the commission chair (who also sits on the water advisory committee) commented in passing that the next three water committee meetings will be discussing fluoride in water. Apparently there had been a stand at the davis farmers market for the last few weeks expressing opposition to the addition of fluoride and calling for discussion to revisit the fluoridation of the Davis water supply with the new water project.

Of course, this is a bit confusing to me...is there a great fluoride debate going on that I'm completely unaware about?? It was pretty much my assumption that this issue had been laid to rest some 40+ years ago...that fluoridation of water was, as hailed by the US CDC, as one of the 10 greatest public health achievements of the 20th century. So what's there to oppose when it comes to adding fluoride to water?

Anyways, in other news, we were presented with a mid-year city budget report. One of the line-items that jumped out was a revenue line from the sale of davisville books (apparently detailing the history of Davis). The revenue brought in from sales of the book? A whopping $23 (with a budget forecast of $60 - our budget woes are over!). I like the fact that property tax, which brings in roughly $15m in revenue, gets the same coverage on the budget summary as davisville book sales.

Anywho, it was another productive meeting (that coincided with the NCAA championship game - clearly time well spent). Maybe next time we can blow 20min on more hotly contested topics such as water fluoridation and the benefits of having city parks.