Back on February 3, the Vanguard made a bit of splash by invoking the spirit of Bush I circa 1988, saying “Read My Lips… No New Taxes.”
In truth, despite how it sounded, it was not a declaration against taxes, or even new taxes. It was suggestion that Davis gets its fiscal house in order. The city of Davis faces both a rare crisis and a rare opportunity. Right now, the city faces in the short term an economic downturn which has led to a loss of tax revenue. This situation calls for short-term budget cuts. However, the city has longer term structural deficit problems, it’s facing a crisis of unmet needs, it’s facing a problem of runaway top employee salaries, a pension problem, and an unfunded liability problem.
Those problems existed before the current economic crisis, but ironically the current economic crisis gives us a glimmer of an opportunity to get our fiscal house in order.
This economic crisis has already caused the city of Davis to scale back on its original plans to fix the longer term problem with new taxation. Instead, they are looking to manage the economic situation by renewing the current taxes.
As the Vanguard wrote on February 3, it has become
“clear that neither the council nor city staff wanted to raise or impose any new taxes in the near future to solve the city’s growing problem of unmet needs. While I agree with that approach, it does not solve the city’s problems either in the short term or the long term.
Instead they have suggested that they will simply place the current taxes back on the ballot. That would include an extension of the Parks Tax, which is a parcel tax requiring two-thirds vote and an extension of the half-cent sales tax.”
The Vanguard took the position that even this renewal of taxes would be opposed unless the city gets their fiscal house in order in part through restructuring employee contracts and pensions.
At Tuesday night’s Davis City Council Townhall Meeting, the Vanguard’s call was heeded by Councilmember Lamar Heystek. In January, a similar townhall meeting drew 30 members of the public, at least. This time the meeting was poorly attended. Just three members of the public attended as opposed to huge amounts of city staff including all of the department heads.
Councilmember Heystek told the council and city staff that he would oppose the renewal of the new taxes unless the city dealt with the fiscal problem and new employee contracts in a responsible manner.
His announcement seemed to stun city staff who immediately took notice. The City Council is not directly involved in employee negotiations, although they do approve the final contracts. However, Mr. Heystek believed it was the only leverage he had.
Two of his concerns are asking city employees to take more responsibility for their post-employment benefits. In addition, the city should re-examine the method by which we deliver services such as fire.
The Vanguard earlier this week demonstrated that the city’s costs for fire are disproportionate to our service calls. A situation the begs for a restructuring of fire staffing. The Vanguard is fully committed to insure that there is no loss of service or response time, but believes alternative and less costly models can and should be applied to improve our fiscal responsibility.
Right now that appears to be several changes the city can make to the structure of contracts that would contain city costs:
- Hold the line on top employee salaries
- Short term hold the line on all employee salaries during the economic crisis, in the future bring them up only as far as inflation takes us.
- Restructure the pension system by increasing employee contributions especially at the top end and moving it from “pay as you go” to full funding.
- Look into cost containment for health coverage
Now that Councilmember Heystek has pressed for the city to engage in strong negotiations, hopefully other members of council will follow. Councilmember Sue Greenwald has long been outspoken in terms of wanting to reign in the contracts and pensions of the highest paid employees and upper-management.
Once again it is important to emphasize that this is not an effort to put down either the average city employee or employee unions. The job of an employee union is to get the best possible contract for their respective bargaining unit. It is the job of the city however to be an effective counter to that weight. They represent the interests of the voters and the taxpayers. When one particular unit uses their political muscle and resources to elect favorable councilmembers while the other units do not engage in overt politicking the system begins to breakdown.
As we saw with the Grand Jury report in January, the impact of throwing $30,000 or more into a political race can be decisive in the actions a council is willing to take. Even the Mayor who has been outspoken in favor of fiscal responsibility wilted under the pressure of her backers back in January.
This will thus be a long and difficult fight, but Councilmember Heystek’s actions on Tuesday put the city staff on notice that business as usual will result in a less than unanimous endorsement of their current policies.
The Vanguard urges other members of the council particularly Mayor Asmundson to quickly follow suit.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
These aren't new taxes , they are extensions of current taxes that we already pay .Weren't you just against Republicans holding the state hostage .Are the two of you Republicans ?
I believe what you and Mr. Heystek are calling for was stated by several other Councilmembers back at a Council workshop on budget negotiations a few months ago.
The Vanguard censorship is over the top. A reactionary blog that doesn't like dissent.
What makes you think they were not substantive?
okay maybe there was something more to it. I'm sorry.
I would start by explaining to us what it is about the posted opinion you disagree with. Do you not believe the salary structure and pension benefit structure is out of whack? If not why not?
Mr. Greenwall, why does the city government have such a large IT staff? Is that a waste of money?Bruce Boyd GIS Specialist Jenny Kochera Computer Support Tech Jon Lee Senior Analyst Matt Muller Computer Support Tech Nika Nami IS System Analyst Rick Guidara IS Manager Sarah Clark Computer Support Tech Steve Franco Computer Support Tech Susan Errington IS Administrative Manager
Lamar Heystek , he's a real trooper , falling asleep at city council meetings , and putting his finger into a certain cavity on his face repeatedly .Yea blog boy you really know how to pick them .
I really do not understand this blog's propensity to attack and undermine city employees while simultaneously carrying the banner for university unions which are bent on increasing their salaries and benefit packages. You're lucky to have the city employees you have, most of whom are hard working and capable. Joining the …rush to the bottom… crowd is hardly a vote in your or anyone else's favor.
What city worker has been attacked here by this blog (as opposed to some of the posters on this blog)?
To …Want specifics…:If you were at the town hall meeting, you would have heard Lamar address the living wage issue within the framework of a responsible employee compensation structure. The real problem with the way the city pays its workers is not at the bottom of the pay scale but in the middle and most certainly the top. All employees should definitely be paid a living wage, without question; that being said, the …living wage… of many employees not at the bottom of the food chain is out of control. Do not confuse another couple of dollars an hour for a janitor with the generous pay increases of our five- to six-digit salaried employees!Lamar invited the other councilmembers to share specific ideas on what to do with the budget on March 10 — he said he would be bring his ideas then and would be looking forward to hearing others'.
…These aren’t new taxes , they are extensions of current taxes that we already pay…That is correct….Weren’t you just against Republicans holding the state hostage….Yes…Are the two of you Republicans ?…No
I believe what you and Mr. Heystek are calling for was stated by several other Councilmembers back at a Council workshop on budget negotiations a few months ago.
I don’t believe so. But if you can find the quote, I’d be very interested.
I agree with the column. The entire budget needs to be addressed. If employee benefits aren’t addressed, there should be fewer employees. The City shouldn’t spend or commit to spend more income than they presently have. Projections for future income increases are generally speculative and lead to over-development because the projections are based on increasing the size of the City.Why is there a City planning staff when there is no development? The staff that has no reason for existing should be given the option of developing new income for the City or dismissed. One good way to increase City income would be for the City planning staff to plan a way to keep the existing businesses. A lot of people who patronized downtown businesses don’t go downtown anymore because of the aggressive parking enforcement. Is there anyway for the City planning staff to explain to the parking control people that they are driving away customers for the downtown businesses?
I think Lamar’s comments are different from anything before because he drew a line in the sand and said he would go ahead and just vote …no… on the budget and future tax measures (new or existing revenue streams) if we do things differently. He’s basically saying to staff that if they want Council unanimity on upcoming tax measures, they’d better shake things up.
From what I saw in the budget workshop last week, the City of Davis is assuming property values and sales taxes are going to go up in the next few years. I think that’s unrealistic and will produce a bigger problem when they find out they were counting on an economic turnaround that is not coming any time soon. It’s fine to be hopeful, but stupid to pretend optimistic forecasts will change things.This comes from today’s Bloomberg story about the state of the economy–I clipped some of the highlights. It sounds to me like this recession is going to last 10 years:Gross domestic product shrank at a 6.2 percent annual pace from October through December, the most since 1982, the Commerce Department said today in Washington.
…if we ***didn’t*** do things differently…
I don’t usually post here, but did you consider the possibility that the powers that be around here finally just got tired of your snide remarks that resulted in absolutely zero in the way of substantive contribution to this board? A lot of people like reading the back and forth comments. No one likes to listen to the few malcontents that whine every single day about how bad it is. If it’s that bad, go away and spend your time doing something else.
Good column, DPD and am intrigued by comments re: planning staff. DPD, do you know the comparison in PD staff numbers and total $$ salary/benefits when building was very active VS now?
…Anonymous said… The Vanguard censorship is over the top. A reactionary blog that doesn’t like dissent. 2/27/09 11:23 AM…Anonymous, If you don’t like it why don’t you:a) Start your own blog, or b) Provide constructive input and stop whining, orc) Go to a different blog.
Realize, as a %-age of salary, high-school graduates, working for the city, get the same health/retiree benefits that college graduates, people who have to have professional licenses to occupy their positions do. If we were to …cap… total compensation to $100,000 (inc. med, contributions to retirement etc.) no professional employee worth their …salt… would apply. As it is, in the professional classes, the benefits make it(barely – 1, maybe 2 viable candidates, based on recent recruitments) good enough to attract viable candidates. We’ve had, overall, good retention because of benefits. Do people want that to continue, or do we want high ‘turnover’?
Censorship, nonetheless, dilutes the significance of the blog. Especially when a mysterious trail of bread crumbs is left informing readers that an offending post …has been removed by a Blog Administrator… Who is a …blog administrator?… David Greenwald or someone else?And why were particular posts removed? Bad spelling, bad language, or bad opinions in the opinion of the …Blog Administator?…The real problem with blogging, of course, is that posters don’t put enough thought into their posts. On the other hand, writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper involves sustained, sequential logical thinking. At the most basic level, most senders of letters to the editor of a newspaper reread and proofread the manuscript before sending it off.
Let’s just say there were vivid descriptions of people’s bodily functions and leave it at that.
Grow up anonymous 9:17 a.m. You don’t have the balls to post your name and can’t even comment on the subject being discussed. Get your finger out of your nose and participate or go elsewhere.I’m glad Lamar is taking a stand on this issue. The other majority council members seem to be bought out by developer interests and special interests. It’s good to have someone on the council not afraid to do the right thing.Keep up the good work Lamar. And DPD keep up the good work with the Vanguard.
I find Lamar’s position here somewhat inconsistent. On the one hand he wants a livable wage for low paid employees – an extra $85,000 in the budget. But now he suddenly has decided to push for fiscal responsibility, after he gets his way in regard to the livable wage issue. (I know, I know, $85K is a drop in the city budget bucket, in comparison to the higher end city staff salaries – but it is the principle of the matter!)Nevertheless, I am glad he has seen the light, even if it did take him a while. Sue Greenwald saw it long ago, so it is nice to see Lamar join forces with her. The two need to hammer away at this hot button topic!That said, Lamar did it in such a way that City Staff sat up and took notice. He used the carrot and stick approach – …if you want my support on voting to extend current taxes, then there must be a push to put the city’s fiscal house in order…. However, he did not really give any ideas on how the city was to do that! Long on rhetoric, but short on specifics. Talk is cheap. I want to see some action!
I’m sorry you think there is something inconsistent between wanting people who make $10 per hour to get $12 per hour but hold the line when it comes to people who make $120,000 per year or more? Really?
David M. Greenwald said…What city worker has been attacked here by this blog .How about All of THEM , does that explain it in detail enough for you .
…How about All of THEM , does that explain it in detail enough for you ….Not really. Specifically how have they been attacked? And more importantly show me example of where …all… of them have been attacked. I think if you are going to make the accusation, you can spent two seconds and come up with a little in the way of substance.
Test
Me thinks thou doth protest too much! You want examples of how you attack and undermine city employees? How about your continuing promotion of where the city manager resides as an issue? Neither your police nor your fire chief reside in Davis either. How about the continuing assault on the fire fighters union? How about the continuing questioning of managements competence and pay levels? You do a great deal to promote a negative perspective toward the city’s workers, and I mean all of them, not just those at the lower-paid levels. You have to look at the agency as a whole not cherry pick some of the employees as noble and deserving and others a overpaid and in need of salary reductions. Enough examples for you?
I think you are largely missing the point here. How is criticism of management attacking city employees? Are they above criticism, particularly since they run the city? I don’t have a negative perspective toward city workers. I have a criticism of the management of the city and the conduct of the firefighter union and the fire chief. I think the city has increased the upper level salaries to the point of non-substanability and to the point where we cannot perform basic city services of repair and infrastructure improvement. I think we need to reign those salaries in. I have presented how I believe that needs to be done, above.
If that’s what you mean by attacking and undermining city employees, then fine.
BTW, I think I’ve mentioned the city manager’s residence in two articles.
I agree with D. Greenwald in the above statement. However I son’t think Lamar is heard from often enough. David is correct, the fire dept. needs to be completely overhauled in salary categories, especially in elimination of rose conroy’s position.
BTW, I rarely agree with anything Greenwald has to say.
David,
I understand the populist appeal of always wanting to cut the pay of the people at the top but come on. It’s budget dust and would have no direct impact on the budget.
Your assault on city mgt. continues unabated. Your questioning of the City managers residence is just a convenient example. You want the city manager to live in Davis but you don’t want to pay him the kind of money that would enable him to. It’s not a very systematic way of thinking. To the contrary it’s self-defeating and illogical.
Spanking
“Me thinks thou doth protest too much! You want examples of how you attack and undermine city employees? How about your continuing promotion of where the city manager resides as an issue? Neither your police nor your fire chief reside in Davis either.”
Excuse me, but for the city manager to live in Davis was a requirement of his job. He knew that when he was hired, and promised he would move here, but has not done so. He has no stake in this community – and it shows. Much of his decisionmaking is not in the best interests of the city, but serves his staff well!