In 2004, the voters of Davis passed a half-cent sales tax that was supposed to preserve city services from cuts. Instead, what we saw is that the $3 million for sales tax went almost directly to a 36% pay increase for firefighters. It did not “preserve” city services from cuts, rather it increased the cost of city services to the taxpayer.
Last year voters renewed that half-cent sales tax, which yields roughly $3 million annually that goes to the city’s general fund. For the last several years we have noted with increasing alarm the state of the city’s roadways and, increasingly, the lack of money available to fund road maintenance that used to come from other sources.
This year the city finally addresses those needs.
Writes the interim city manager, “A second set of budget reductions (Tier 2) is being recommended to provide an additional $485,000 in budgetary savings to be reallocated in support of needed street maintenance, as well as city facility and parks infrastructure rehabilitation and replacement needs.”
The funding for road maintenance will come from a number of things, including the elimination of general fund support for the I-House, reduction in city promotions budget, more reduction in the ombudsman contract, elimination of city courier service, reduction in funding for economic development, street maintenance contract and Historical Resource preservation, elimination of non-mandated mediation services and support for arts grants (from the general fund as opposed to other funding sources), realizing of savings from shared Fire Chief position (which I think they used for another savings last year), and the big one, the closing of community pool.
From all of that, they will give $35,000 to County Office of Emergency Services, $150,000 to the transportation street maintenance, $100,000 to facility replacement, and $200,000 to parks/irrigation replacement.
So less than one-third of that money goes to actual street maintenance.
It gets worse.
Historically we have funded our streets at about a $650,000 to $800,000 level. However, that level of funding is not sufficient and at $800,000, we would achieve a rating by next year of 68, which is actually worse than it sounds and there would be an $11.7 million maintenance backlog.
Here is the investment strategies comparison that Interim Public Works Director Bob Clarke presented back in March:
In 2010, Bob Clarke told the council, “Our approximately $1 million a year road maintenance budget is down to $250,000 next year, which won’t buy us much pavement out in the field next year.”
“Something you’ll see immediately, some things won’t be apparent immediately but there will be impacts. Recovering from some of them will take awhile,” he said. “Much as my analogy would be if we don’t maintain our streets when we can do it cost effectively eventually they will fall apart and the cost to repair them will be much much more significant.”
So a critical question is how much we have for road maintenance this year.
It looks like $2 million in total is going to transportation funding. The city in the past three years had utilized $1.96 million in Proposition 1B funding and another $761,000 in federal stimulus funding.
Right now it appears $150,000 is going from the general fund and $200,000 is going from the roadway impact fee. That is $350,000.
That appears to be it. The city chart calls it a program area “with significant under-funding.” There needs to be a long-term funding plan and it likely requires significant long-term General Fund support.
So let me sum up what I am seeing here. Traditionally, we spend $800,000 on street maintenance. $800,000 is not enough to even maintain current levels of road quality.
We are going to spend less than half of that money this year, or $350,000.
The city manager buries in there that this area will require significant long-term General Fund support.
We will have a backlog of about $12 million by this time next year. Probably considerably more, since we are only funding half of what would be required to get to that level.
Deferred maintenance, of course, means much higher future costs. And yet, the budget we have seen proposed by the City Manager fails to account for this when it puts the budget in the black in the out years.
This is another reason I question the veracity of the budgets, because they are not accounting for actual costs and needs.
This is really a crisis that few are recognizing.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
[quote]The funding for road maintenance will come from a number of things including the elimination of general fund support for the I-House, reduction in city promotions budget, more reduction in the ombudsman contract, elimination of city courier service, reduction in funding for economic development, street maintenance contract and Historical resource preservation, elimination of non-mandated mediation services and support for arts grants (from the genera fund as opposed to other funding sources, realize savings from shared Fire Chief position (which I think they used for another savings last year), and the big one the closing of community pool.[/quote]
Why would the city be funding I-House at all? City courier service? What is wrong with scanning copies of documents and sending them via good ol’ email? Exactly how much funding went for economic development, and how much economic development was the result of such expenditures? Not much, I’ll guess. Why would the city pay for historical preservation – wouldn’t the owner of the property pay for it? And don’t even get me started on the waste that occurs with the art projects. As someone said on this blog previously, the city was paying something like $1500 to paint a park bench. Community pool should have been closed ages ago, as it has been severely underutilized for years according to my daughter, who worked as a manager at the city pools.
None of these changes being proposed are monumental in nature, and should have occurred long ago to make sure we had enough money to fill our streets’ potholes. But as is typical of gov’t, frills are paid for first, so that basics don’t get addressed. Then the trick is to claim there is not enough money for basics, which gives the excuse to raise taxes. In that way, both frills and basics get paid for and spending can continue as per usual. That strategy may have worked in the past, but it is just not going to work anymore… the taxpayers’ pockets have been picked clean… enough is enough!
“Why would the city pay for historical preservation – wouldn’t the owner of the property pay for it? “
On the contrary, often the owner is moving the other direction and trying to alter even demolish.
That said, I agree with you that there is a lot of non-priority spending in here.
“Community pool should have been closed ages ago, as it has been severely underutilized for years according to my daughter, who worked as a manager at the city pools. “
This is something I haven’t heard before. I know last summer the kids utilized Slide Hill Pool and Arroyo around the corner from our place. I know the pool over by City Hall gets heavy use. It seemed like every time I went to Community Park, usually for Fourth of July, the pool was well used there are well. But I’m not opposed to closing a pool either.
However, that is really a side note from this article. The real point is that even with all of this, we are not getting enough money to pay for road work and moreover, it is far off and once again we have a budget that is balanced without really addressing critical needs.
[quote]However, that is really a side note from this article. The real point is that even with all of this, we are not getting enough money to pay for road work and moreover, it is far off and once again we have a budget that is balanced without really addressing critical needs.[/quote]
And my point is had we made some of these “tough choices” (LOL) long ago, we would have money to fix all these potholes now. But instead, pothole fixing was placed in the “unmet need” category, and our budget was declared “balanced” – what I would call “creative bookkeeping”. And it was done right around the time some on the CC were running for re-election. It was nothing but a cynical attempt by some on the CC, complicit with City Mgr Bill Emlen, to make it look as if the city had no budget problems. Yet even back then we knew there was not enough money being placed into the “pothole account”.
I don’t disagree with that. But I think it’s easy to look at some of these spending areas that maybe are not priorities, the real money is going to employee compensation and increasingly to retirement. But yeah, we are still playing the same budgetary tricks. THe council for the first time two weeks ago started to call the city manager on some of this. But there is more coming.
Oh my gosh the sky is falling . Dam roads …..
Thank you American Vets for doing what you have done and continue to do ,
protecting America now and always !
“Dam roads”
Fortunately we don’t have any dams here, or that would likely be another problem.
“Thank you American Vets for doing what you have done and continue to do ,
protecting America now and always ! “
Yes, thank you vets, tomorrow we will continue cutting your benefits, leave you homeless and starving, and deny you proper health care. But thank you for putting yourself in harms way and protecting America. Can you please also protect us from ourselves.
“As someone said on this blog previously, the city was paying something like $1500 to paint a park bench”
ERM, it struck me as funny for this to be brought up today because just yesterday I walked past one of those park benches and it was completely covered with tarp and a big piece of the painting was lying on the ground next to the bench. Obviously the paint isn’t sticking to the bench. Two benches were painted at a cost of $5000. I agree with you that the money is there to fix things like potholes if it were delegated responsively.
At this point we are talking about $12 million that we need to fix our roads. I don’t agree that the money is there now for that. It would also be worth checking to find out where the money is coming from to paint the benches, if it is not general fund money it couldn’t go to road repair anyway.
As frequently happens, David, you seem to miss Avatar’s irony. The only “dam road” I know of in the area is the one atop Folsom Dam, which was closed years ago due to ‘homeland security issues…
And, your point is well taken… as you succeed in the accomplishments for the veterans you suggested, we can work to accomplish the same for city, county and other government employees.
Good point, I suspect he missed his own irony as well.
Just trying not to say ” Damn ” , someone might be offended .
Just having a little fun at your expense.
[i]thank you vets, tomorrow we will continue cutting your benefits, leave you homeless and starving, and deny you proper health care. But thank you for putting yourself in harms way and protecting America. Can you please also protect us from ourselves.[/i]
On the plus side, the GI Bill is great. It’s putting my daughter through college. Thanks to all service members for their service to our country.
“Yes, thank you vets, tomorrow we will continue cutting your benefits”
I must have missed this. Did veteran’s benefits get cut? When and where? Evidence?
Perhaps you are referring to this:
http://www.factcheck.org/funding_for_veterans_up_27_but_democrats.html
or this
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/11/health-care-overhaul-and-tricare/
or this
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/afl-cio_falsely_attacks_mccain.html
But no, each of these shows that claims of veteran’s benefits cuts are false.
So can you back up your claim?
It is true that a disproportionate percentage of the homeless, according to some studies, are veterans. IMO this is largely a problem of outreach and difficulty identifying and treating mental illness. As to claims that benefits and health care are being cut, I don’t think there is any basis for that. In fact, veterans get some of the best health care in America: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-hard-to-top-veterans-health-care-2010-06-02
The success of the VA is one of the best arguments for government-run, single-payer health care with doctors on a salaried basis.
With regard to the city budget, it is easy to look at individual budget items and criticize them. But as with the state budget, each has its own constituency. I believe it would be more successful to cut across the board as much as is needed to achieve the fiscal goals. Otherwise, what will happen is the council will try to cut the funding for the pool, and will get a big turnout at a council meeting to protest that. Then they’ll try to cut funding for historic preservation, and they’ll get lobbied by people who think that is important. And so on. Just decide what the broad fiscal goals are and tell staff to present options. Every thing that you or I think is unimportant is valued by someone else, or it wouldn’t be in the budget already.
Don Shor
“The success of the VA is one of the best arguments for government run, single payer health care with doctors on a salaried basis.”
As a doctor who has worked at a VA style facility with the public health service and as a salaried physician with a major medical group with a similar care model, I could not agree with you more. When you remove barriers to care ( pre approval by insurance company functionaries),
defensive medicine, and provide incentives for preventative health care, measurement of health outcomes, patient and family centered care,
fully integrated care with a team approach, same day access to specialty consultation and an electronic medical record available to all providers, the care that is provided is vastly superior to that of the hit and miss approach provided in much of the fee for service world.
ERM: “Community pool should have been closed ages ago, as it has been severely underutilized for years according to my daughter, who worked as a manager at the city pools. ”
What level is underutilization? I know that my kids have gone to community pool regularly for swim team workouts. I think the syncrhonized swim team has also used it. DAM uses civic pool a lot, and I think they’ve used some other pools. I keep thinking I see a lot of these pools being used for all kinds of activities whenever I turn my head to look.
[i]”what will happen is the council will try to cut the funding for the pool, and will get a big turnout at a council meeting to protest that. Then they’ll try to cut [b]funding for historic preservation[/b],”[/i]
Just for the record … there is no funding for historic preservation in Davis. None at all.
Rich: I just skimmed over David’s budget notes above, but I was assuming “Historical Resource preservation” was a budget item.
I am not sure what David was refering to. I know for a fact that there is no regular money, no line item in any budget which is “Historical Resource preservation.” As a commission, the HRMC, unlike the Civic Arts Commission, has no funds to spend.
I don’t mean to say that the City has never in the past spent money on what might be called Historical Resource preservation. It has, but mostly because the City owns quite a large number of our Landmark properties, including the Varsity and the Hunt Boyer. So, for example, when the decision was made to build the Mishka’s Cafe project on the land of the Hunt Boyer, where the historic orange grove and the tankhouse had been, there may have been a line item as part of the project for “Historical Resource preservation.” I don’t know. I am not really sure how Mishka’s was financed. I know that the money to move the tankhouse and restore it on the west side–since rescinded–was paid for by mitigation for the damage to the Landmark mansion. But that’s not the same thing as a general fund expense.
The City also, for example, maintains the black walnut trees on west Russell Blvd, which collectively are another historical Landmark. I doubt they tag that as “Historical Resource preservation.” They are treated no differently than any other trees in town.
Most of the historic resource properties in Davis are private properties. The owners of those pay for all of the upkeep and so on themselves. If someone does a major rehab project, he might qualify for some tax credits, but no city money at all. Recently, for example, the owner of a Merit resource in Old East Davis decided to extend his carport and fence it in. He came to our commission for approval, which was granted after a 2 minute hearing. (No controversy at all in this case.) But all of the money for his project was his own, same as any other homeowner in Davis.
I wish, by the way, this were not the case. I wish we had money to help the owners of some old properties to maintain them. We don’t. For example, on Renoir Avenue there is the last remaining intact, well preserved tankhouse on a private property (owned by a branch of the Haussler family). The tankhouse looks a bit weathered, certainly in need of a paintjob and maybe some replacement siding. But Davis does not have any money for such things.
Moreover, the City does not even have in place any system to generate money. I wish, for example, we had an in lieu History fee, much like our in lieu parking place fee. In the latter, if someone builds a structure in downtown which requires, say, 4 parking places, he can pay $16,000 (4 x $4,000) to the City, and that money goes into a parking fund which will be used for the new parking garage. My wish is that if someone demolishes some historical resource–say it is in too bad of repair to rehab; or it just does not meet modern needs–let the owner do that, and then pay into a historical resources fund, which would, for example, be used to pay half the cost of things like painting the Haussler tankhouse; or restoring some historic feature on a Landmark like the SP Depot.
One other thing we don’t do: fine property owners who break their agreements with the HRMC. One developer, for example, promised to retain the historic siding and windows on a 100-year-old house he was rebuilding. But he decided, once the project was underway, that would be too expensive. So his workmen just threw out the siding and the old windows; and the rehabbled house really does not look like what he had promised. I wish we had some kind of small fine for that; and then we could put the fine money to use to maintain our historic resources. But we have no such thing. When developers break their word, nothing happens to them.
I actually think this is a darn good article. The comments don’t seem to reflect what was actually said in the article, unfortunately- nor was the tone of the article “the sky is falling” as someone wrote.
But the issue deserves some attention, and the numbers don’t lie. Nice job.
[quote]What level is underutilization? I know that my kids have gone to community pool regularly for swim team workouts. I think the syncrhonized swim team has also used it. DAM uses civic pool a lot, and I think they’ve used some other pools. I keep thinking I see a lot of these pools being used for all kinds of activities whenever I turn my head to look.[/quote]
The use of Community Pool was “forced” by city staff so the pool would be utilized, but it was not the preferred site for swim lessons and so forth. It was used mostly for summer camps, but the consensus by the pool managers was that it could and should be closed.
[i]” the consensus by the pool managers was that it could and should be closed.”[/i]
What about leasing it to a private operator, someone like Davis Athletic Club or Davis Swim and Fitness? Or what about making it a part of Davis High School?
It seems to me shuttering the entire facility would be a shame and a waste.
Rich: That would be my preference is see private entities and non-profits try to take over running some of these city services.
David: I tried to find this number on the City’s website but failed: Do you know how much money is in the Municipal Arts fund? And do you know how much that fund is drawn down in a typical year?
My guess is the number is around $200,000 to $250,000. I looked for an all-funds balance sheet but never found it.