The tax levies about 49 dollars per year per parcel which produces an overall amount of 1.36 million dollars in general fund revenue to the city that is used to offset the cost of parks maintenance costs. According to staff reports, this accounts for about one-fifth of the overall annual park maintenance costs to the city.
The renewal was approved for a six-year period through June 2018.
The big question was whether this amount should go up.
Staff wrote as follows: “While it is generally recognized that the funding requirements to support the park and greenbelt infrastructure within the City exceed the capacity of currently available funding, staff believes that preservation of the existing tax revenues is paramount, and any proposal to increase the tax, or otherwise re-structure the tax poses the risk that the voters will reject the measure and result in a loss of critical funding.”
The Recreation and Parks Commission made the recommendation to increase the tax to a $75 fee per single-family residence with an annual Consumer Price Index increase not to exceed 3% any given year.
Travie Westlund, a Recreation and Park Commission member who was not speaking on behalf of the commission, urged the council to engage in an education campaign. He said that he has been so urging the council for a year, but so far all they have produced are threats that this tax will not pass.
“People in Davis don’t understand what it takes to maintain our parks and recreation,” he said. “$6 million [for] the acreage. The $49 that we have as the parcel tax used to be $98, and it has been reduced. I don’t think the people understand what’s going on. We don’t have the money to take care of the parks we have now.”
He added, “There always seems to be money to add things, but never to take care of the things we have.”
However, it is clear that the city does not have the money to add things at this time either.
Paul Navazio, who directs the city’s finance department, warned that the residents of Davis may be wary of voting for a tax increase, and with a two-thirds vote necessary to renew the measure, he believed that the council should only aim for a $49 tax at this time.
Councilmember Dan Wolk, in making the motion, argued, “I think this parks tax is essential and the most prudent course of action to take right now.”
He said for all the reasons stated, doing a straight-up renewal made the most sense at this time, but that does not preclude us from looking at alternatives in the future.
Mayor Joe Krovoza argued for the inflator, stating, “It’s the one small thing we can do to plant the seed in the community that costs are increasing. So, we would start at the current rate and it would be a CPI not to exceed 3%.”
Councilmember Greenwald spoke against that notion, “I just think it’s risky without much upside in the next few years… Any time you add something like this I think you will scare off a number of people who don’t like the uncertainty.”
Mayor Pro Tem Rochelle Swanson agreed, “I would have to echo Sue’s comment, that would be my exact concern. I think already this is going to be a little bit of a fight. I think any kind of increase, even just a CPI increase, I think is much bigger than the potential return on investment.”
There are several different big pictures to this issue.
The first picture is laying out the tax environment this year. The school district is looking to renew their parcel tax with a CPI inflator. That election is coming up in two months.
The voters either in June or November will be asked to weigh in on the water rate hikes. Of all of the taxes and fees, that is potentially by far the largest. The previous proposed increase was a minimum 26.7% per unit rate increase that might have been reduced with conservation efforts.
The parks tax, by contrast, is very modest, at $49 per year.
The second picture that needs to be laid out is the city’s fiscal picture. The city passed the extension of the sales tax in 2010 and is now looking to pass the parks tax in 2012.
The tax funds only about a quarter of the ongoing parks costs, and that fits into the general problem of under-funded elements of the budget.
As we have noted, the city is underfunded right now by at least $1 million in terms of pensions, $2.4 million in terms of Other Post-Employment Benefits, another $2 million in street maintenance and another nearly half million in concrete repair. They are also underfunded in parks facilities replacement costs.
We estimated that the city was going to have to find about $7 million in cuts to be able to keep up with funding for pensions, OPEB and streets. That is a huge chunk of change.
For several years we have been talking about the need to have a community discussion on what our spending priorities have to be. We have to understand that the big ticket items are public safety, public works and parks.
One of the things that we have consistently argued for is finding private partnerships, either in the form of private companies or non-profits, to take over some of the city-sponsored recreation functions, including pools and rec programs.
At the same time we are leery of the overall tax burden and believe that parks are an area where we should be looking to cut back on the spending – $6 million on maintaining parks is, simply put, too much. We also have been cognizant that the number we will cut back to on parks is not zero.
Given that the parks tax only funds a quarter of the actual costs, we believe that is a reasonable amount.
Moreover, we have to applaud this council for their fiscal responsiveness. One of the big things that they passed a few months ago was a measure by which unmet needs, which previously were put into an off-budget category much like a wish list, will now be fully reflected in the budget and will demonstrate the gap in spending that the city has.
The council was wise at this point to avoid any increase in the parks tax, either by an actual rate increase or a CPI inflator.
Based on all of this, the Vanguard urges the city to look at ways to cut into that $6 million annual operating cost, but at this time believes renewing the tax makes the most sense, particularly in light of the general fund hit that would occur due to the loss of $1.36 million at this time.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
[quote]One of the things that we have consistently argued for is finding private partnerships, either in the form of private companies or non-profits, to take over some of the city-sponsored recreation functions, including pools and rec programs.[/quote]
The Vanguard is advocating for private operation of rec functions; but advocating for public operation of the surface water project? Curious divergence of/contradictory thinking…
“The Vanguard is advocating for private operation of rec functions; but advocating for public operation of the surface water project? Curious divergence of/contradictory thinking”
…just another example,as if we needed more, of serious questions concerning the Citizen Advisory Commission Chair’s claim of “open-mindedness” with regard to the future of the water project.
There is obviously NO comparison between public ownership and operation of a Davis surface water system and Davis non-profit groups that can participate in maintaining our park system. Citizen volunteerism,organized perhaps through non-profits, was offered as a significant part of the City Manager’s State of the City address and the parks and recreation system could be a place where it could be most successful.
[quote]ERM: “The Vanguard is advocating for private operation of rec functions; but advocating for public operation of the surface water project? Curious divergence of/contradictory thinking”
davisite2: …just another example,as if we needed more, of serious questions concerning the Citizen Advisory Commission Chair’s claim of “open-mindedness” with regard to the future of the water project. [/quote]
[i]Who does not have the open mind here?[/i] Why is posing a simple/reasonable question somehow an “example… of serious questions concerning the Citizen Advisory Commission Chair’s claim of “open-mindedness” with the regard to the future of the water project”? Is it not clearly contradictory to advocate private operation in one arena but public operation in another arena of city services? And what does the Vanguard see as the difference that warrants the contradiction? It is an obvious and sensible question…
Secondly, I have not come to any decision as to the public versus private operation issue, or any other issue surrounding the proposed surface water project/wastewater treatment plant. I consider this to be a situation in which the entire case is being “tried” again, which will most likely involve “new” evidence. All on the WAC are taking a hard look at everything, viewing the issue with fresh eyes and perspective.
Were you at the first or second WAC meeting? If yes, welcome, and please to not be afraid to speak up during public comment. If not, I hope you will follow along by reading the minutes and accompanying documentation. However, if you had been at both meetings, you would have been well aware that as Chair, all I did was keep the meeting on schedule, but gave free rein for everyone to ask questions and voice opinions. I did not steer/control/hamper questions in any way. Staff was incessantly peppered with tough questions, so that we were actually not able to stick to the given schedule. It has become clear that the WAC will control what it wants to know, not city staff.
If you did come to the second WAC meeting, what was your impression? Because I don’t know how you could possibly take away any notion that the WAC was in any way “biased” for/against the surface water project.
“The Vanguard is advocating for private operation of rec functions; but advocating for public operation of the surface water project? Curious divergence of/contradictory thinking…”
First of all, the Vanguard has not advocated for a public operation of the surface water project, only exploring that option. Also it did support SMUD over PG&E.
I see nothing contradictory about the positions. The provision of utilities has been shown to be cheaper and more effective when public agencies rather than private operators run them. The city is not able to afford to provide all of the services that it, we have a community we have active non-profit and community based organizations that might be able to partner with the city to better supply some of those recreational services.
I see nothing divergent or contradictory, it is all inspired in fact by the same thinking – finding ways to provide the best possible array of services at a cost that the public can afford. The fact that you find this contradictory just shows your mindset is embedded in an antiquated public-private dichotomous paradigm, that I think we have to get rid of if we are to survive another century.
Look at Sacramento’s once glorious McKinley Park rose garden to see what volunteerism does to parks . The road to Hell is paved with good intentions and clogged by public spirited, but untrained and out of shape volunteers .
[i]”The tax levies about 49 dollars per year per parcel which produces an overall amount of 1.36 million dollars in general fund revenue to the city that is used to offset the cost of parks maintenance costs.”[/i]
This is not a lie. But it is a half-truth. The parks maintenance tax revenues go into the general fund. They are not specifically for ‘the cost of parks maintenance.’ They are for that and for police officer salaries and for fuel for the fire trucks and for retiree healthcare costs and for the pension funding of many safety and non-safety employees and so on.
I have long been skeptical of using private contractors to save money when provisioning many public services, because as I looked into the issue I found that those private contractors tend to be uncompetititve monopolists. They are profit-seeking, but find those profits in keeping out competitors, not in providing cheaper or more efficient services. A perfect example of that is the two so-called private companies, Coast and GP, which provide half of the parks maintenance in Davis, today. They charge very high, very uncompetitive rates. They give their employees big wages and big benefits, both of which are actually required by the City of Davis to allow them to “bid.” It is a rigged system.
That said, I have very recently changed my mind on this. I never fully accounted for the post-employment cost differential between public and private labor. Even the rip-off artists, like Coast and GP, cost the taxpayers much less money than the public employees cost, because for their workers we are not getting stabbed with a huge bill for pensions and retiree healthcare.
Were it up to me*, we would open up the entire system (for parks maintenance and for all public works maintenance) to competitive bidding. As long as the provisioner can do a good job and its business practices break no state or federal laws or regulations, the City should not worry about how much the bidder is paying its workers, whether enough of those workers are white or yellow or black or brown, or whether the workers pee standing up or squatting on a pot. If we did that, we could save about 70-80% of what we are now paying our public employees to maintain half the green spaces in Davis; and we would save probably 50% of what we are paying the current “private” maintenance companies. When accounting for retirement benefits, I suspect we could save 30-50% of the cost of our current public works maintenance staff.
*I am generally very much against laying off workers, even for reasons of saving the public money. I would much prefer changing from public to truly private by attrition, if at all possible.
[i]”Look at Sacramento’s once glorious McKinley Park rose garden to see what volunteerism does to parks.”[/i]
That area is currently being renovated. It will look better than ever in a few months. (I was told this by a family friend who lives on H Street, very near McKinley Park.)
[quote]I see nothing divergent or contradictory, it is all inspired in fact by the same thinking – finding ways to provide the best possible array of services at a cost that the public can afford. The fact that you find this contradictory just shows your mindset is embedded in an antiquated public-private dichotomous paradigm, that I think we have to get rid of if we are to survive another century. [/quote]
The fact that you don’t find this contradictory just shows your mindset is embedded in a public over private paradigm…
[quote]First of all, the Vanguard has not advocated for a public operation of the surface water project, only exploring that option. Also it did support SMUD over PG&E. [/quote]
I supported SMUD as well…
Rifkin: … ‘They are profit-seeking, but find those profits in keeping out competitors, not in providing cheaper or more efficient services. A perfect example of that is the two so-called private companies, Coast and GP, which provide half of the parks maintenance in Davis, today. They charge very high, very uncompetitive rates. They give their employees big wages and big benefits, both of which are actually required by the City of Davis to allow them to “bid.” It is a rigged system.’…
I don’t know what “a rigged system” means. But the contractors, per City ordinance must pay a living wage. That wage is higher than the adopted $12.50 total hourly rate adopted in 2008. I’m guessing (couldn’t find the current official City mandated rate) but it’s probably increased about 3 years at 2%/yr or about $13.25.
I wonder if the landscape maintenance companies actually pass this rate onto their employees. The City can’t possible tract this.
If they do pay their employees the living wage amount, I hardly see that as “very high, very uncompetitive rates”. It doesn’t come close to what the City requires public works contractors to pay their employees which are known as union rates. If a local contractor, say Harrison Construction, wins a Davis public project, their employees get a 30% pay raise for that one project. Local contractors don’t pay union hourly rates.
I observe the mentioned landscape companies performing maintenance in street medians and greenbelts. They’re fast, thorough and seem very efficient. The City is getting, I believe, a good value. They outperform city maintenance crews by a considerable amount.
[i]”I don’t know what “a rigged system” means.”[/i]
It means that the bidding is not competitive. A different company cannot legally underbid any of the current contractors.
[i]”But the contractors, per City ordinance must pay a living wage.”[/i]
True. However, long before the City adopted its living wage ordinance (Ord. 2327 § 1, 2008), there was a different, but effectively the same provision which prohibited price competition among contractors for parks maintenance.
[i]”I wonder if the landscape maintenance companies actually pass this rate onto their employees. The City can’t possible tract this.”[/i]
They do.
My recollection is that in 2005 (years before Lamar’s living wage law), both of the “private” landscaping firms, GP and Coast, paid their workers (including supervisors) an average of just under $22 per hour wage plus health benefits which were similar to the health benefits that city workers got. At that time, the cost to the City for the private crews was roughly the same* as it was for the public crews–by design. However, the rising cost of retirement benefits, I would guess, has made the public employees more expensive.
*My source for this was the then-director of the Parks Department, Donna Silva.
[i]If they do pay their employees the living wage amount, I hardly see that as “very high, very uncompetitive rates”.[/i]
It is uncompetitive if you compare their cost of labor to the companies which do landscape management for large apartment complexes and industrial facilities in Davis, which is about the only thing I can compare it with. In fact, I ran the numbers in 2010 and found that, when you look at total comp, the City’s landscape maintenance crews (including supervisors) cost about 5 times as much per man.
The difference is not mostly wages. The difference is the huge costs for health benefits, pensions, retiree health, and 3-4 times as much paid vacations plus paid holidays.
[i]”It doesn’t come close to what the City requires public works contractors to pay their employees which are known as union rates.”[/i]
That is state law for the “prevailing wage.” But that only affects construction jobs, not routine maintenance. It is legal for cities like Davis to hire companies to maintain their infrastructure without paying the prevailing “union” wage.
I should add here, in case you were not aware of it, that the requirement to pay union wages (to non-union workers) became far more expensive (roughly 20% more expensive) in 2011, when Jerry Brown and the unions agreed to a new provision called Project Labor Agreements ([url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Labor_Agreement[/url]). With PLAs, not only do they have to pay the prevailing wage and benefits, but they have to pay all union post-retirement benefits, including pension costs and retiree healthcare. And on top of that, the PLAs require union-oriented job classifications, so that what a “laborer” does cannot be done by a “carpenter” and what a carpenter does cannot be done by a tile setter and so on. Fixing job rules like that makes all construction projects much less efficient.
[i]”(The private contractors who do landscape maintenance for the City are) fast, thorough and seem very efficient. The City is getting, I believe, a good value. They outperform city maintenance crews by a considerable amount.”[/i]
I have no basis to know that the city workers are not just as good. You may be right. I just don’t claim to know.
Rifkin: [i]”I don’t know what “a rigged system” means.”
It means that the bidding is not competitive. A different company cannot legally underbid any of the current contractors. [/i]
So the City never advertises for maintenance bids-instead they just renew the existing contract? I didn’t know that.
[i]”I wonder if the landscape maintenance companies actually pass this rate onto their employees. The City can’t possible tract this.”
They do. [/i]
How do you know the city tracks what the contractor pays their employees for work in Davis? The city has labor/wage compliance officers? They certainly don’t.
You’re suggesting the current private maintenance employees receive $22/hr for time and another $4.75/hr for health benefit-total almost $27/hr or $56,000/yr? I find that impossible to believe.
I didn’t suggest that public contracting prevailing wages were applicable to all maintenance work. It gets tricky though because the definition of a “public works” is quite complex and wide ranging. For instance, the city must and does pay prevailing wages for street maintenance.
I’m not sure why you introduced the PLA topic. I haven’t seen or read where the city has adopted PLA. You are correct that they are certainly restrictive, add cost and benefit the existing unions, although prevailing wages all ready include $amounts for benefits and training. Even without PLA, a city construction contractor, if they’re union, cannot allow, for instance, a truck driver to operate other heavy equipment.
All that said, I still cannot believe the private maintenance worker I see in the greenbelts is compensated $56k/yr; and the city can’t prove or disprove it.