State of the City: New City Manager Talks About the Upcoming Year and the Character of Davis

On Tuesday, Davis City Manager Steve Pinkerton will deliver his first state of the city address to the Davis Chamber of Commerce.

The Vanguard spoke with the city manager about his thoughts so far and for the upcoming year.  It has been a fast start for the former city manager from Manteca. His first council meeting lasted until 3:30 in the morning, and things have not slowed down since.

“It’s the snake swallowing the egg,” Steve Pinkerton told the Vanguard.  “You try to take as much on as you can and at the same time you don’t want to be completely a mile wide and an inch deep, just to catch up on all of the subjects.  You kind of take in all the areas and you triage the areas that need the most immediate focus.”

At the top of the list: water, labor, and organizational concerns.

“Those are the things that are the most critical to the organization so that’s where you put your highest priority energy, but that doesn’t mean that a lot of these other things don’t get a lot of attention as well,” he said.

The water issue has dominated the landscape for much of the last four months.

Mr. Pinkerton could not give an exact percentage of his time spent on water, but he did say it was less than seventy-five percent of the time.

“I can’t give an exact percentage, but it is certainly more than I expected coming into this job,” he said.

Davis is often considered by many to be a completely different animal, where there is a different mentality and a higher level of focus on local affairs.  Steve Pinkerton has spent time in Stockton and Manteca in the valley, in addition to his time in Southern California and the Midwest.

“The first impression from the beginning is that it’s definitely different than most other communities, it has unique characteristics here,” he said, but he added that those differences are more “subtle than in a lot of other communities.”

“The differences are more subtle than you realize, but also very significant,” he said.

He compared it to DNA, “All of our DNA is about 99 percent the same, but then you have that one percent that’s very different.”

He quickly added, “I guess I expected it to be more different, but cities are cities.  We all have basic functions that we do, it’s just we have a little bit different character here.”

“Certainly the biggest thing is just the large number of people who not only take an interest in local government but to a very highly detailed level of interest,” he said.  “Probably because you have so many people who work in government who live in this community.”

He continued: “It’s just that extra level of intensity and there’s a lot of different expertise that can all apply toward this city – whether it’s wastewater or land use or air quality or burrowing owls, whatever you name it, there’s a lot of people outside government who have both an interest and an expertise as well.”

“I think to a higher level than the typical community,” he added.

One of the Vanguard’s biggest concerns has been that budget cuts have come unequally, and primarily through attrition.  As a result, there has been little thought as to how to properly structure government so as to prioritize the provision of services in a manner that is both efficient and takes into account community needs, desires and priorities.

This is one of the chief things that Mr. Pinkerton, in addition to helping to better manage the budget, was brought in to do.

“My vision is acknowledging that we have limited resources, but disagreeing with the contention that we still can’t provide excellent services,” Steve Pinkerton responded to the Vanguard’s question on his vision for reorganization.  “It’s just going to have to be delivered in a very different method and far more in collaboration with the community.”

“It’s not just looking at how we do the service and how we do the services more efficiently, but figuring out how we better engage the public in working with us to provide services,” he said.  “I think we have a very engaged citizenry when it comes to the policy side, but I’d like to see the same level of sophistication on the volunteer side.”

Some of the ideas that have emerged include more public-private partnerships, and the inclusion of more volunteers to fill tasks that we have traditionally had paid staff perform.

“It’s going to take everything,” Mr. Pinkerton said throwing out the ideas of hybrid private and public with some volunteer.  He also noted that some things may end up be more emphasized while other things less emphasized.

“I think we have to have this continual dialogue of what is the city’s role in providing services,” he added.

One critical question will be what role does the city play in economic development.  But other questions will be the role in streets, sidewalks, landscaping, trees, fire services, public safety – “all of those things need to be looked at in more detail,” he said.  “And it’s an evolution; it’s going to change over time.  We don’t have any choice.  The cost of providing services has become very expensive.”

But, he added, “I think we still have an obligation to provide those services.”

He said that, obviously, we have to evaluate a number of factors before we make a determination. However, he suggested in contemplating what this might look like, we need to look at trends in communities.

“Particularly in public safety, you see a lot of volunteers helping out,” he said.  “There are a lot of things that a sworn officer may get involved with now that in the future he could have volunteers involved in.”

He suggested things like weed abatement, to having a visible presence in a car in the parking lot.

“That’s really what you see in other communities – is really focusing your professionals on the things that require professionals with a lot of the laborious tasks can be put toward volunteers,” Steve Pinkerton told the Vanguard.

The obvious question that we asked was one that has come up repeatedly whenever the discussion has turned to fire staffing: what about volunteer firefighters.

“That’s something we’ll have to look at,” he said.  “My initial focus is on the non-safety, but firefighting…  one of the areas where you see is that after the firefighting is done, having volunteers come in to help with the clean-up.”

“That reduces the number of sworn officers that are involved in that,” he said.  “A lot of these things get done incrementally over time.”

He does not view it as a drastic process which would change overnight.  “Part of it is where you have the interest in the public in participating,” he added.

We also talked about goals for the upcoming year.  One of the key points he made was the need to meet the council’s goals, as they are the ones that actually establish the policies that city staff carry out.

“One of the biggest goals is certainly having a sustainable budget that we all agree upon come midyear,” he said.  “That’s probably the overriding goal above everything else and all the rest of these are really subplots.”

Redevelopment figures to be among the top emerging issues this year.

“There are so many subplots to the whole redevelopment issue that there will be a lot of things we’re talking about that,” he said.  “If we don’t get some sort of legislation passed there’s going to be a lot of interesting interaction between the city and the county on that very issue.”

The end of the pass-through agreement he said, is really just “the tip of the iceberg.”  “There’re so many complicating factors,” he said.

One of the critical questions will be how agency assets will be disposed of.

“We’re all hoping this doesn’t happen next,” he said.  “I don’t think anyone wants to go through a complete unwinding of redevelopment.  I know a lot of people want to change it, but the unwinding would be just a disaster.”

Many believe that there will likely be another round of compromise to try to prevent the need to completely unwind redevelopment.  Mr. Pinkerton agrees with this, but cautions, “My fear is that it won’t happen in a timely manner.  So we can end up starting the unwinding before we get to put it all back together again.”

One of the critical timelines is that over the next three weeks, as the legislature gets back to work, that they put off the February 1 date after which the agencies are dissolved.

“That’s the critical date right now,” he said.

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