If previous councils would have viewed their role as a sledgehammer or a jack hammer, this council at least in the early days looks more like a scalpel – a tool that will attempt to refine, finesse, and shape policy.
Never was that more apparent than on Tuesday night as the Davis City Council sought to smooth out language from the Water Advisory Committee’s delicate compromise recommendation – a recommendation in which even chair Elaine Roberts-Musser acknowledged the language was rough and crafted hastily and on the fly – keeping the key elements in place.
In the end, a long discussion produced multiple motions, but like the WAC itself, the result was a delicate compromise that keeps both water options on the table even as it sets the parameters and time limitations for going forward.
Ultimately it was Joe Krovoza’s substitute motion with the blessing of the original motion maker, Brett Lee, that was implemented.
The motion acknowledged that the “Davis City Council formally receives the recommendations of the Water Advisory Committee from its August 16 meeting.”
The critical provision was that “over the next 60 days the City Council negotiate with Woodland and West Sacramento to pursue the recommendations of the WAC.”
Council also believed it was important that the findings go back to the WAC: “As soon as these negotiations are completed with either or both parties – or advanced as far as feasible – Council will share its progress with the WAC to seek the WAC’s acceptance or further direction.”
In the meantime, the WAC “will continue to prepare recommendations to the City Council on the WDCWA’s proposed DBO bidding process, and on the appropriate rate structure for future city water supply pricing.”
This slightly modified the language of the WAC’s compromise motion, which asked the city council to “adopt” the Woodland Water Supply option.
Instead, it acknowledged that, in fact, this was a complicated, two-fold negotiation.
With Woodland, the city would be negotiating the more equitable “share in the cost of the pipelines to convey the treated water to the city limits of each city,” along with shaping the cost share percentages to reflect the current anticipated reliance on the treatment facility.
In the meantime, in a separate negotiation, staff and council would work with West Sacramento to create a proposal “to provide a hook-up fee to the City of Davis that does not exceed $6,000,000 and provides the processing of 12 mgd per day for 30 years and a 30 year renewal option, at a fixed processing rate. The proposal should provide for Davis to provide upgrades that it desires.”
Both of these proposals have a limited time horizon, as they must be completed by October 23 in order to get language onto the March 5 ballot.
While those specific dates may be somewhat arbitrary – after all, there seems to be no real reason that the election has to be March 5 rather than later in March or even in April – it does serve the purpose of providing a hard time to show progress and reach some sort of resolution or otherwise acknowledge it is time to move forward.
The key question that arose from the decision to have dual concurrent negotiations were Brown Act concerns. City Attorney Harriet Steiner suggested that a West Sacramento negotiation team of Joe Krovoza and Brett Lee, the same two who made initial contacts a few weeks ago, would be no problem.
However, she was concerned with the prospect of Mayor Krovoza and Councilmember Lee trying to negotiation with Woodland and creating a situation where it might be a recomposition of the JPA.
The question was then whether Brett Lee, who Mayor Krovoza felt should be on both negotiating teams to provide some continuity, could work with Rochelle Swanson or Dan Wolk without creating a Brown Act violation.
Harriet Steiner noted that the purpose of the law was to prevent serial meetings that resulted in an off-the-record concurrence on policy and that Brown Act “partners” could be fluid so long as the scope of the discussions was limited.
Following that advice, Joe Krovoza moved for Rochelle Swanson to partner with Brett Lee. However, both Councilmember Swanson and Mayor Pro Tem Dan Wolk, who have worked together on water issues, were ultimately uncomfortable with that arrangement.
The result of this was that Brett Lee and Joe Krovoza would handle the West Sacramento negotiations and Rochelle Swanson and Dan Wolk will handle the Woodland negotiations.
On Thursday, the WAC will shift its focus to dealing with issues of the DBO.
In the meantime, both the Council and WAC have taken great pains to forge consensus to move toward the Woodland Project, while still keeping the West Sacramento project open.
We get the answer now as to how long to keep both options open – the answer to that is October 23, though again, we stress that date may not be actually fixed in stone.
Will this due diligence prevent a heated ballot fight in March? Perhaps not. But at least the council and WAC will be able to make the argument to the voters that they did everything they could to seek all options.
At some point the voters will decide whether they can afford this project and approve of this form.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Governance without acrimony, how refreshing.
Refreshing would indeed seem to have been the operative word last night. Having attended the majority of the discussion on the water issues last night, I could not help being impressed by the magnitude of change in tone and substance of the discussion with council members and staff actually listening to each other, being respectful of positions differing from their own, and working together collaboratively to arrive at a process which allows us to move forward.
One note. The chamber was rather sparsely populated compared to some meetings. It is still August, so perhaps many are still wrapped up in summer and back to school activities. But for anyone who had stopped attending or participating because of the perception of a hostile, argumentative environment, I would highly recommend giving attending the council meetings another try. You might be very pleasantly surprised.
I think this paragraph from this morning’s Bob Dunning article sums up what many Davisites feel about the water situation:
“WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE … my friend Joe at pacbell.net, reacting to the Water Advisory Committee’s seeming preference to play ball with Woodland when it comes to tapping Sacramento River water, asks “Why do I get the feeling that the folks who came up with last year’s plan, a plan that significantly overstated the amount of water required, that had a rate structure no one understood and that failed to examine all the alternatives, are now trying to justify what they did by supporting the same plan with only a few minor changes.” … I think you’re nudging very close to the truth here, Joe … “I can only hope that the new council members will not be steamrolled, but hang tough until they get all the data needed to make an informed decision.” … that makes two of us, Joe”
I heartily concur with medwoman’s sentiments. Good governance was in evidence throughout the evening. That doesn’t mean that there was preagreement on the issues and/or the best way to deal with them, simply that the participants spent vey little time trying to govern one another, and more time and thought on how best to govern the community.
Kudos to all.
I’m glad you posted Bob’s article rusty because it illuminates a trap we as voters/citizens can fall into just as easily as Council can . . . specifically that we frequently focus on the people (and their evolution over time) much more than we focus on how the issues are evolving.
With respect to the optimal sizing of the plant, when Dianna Jensen posted her graphic from Page 8 of the Demand Capacity Analysis [url]http://archive.cityofdavis.org/meetings/water-advisory/documents/2012-07-26-item4-staffreport-demand-capacity.pdf[/url] she presented to the WAC, I felt a strong desire to drill down into the numbers that fed that graphic, and created an excel model to see how “robust” her scenario was. Bottom-line, I firmly believe that the 12 mgd plant scenario does as good a job of balancing the many competing factors as is possible. For me those factors are:
— Affordability (downward size pressure)
— Desire not to build capacity that will never be used (downward size pressure)
— Realistic population growth projections (downward size pressure)
— Realistic continued water conservation attainment (downward size pressure)
— UCD’s planned enrollment growth (upward size pressure)
— Water availability preparedness for new jobs coming to Davis (upward size pressure)
— Elimination of the need for and cost of water softeners in Davis (upward size pressure)
— Elimination of the need for and cost of bottled water in Davis (upward pressure)
— Source water effects on wastewater discharge electro-conductivity (upward pressure) see WAC documentation at [url]http://archive.cityofdavis.org/meetings/water-advisory/documents/2012-07-26-item4-attachment-surface-water-needs-wastewater.pdf[/url]
The fact that there are just as many arguments/concerns currently being expressed that 12 mgd is too low as there are that 12 mgd is still too high, tells me that 12 mgd may be the Goldilocks solution. My excel model tells me much the same thing.
So if 12 mgd is the right size, regardless of whether it comes from West sac or Woodland, then our focus needs to be on making sure the cost for those 12 mgd is the best possible. The Council last night gave us every appearance that their focus is very much in the right place.
I was logging on to post agreement with Bob Dunning’s column but I think Matt Williams raises a point worth considering. That said, I think West Sacramento needs to be fully explored or we risk overlooking potential cost-savings and losing leverage on Woodland to share in the cost of the pipeline.
For those of you who have’nt seen it, here is Dianna’s Demand Capacity graphic. Note she has us building an additional 6 million gallon storage tank in 2025. The reason for this is that the peak demand at any unique point in time needs to be met, but that does not require additional production, but rather additional storage (that can be drawn on when the peak demand happens), which is much less expensive than additional water treatment plant production capacity.
[IMG]http://i1104.photobucket.com/albums/h321/mwill47/CofD-DemandCapacitygraphic.jpg[/IMG]
Matt:
“The fact that there are just as many arguments/concerns currently being expressed that 12 mgd is too low as there are that 12 mgd is still too high, tells me that 12 mgd may be the Goldilocks solution.”
Matt, I’m just curious as to who are the ones who are arguing that 12 mgd is too low and do many of them come from the developer/development camp?
rusty, the simple answer to your question is, “no I haven’t gotten that argument from anyone in the developer/development camp” but in fairness that is because I haven’t been interacting with any of the members of that “camp” in the past few weeks. Don Shor has been vocal about the potential for the UCD enrollment “bump” of 5,000 students to significantly affect the sizing. Don is definitely not part of the developer/development community. Mark West has been just as vocal, but with the principle argument that we shouldn’t be burdening the future generations with unnecessary upgrade costs. Another representative “voice” has come from more than one employee of DWR/SWRCB who have expressed off-the-record concern about the chemistry of the inflows to the wastewater treatment facility. Neither Mark, nor the DWR/SWRCB employees have any connections to the developer/development community. Finally, I keep hearing from a gardener with Eastern roots (no pun intended) who wants us to go with 100% surface water so he can grow azaleas, rhododendrons and camellias here in Davis.
With all the above said, I imagine that the Chamber discussions on the 12 mgd plant size will be interesting.
I don’t understand the argument that we are burdening future generations with upgrade costs – if they chose to grow, that will be a consequence of that growth.
BTW, I’m stunned with haven’t seen the chair weigh in yet.
Reasonable point GI. I believe part of the concern is that that growth may not be at the behest of the future generation, but rather at the behest of the Chancellor.
“I believe part of the concern is that that growth may not be at the behest of the future generation, but rather at the behest of the Chancellor.”
Or at the behest of the developers.
Well if that’s the case, I think the Chancellor and university need to be part of any future discussion that impact water supply.
[quote]BTW, I’m stunned with haven’t seen the chair weigh in yet.[/quote]
Was at morning meeting; then car broke down right in front of traffic light at Russell & Anderson. Three lovely good Samaritans pushed my car into the ARCO station for safety’s sake. Had to wait 1.5 hrs for a tow. Off to another meeting soon, so have just enough time to check in on the blog for a few minutes. Nice summation of last night’s meeting!