Month: November 2012

Commentary: Council Faces a Quiet Crisis of Confidence on Labor Front – Last week’s employee contract that was approved by the council by a 5-0 vote was a reminder that while the city has been focused – and rightly so – on getting the water project squared away, there is another critical battle underway and that is the approval of the employee contracts.

The last contracts expired on June 30.  It is now approaching November 30 (particularly when you realize that city offices are closed until November 26) and contracts remain unsigned.

Weist Willing to Risk Public Safety in Order to Protect Turf – This past week, Davis Interim Fire Chief Scott Kenley made a thorough presentation of the Davis Fire Department.

Contained within the report were recommendations as to how the city could move forward with a reduction of fire staffing, first reducing staffing from 42 to 36 and then reducing staffing from 12 personnel per shift down to 10 or 11, depending on how the city wanted to proceed.

Vanguard Analysis: Impact of Rates Unclear – It is worth noting that some of the most bitter and divisive machinations both in private and in public, occurred not necessarily with the core water project but rather in determining which rate structure to use.

After three hours of at times colorful and heated debate over several different versions of the rate structure, the WAC finally reached a decision by an 8-2 vote, with Former Davis Mayor Jerry Adler and Chair of the WAC Elaine Roberts Musser providing the dissenting votes.

Vanguard Analysis – When the Davis School Board has wanted to put parcel tax measures on the ballot, it has asked a political consultant, Jay Ziegler, to doing polling analysis and help them craft a parcel tax measure that would have a reasonable chance of being successful at the polls.

Not everyone agrees with that approach.  For instance, Trustee Tim Taylor often argued that the board should simply ask why the measure was needed.  Indeed, that was more the approach of Measure E, where there was no polling, and no consultant. However, this was the fifth such ballot measure since 2007 and Richard Harris, who ran the campaign, might as well be a political consultant.

Vanguard Analysis of Fire Staffing and Budgetary Changes Shows Savings Fall Short – The issue of fire staffing is one that bedevils many observers.  One of the key questions that the council is going to have to wrestle with is the issue of overstaffing versus overtime.

“Overtime in the fire service has been misunderstood by the lay person, including City Administration and Elected officials for over thirty years. A lay person’s assessment of overtime is work that is done because it could not be completed during normal working hours,” Davis’ Interim Fire Chief Scott Kenley writes in his audit of the department.

Chief Suggests Way Forward to Three on an Engine – Interim Fire Chief Scott Kenley on Tuesday night presented the Davis City Council with a very thorough and massive report on the fire department.  While the council did not act on the informational item on Tuesday, the plan is to bring the item back in the coming weeks as council sifts through the material and looks for ways to cut costs and possibly reduce staffing down to three on an engine.

COMMENTARY – At the October 23 city council meeting, the council listened not only to the advice of its own City Attorney Harriet Steiner, who argued against a binding vote, but the city also brought in Iris Yang from Paso Robles, at city expense, to make the same case.

However, three weeks later, City Attorney Harriet Steiner was singing a completely different tune.  Suddenly, hurdles that she presented as insurmountable were presented as no problem.

COMMENTARY – On Tuesday, the Davis City Council fixed the most glaring and immediate problem facing them – they shifted course, really without much incident, to support a binding resolution similar to one the Vanguard suggested, giving the council the authority to move forward with a yes vote and binding it to not move forward with a no vote.

One problem was therefore solved on Tuesday night.  But the proceedings will, if anything, complicate matters down the road, as it is quite clear that council was forced to move forward despite all indications that they were really not ready.