COMMENTARY: Fire Offers No Alternatives Other Than Status Quo – It was a sparse crowd on Tuesday night, at the Multipurpose Room at Pioneer Elementary School, to hear about the city’s proposed fire staffing changes. It is part of a larger campaign to bring public awareness to the firefighters’ issue.
The firefighters, apparently believing that they cannot move council directly, are trying to mobilize people to pressure council. If Tuesday night is any indication, this is going to be a tough task.
Nine people, several of whom were either current or past fire personnel, stood around in a circle listening to Davis Firefighters Union Bobby Weist speak about the proposed changes.
“In South Davis this is going to be a huge impact to you,” Mr. Weist told one resident, “If your house is on fire and we’re not here trying to tell you that if this happens, you’re going to die. We’re not trying to scare anybody or anything.”
“What we’re trying to do is there’s been no discussion about this, no talk about this coming from the city,” he said. “There’s more discussion about naming a park than there is about whether we should cut fire services.”
The general theme of the comments that stretched over a 45-minute time period is that the only person with actual fire experience to argue for these changes was former Interim Chief Scott Kenley, whose credentials at times they mocked.
In their favor they cited reports from Citygate, former Chief Rose Conroy and former Interim Chief Bill Weisgerber – who, they said, arrived indifferent to three or four on an engine, but once he watched a fire in action changed his mind and became a solid proponent of four on an engine in Davis.
They argued that there are more fires than people realize in the city and that the reason that they do not spread and become big fires is that they are able to arrive as a self-contained unit and put water on the fire immediately to knock it down.
Much of the time was used to explain in anecdotal terms why having three instead of four fire personnel on an engine would bring the entire safety system to a halt, and put people and their property in danger.
Mr. Weist and fellow Captain Emily Lo presented the perspective of firefighters, who have spent 30 years or more in service, to this community. They discussed the difficult day they had on Tuesday, a day of low temperatures but high wind, in trying to battle fires and respond to medical emergencies.
Mr. Weist expressed concern that we would go back to the days of the early 1980s when they would watch structures and homes burn to the ground, although acknowledging that their knowledge and expertise has vastly improved.
What their presentation lacked was perspective. Much as their talk back in January seemed to lack awareness of budgetary realities, so too did their discussion on Tuesday.
The viewpoint of Mr. Weist is perhaps best captured by the quote he gave to the Davis Enterprise for a story on Wednesday.
The Enterprise writes, “But Weist contends the scenario would jeopardize firefighter safety and leave West and South Davis neighborhoods more vulnerable, as crews there would still have to wait for a second unit to arrive before attacking a structure fire.”
“When it comes to public safety, $300,000 is not a significant amount of money,” he told the paper.
But Mr. Weist offers no solutions – only presses for the status quo. And while we need to remember that his job is to advocate for his union members, we also need to bear in mind that if he offers no alternatives, he ceases to be part of the solution.
There was no mention in the more than 45 minutes of comments of anything about budgetary considerations. The city had to cut $8 million in the last budget – four million of that was to be achieved through the collective bargaining process and another $4 million through organizational restructuring.
Bobby Weist mentioned on Tuesday that the number of positions has shrunk from 45 to 37, but failed to note that this was achieved through attrition and that no one has lost a job. The proposed cut from 12 to 11 would likewise be achieved through attrition rather than layoff.
Mr. Weist failed to mention that the firefighters union is one of only two bargaining units along with DCEA that have not agreed to a new contract. So, as of right now, the firefighters are trying to fight the reorganization of resources while holding out on taking the concessions that almost every other city employee has already taken.
Here is the kicker. Bobby Weist argues that $300,000 is not a significant amount of money, but he fails to mention that they have an alternative if they truly believe that losing personnel of one per shift is that critical to public safety.
According to city records, a firefighter in the city of Davis makes $7,748.10 per month in salary, while the police officer makes $6,752.37 per month in salary.
This is the base salary. It does not include the tens of thousands of hours of overtime, their pensions, their health care, their retirement health care, or their cafeteria cash outs.
Compare that to Woodland, where police officers and firefighters make about the same in salary compensation.
In fact, in Woodland, a police officer makes $6,782.62, about the same as in Davis. However, a firefighter in Woodland makes just $6,536 – or $1,200 less per month than the police counterpart.
If you calculate the monthly differential of $1,000 out to a full year, that’s a $12,000 discrepancy multiplied across dozens of personnel. That discrepancy alone accounts for over $400,000 – or well over the amount of savings the personnel reductions would save.
In other words, if firefighters agreed to take concessions and make what police officers in the city of Davis make, the city might not need to reduce staffing.
If firefighters are really that concerned about public safety and the safety of their own officers, then the answer is simple – take a pay reduction to make what police officers make.
Instead, what we saw in January and we have seen now is no recognition by firefighters that changes have to be made, given tough times, in budget.
Instead we saw the opposite in January from Captain Joe Tenney.
“My concern here is that the last couple of items that this roundtable is addressing is nothing has changed in the city of Davis since 1999,” Captain Tenney said.
He would say, “I know the budget thing has been trouble, but that appears to be making a change in a different direction.”
“At what point does the city and university, instead of putting on more bandaids, take a look at the resources that they need,” he continued. “My point has been the fire department has done the best that they can up to a certain point to provide excellent service, and the university has done the same, why do we want to lower any of those standards?”
“I know the budget thing has been trouble, but that appears to be making a change in a different direction, at what point will the city and university decide it’s time to start investing?”
Perhaps that will be at the point when the firefighters realize that they cannot continue to make the huge salaries they did in the last decade and still ride around with four on an engine.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
“I know the budget thing has been trouble, but that appears to be making a change in a different direction, at what point will the city and university decide it’s time to start investing?”
Now that the economy has turned around, how about we start “investing” in a new fire department! How can we get rid of the current insubordinate, uncooperative firefighters so we can hire better people for less money and use the surplus for improved technology?
JustSaying: I think we have a good group of FFs. Why would you want to get rid of them?
The job of the Union and Bobby Weist is to ask for raises, better working conditions. It’s up to the CC to say NO, or MAYBE, or YES.
If you want to blame anyone, blame the Partansky CC in 1998-99 that gave them the extra crew member, to 4, and that changed the definition of the 5 minute response time such that the northern 3rd of Davis suddenly was “out of safe response” range. Or the Wagstaff CC (me and Sue included) that gave them the 3% at 50. Or blame the Saylor/Souza CC that stole the Measure S sales tax incremental increase, and gave all of it to the FF for huge raises.
But don’t blame the FF union for asking …. blame the CC idiots that gave it to them.
And … the Union has a First Amendment right to lobby, and go door knocking and dropping. The interplay of efforts and ideas is what makes our country, and little city, great places to live and work.
Were either Bobby Weist or Emily Lo on duty or off duty for this talk? If off duty, were either of them on “release” time, and did we have to pay overtime to cover a shift for either for them to hold this talk?
BTW, I say the above even though I never received a dime or a single endorsement from a FF union member, and in fact, the Union liked to “go after me” for comments I made challenging some of their goodies. Their power plays against me were sometimes splashed across the top front page of the DE in font type larger than an announcement that the Martians were landing in Woodland and marching south. (Must have been slow news days?)
But I will fight to protect their right to organize, and to demonstate, and to ask their elected leaders for benefits.
I had a No on Prop 32 sign in my yards last November, and proud of it.
Ryan: as you can make out in the photo, they were in street clothes. They were not even wearing their union shifts.
RYan Kelly: good questions. The City Manager should make sure that his employees follow the law.
Was the room paid for by the Union? I asked earlier, and no answer yet.
Was it proper and lawful to campaign in precincts while wearing the City’s uniform? I dont know the rules, but the City Manager should tell us.
David: you are right. The budget has to be cut. It is long overdue. I’m leaving it up to the CC and the City Manager to make it happen. My time is being spent right now on trying to stop the CC from taking ratepayers over the Niagra Falls with the surface water project. It will bring this City much closer to bankruptcy if it goes in.
“JustSaying: I think we have a good group of FFs. Why would you want to get rid of them?”
Good question. The only ones I want fired are the ones who refused* to assist in the recent evaluation, and, really, only the ones who refused to attend the mandatory meeting called by the chief to discuss the study. The only problem is that condition applies to most of the Davis firefighters.
Other than that, nothing to complain about our current crop of firefighters except that we’re paying too much for the present system and personnel.
*The same insubordinates now whining that they weren’t allowed to be involved. (See past Vanguard coverage.)
JustSaying: You do make some good points above.
David wrote:
> According to city records, a firefighter in the city
> of Davis makes $7,748.10 per month in salary, while
> the police officer makes $6,752.37 per month in salary.
> This is the base salary.
Any way you can find out what the average firefighter actually makes? It sounds strange to “regular” working people but many firefighters (and prison guards) will make an extra $100K of OT year after year. I would also be interested to see the average TCOE for the Davis Firefighters. I just went to the web site below and saw that a Firefighter I know has a TCOE of over $350K with over $100K going to his pension/employee retirement.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/salaries
Then Ryan wrote:
> Were either Bobby Weist or Emily Lo on duty or off
> duty for this talk? If off duty, were either of them
> on “release” time, and did we have to pay overtime to
> cover a shift for either for them to hold this talk?
I would like to look in to the amount of “release time” in Davis. My firefighter friends have been doing the job for a while and most make a “base” salary of over $150K, so when they take a day off using “release” time for union work their department needs to cover their shift they will pay another highly paid person of the same rank or higher time and a half (close to $3K) to cover a single 24 hour shift. Using as much “release time” as possible is a way to force the city to pay as much time and a half to your buddies as possible.
Then Michael wrote:
> If you want to blame anyone, blame the Partansky CC
> in 1998-99 that gave them the extra crew member, to 4
We can’t forget that Partansky also got us the “Toad Tunnel” (and some national attention):
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-april-27-1999/colbert—tunnel-vision
Weist: [i]”In South Davis this is going to be a huge impact to you. If your house is on fire and we’re not here trying to tell you that if this happens, you’re going to die. [b]We’re not trying to scare anybody or anything[/b].”[/i]
That’s a good job of not trying to scare anybody or anything.
[i]”They argued that [b]there are more fires than people realize[/b] in the city …”[/i]
There are [i]more.[/i] This is true. What is not true is that there are more house fires than you might think. Those are quite rare, and they are usually contained without a major fire-fight.
The majority of fires in Davis are not structure fires. They include weed/crop/grass fires–keep in mind that the Davis fire district extends to rural areas outside the city limits–fires from outdoor cooking (out of control barbecues), automobile fires or other fires along one of the freeways, out-building fires and industrial or hazardous material fires which do not include a burning building.
[i]”… and that the reason that they do not spread and become big fires is that they are able to arrive as a self-contained unit and put water on the fire immediately to knock it down.”[/i]
Nothing proposed by Chief Kenley will change that. Nothing. Even implying that this will change is a very serious lie by Weist. It’s serious enough that he really should be suspended by the City Manager. It’s one thing to issue an opinion and either back that up or not with some facts. But to flat out lie to the people he is sworn to serve and to imply, falsely, state that the proposed change will no longer enable fire crews in Davis “to arrive as a self-contained unit and put water on the fire immediately to knock it down,” is a very serious breach of ethics and, again, ought to be cause for his suspension, if not termination.
[i]”The job of the Union and Bobby Weist is to ask for raises, better working conditions. It’s up to the CC to say NO, or MAYBE, or YES.”[/i]
There are some practical problems with this statement. The fire union has not simply been “asking” for more money and better benefits and the rest. The fire union has been actively corrupting every member of the city council that it could, with massive amounts of direct contributions and equally massive indirect efforts, in order to get pliant members of the council to hand them everything including the kitchen sink. As such, this union deserves disdain.
Its level of behavior, geared entirely to corrupting the process, is without precedent in the Davis among City employees. The fire union even makes the corruption of the DTA look very small.
What’s even worse, at the state level, is how the various public employee groups (including the California Professional Firefighters, of which Local 3494 is a member) corrupted CalPERS in order to massively increase the pension benefits of employees like our local firefighters. Cities like Davis were told back in 2000–Mike Harrington can confirm this–that CalPERS’s reps came to Davis and other cities and lied to them: they said the massive increase in benefits would never cost the cities a penny. And people like Mike Harrington and Sue Greenwald bought that b.s. hook, line and sinker. And people like Helen Thomson, who was in the Assembly when the state adopted the original legislation to massively increase pension benefits also was told the same lies by CalPERS.
As such, it’s really not a fair understanding of how our corrupt system works to just say, “they have the right to ask,” unless you are perfectly fine with having them first buy total influence over elected officials and the pension fund managers.
One more thing about how the corrupting efforts of these unions is stealing money from everyone in Davis: the new water project is going to cost roughly twice as much as it would if the labor were priced competitively, but every contract for labor for the project is required by state law to pay 3 times* as much per hour.
Why do you think all of the Yes on I campaign ads are being bought by the labor unions? Do you think any of those union workers could ever win a competitive bid in a free market? The entire process is corrupt. And the victims are the people who will no longer be able to afford to live in Davis. Perhaps you can be replaced by the union fat cats who paid off all the Democrats to get in all of the required union wages and required union work rules.
*The wage is roughly double for all of the trades. But with benefits added, it is 2.5 times the competitive rate. And with the union work rules (which is a huge drag on productivity), the cost of labor, per hour, is 3 times as much. Because labor is most of the total bill, the total cost is double what it otherwise would be for many large public works projects.
[quote]The fire union has not simply been “asking” for more money and better benefits and the rest. The fire union has been actively corrupting every member of the city council that it could, with massive amounts of direct contributions and equally massive indirect efforts, in order to get pliant members of the council to hand them everything including the kitchen sink. As such, this union deserves disdain. [/quote]
I think this is the essential point that Harrington misses, it’s not just that the council was “bad” and supported the firefighters every whim. It’s that the firefighters actively created those conditions by purchasing influence. Now that they have recognized that they cannot do that with this council, they are attempting to go to the public.
They are actively soliciting members of the public to contact the council and I think those who support reform need to do the same.
[i]”… it’s not just that the council was “bad” and supported the firefighters every whim. It’s that the firefighters actively created those conditions by purchasing influence.”[/i]
This is why we need publicly financed campaigns. At the city level, the behavior of Local 3494 is uniquely corrupting. At higher levels of government, with a lot more money at stake, many more of the unions (in Democratic districts) do the very same things in order to corrupt elected officials, like our very own Mariko Yamada. Even those few Democrats who don’t get most of their money from the unions are corrupted by union money, because they are very afraid of the unions twisting arms in order to make them impotent in office. We saw this when the CPF got Lois Wolk kicked off of various committee assignments when she voted against them on a single bill.
It’s funny to me that in a lefty-liberal town like Davis, where most everyone could agree that when fat-cat developers and corporate contractors and private for-profit corporations spend millions of dollars to corrupt politicians (usually whichever party in power) it is outrageous and deserves condemnation and it brings out calls for reform, but when their friends, the public employee unions and the trade unions corrupt the Democratic Party in the same way for the very same reason (to steal), there is nary a word of rebuke from the lefty-liberals. They seem to think that their side of the aisle is pure and clean and decent and for good government and that it is just those baddies on the other side who are evil and bad and corrupt and undeserving. Of course, the lefty-liberals who think that usually do so because they are benefitting from some of that corruption themselves.
[i]”At the city level, the behavior of Local 3494 is uniquely corrupting.”[/i]
I need to amend that. It should read: “At the city level, the behavior of Local 3494 is uniquely corrupting [i]among city employees.[/i] As most readers of this blog know, the corrupting actions of the firefighters is quite similar to the corrupting actions of the real estate developers and the real estate contractors, who, before Measure J, had nearly unchecked power to get zoning changes made by pliant councils which redounded to their checkbooks.
“According to city records, a firefighter in the city of Davis makes $7,748.10 per month in salary”
I was a workers comp insurance adjuster years ago, and I believe the firefighters earn every cent. They risk asbestosis, heart disease, lung cancer, serious back injuries and other horrible afflictions to keep us safe. They are polite, friendly, and they act like true civil servants. And they usually are the first ones to go back to work; they don’t malinger. They serve our community admirably. They are hard workers and they can be called away at a moment’s notice to fight fires in other communities.
Several years ago there was a fire in the empty field behind Albany Circle. The firefighters were there in a heartbeat, and they saved several homes & animals & people. They deserve their wages. The city council should find other places to fix the budget.
Rifs
[quote]Of course, the lefty-liberals who think that usually do so because they are benefitting from some of that corruption themselves.[/quote]
Wow ! Rich, you seemed to have joined the Mike Harrington tactical group with this statement. Unless you are willing to name names and specific examples….other than Mariko Yamada, your usual go to whipping woman,
it would seem that this is nothing but typical MH inspired innuendo session.
Man, before Harrington started trolling this blog on a daily basis, innuendo was just fun. Now innuendo is just toxic!
For humors sake, maybe instead of zero tolerance innuendo policy we could allow one instance of innuendo per month from each poster – maybe two or three instances for an actual named poster – five or six for Rich Rifkin, Bob Dunning, and any other regular contributor to the Enterprise.
Hmmm, on second thought, I agree with medwowan.
Rich wrote:
> This is why we need publicly financed campaigns.
I don’t think that “publicly financed campaigns” will do anything to stop firefighters in uniform in front of grocery stores telling people who to vote for (my firefighter friends do this to get rid of anyone they don’t like) or big companies paying for (free speech protected) issue ads that may mention that someone in elected office is a bad guy.
I have never heard anyone else talk about my campaign finance reform idea where you can take as much as you want from fire fighters, oil companies, etc. but have to recuse yourself from any vote that has anything to do with the people you take money from.
I would also have a process where the courts would also require a politician who got political help from an independent expenditure group run by the firefighters, oil companies, etc. to recuse themselves.
Rich wrote:
> Of course, the lefty-liberals who think that
> usually do so because they are benefitting
> from some of that corruption themselves.
Then medwoman wrote:
> Wow ! Rich, you seemed to have joined the Mike
> Harrington tactical group with this statement.
> Unless you are willing to name names and specific
> examples
The first step in getting any change is to realize that (just about) everyone that gives money to the government (from BOTH the righ and left) is doing it to get special favors. A left wing group may want to close a chunk of land to everyone but members of their small group that go in to “inspect” things while a right wing compamy may want to close a chunk of land to everyone but them and lease it for next to nothing so they can strip mine, drill for oil or cut down all the trees.
As for examples you can look at ANYTHING the government pays for. Rich writes above “the cost of labor, per hour, is 3 times as much”. A friend that works for a huge construction company that does a lot of government work has told me that labor for government contracts it is much more than
three times higher than average since the “work rules” are just insane. If he has some guys in the “laborers union” digging in a basement they need to get someone from the “electrician’s union” to move their lights (and they stop working but still get paid while they wait for the guy to come move the lights). About 15 years back the city of San Francisco “remodeled” some public housing units at a cost of over $250K (what the public sector was selling new homes at the time for in most parts of the state).
RICH: [i]”Of course, the lefty-liberals who think that usually do so because they are benefitting from some of that corruption themselves.”[/i]
POOR: [i]”Unless you are willing to name names and specific examples … other than Mariko Yamada, your usual go to whipping woman …”[/i]
My point, quite simply, is that most of Davis’s lefty-liberals are either directly employed by government (schools, city, county, UC or state) or indirectly employed (such as Kaiser gynecologists whose income largely comes from government accounts). As such, when we had the chance to stem the corruption and clean up campaign finance with Prop 32, Davis voted against it in big numbers. I believe most of the lefty-liberals did so because they believe the corruption in the Democratic Party is good for their bank accounts.
It’s a similar self-interested logic in Davis when those who are already comfortably living here, whether liberal, moderate or conservative, vote against all new housing developments. They don’t care so much about the folks who would like to occupy those residents. The current anti-growthers are voting their own self-interest; and likewise, many of the pro-growthers (at least those funding pro-growth positions) are doing so out of selfish interest.
[i]”I have never heard anyone else talk about my campaign finance reform idea where you can take as much as you want from fire fighters, oil companies, etc. but have to recuse yourself from any vote that has anything to do with the people you take money from.”[/i]
I’ve given thought to this idea in the past. And while I do like it, there is a practical problem. Take, for example, a housing development proposal in Davis. Say three of the five members of the Council have accepted campaign donations from the developer. The other two have not. If you were to preclude three of the five from the vote, you would fail to have a quorum.
In a development case, you might respond, “That’s fine. Then the development proposal dies for lack of a quorum.”
But there are issues which won’t just go away. How would we pass a labor contract with the firefighters, if three of the five are precluded and we don’t have a quorum? And if the three are precluded from the fire union vote, then they likely should be precluded from the entire budget vote, a portion of which is that labor deal. And then we could not have a budget.
These same sort of problems would arise at the state level, as well.
One thing I think conservatives should understand (I don’t know if you are a conservative) is that almost every organized private campaign financing is designed to expand the power and scope of government and/or to constrain the free market and they therefore have that effect. The oil industry lobbyists don’t spend most of their efforts fighting against environmentalist lobbyists or burdensome regulations. They fight for tax breaks (which amount to subsidies to the oil companies) for exploration, extraction and delivery of oil and gas and so on. The farm lobby is funding campaigns to get taxpayer funded crop insurance and direct subsidies for grain crops and indirect subsidies for cheap water and other infrastructure projects that they want but don’t want to pay for and on and on. And of course, the labor lobbies are funding campaigns to expand the pay and benefits of public employees and to restrict the competition for private organized labor.
As such, the main reason our government keeps growing and growing in power and scope is because those who are benefitting from it are privately financing campaigns. The only way to stop that is to have publicly financed campaigns at all levels, if you want less and better government services. And conservatives have always failed to understand that.
My bad: “They don’t care so much about the folks who would like to occupy those [s]residents[/s] [b]residences.[/b]
I wrote:
> I have never heard anyone else talk about my
> campaign finance reform idea where you can take
> as much as you want from fire fighters, oil companies,
> etc. but have to recuse yourself from any vote
> that has anything to do with the people you take
> money from.
Then Rich wrote:
> I’ve given thought to this idea in the past.
> And while I do like it, there is a practical
> problem. Take, for example, a housing development
> proposal in Davis. Say three of the five members
> of the Council have accepted campaign donations
> from the developer. The other two have not. If
> you were to preclude three of the five from the
> vote, you would fail to have a quorum.
I have not worked out the details, but we could have a system that would reduce the amount of money people accepted in the first place if they knew that if they were not able to vote in some number of votes that they could not run for re-election and if they could not vote in a larger number of votes they would be forced out of office and the seat would be filled with a special election.
Rich then wrote:
> One thing I think conservatives should understand
> (I don’t know if you are a conservative) is that
> almost every organized private campaign financing
> is designed to expand the power and scope of
> government and/or to constrain the free market and
> they therefore have that effect.
Not many people call me a “conservative” (it might have something to do with me calling most mainstream “conservatives” “right wing partisan nut jobs” on a regular basis), but I am well aware that when most people say “campaign finance reform” they are really saying “make it easier for my guys to get elected and/or stay in office”. What scares me today is that I’m seeing more and more of the people in power making deals with each other so they get more power and we have things like “we will give your defense contractors a huge $1 million a toilet seat contract if you give my union buddies an extra $10K a year. Since they are spending other people’s money no one seems to care that we are heading toward financial insolvency on the federal, state and local level.