It is going to be an interesting three and a half months between now and the June 3 election on taxes. What will make this endeavor most frustrating is that the public has not been paying attention to the city’s ongoing fiscal crisis, which actually started well before September of 2008 but became evident at that time. Many will be unaware as to the steps that the city has taken to reduce costs, cut back on personnel, and belatedly make structural reforms.
Many will also not understand that the genesis of these problems are 10 to 15 years old, and only because the economic collapse are we giving them heed.
First, we again have to clear the insinuation that something nefarious occurred during the meeting on Tuesday. What happened was that Brett Lee called for a break so the council could collect their thoughts – when they came back, Councilmember Lucas Frerichs decided to reduce the tax from 0.75% to 0.50%.
But that was not the result of any secret discussion. He largely did that on his own or after discussing it with Rochelle Swanson, his Brown Act Partner.
Yes, the Brown Act would preclude the council huddling in a private room to figure things out – but that is not what occurred. In fact, for most of the break, Lucas Frerichs was not even talking to Rochelle Swanson – I know this because she and Brett Lee spent most of the break talking to me.
This notion had been discredited on the Vanguard on Wednesday, but for reasons unknown, Bob Dunning decided to write on Friday: “Along about midnight, at the urging of Councilman Brett Lee, they took a two-minute bathroom break and all five of them disappeared behind the magic doors where only council members are allowed to tread …
“Oddly, when they returned, they had lowered their sights to a mere half-penny tax increase and passed it faster than you can say ‘potholes on Pole Line’ … I don’t know what they were drinking back there during their short break, but it wasn’t Sacramento River water …”
Bob Dunning, as usual was not at the meeting, and must have either jumped to conclusions based on the break or been given erroneous information. Oddly, when I emailed him about it, we had a 30-email exchange (I exaggerate not) in which he talked about everything but the issue at hand.
I may not have agreed with the council’s decision – as I wrote on Thursday – but nothing nefarious occurred. I do think Mr. Dunning was correct in his next comment which is, “They left $1.7 million on the table in the mistaken belief that lowering the ante by one-quarter cent would make it bulletproof at the ballot box …”
The council believes that they are going to get two passes at this, and I think that is one of the bigger miscalculations they made on Tuesday night, or Wednesday morning.
The next thing that is going to move into the opening is the re-hashing of the revenue issue. Today’s letter lays that out as well as any, as William Tournay of Davis suggests that the council, “after years of no serious discussions of revenue” instead expect to “soak its residents with more fees. How much blood do they expect to get out of a turnip?”
Mr. Tournay cites the “2006 retail leakage study, done in conjunction with the Target development, indicated 75 percent retail leakage for Davis. Folks, that is troubling. It also indicates that Davis is underserved with retail space.”
He continues, “Our council is well known for the pressure it endures from the ‘keep-us-small-and-desirable’ crowd. But that kind of problematic inwardness needs to be tempered with reality. Six to 10 years of additional taxation and economic planning will not change the reality that money chases low prices and broad choices.”
But Mr. Tournay completely ignores the other side of the coin. Everyone from the Chamber Executive to Director to the Chief Innovation Officer to the four candidates running for council believe that the public is not going to support additional retail. In fact, when Target was placed to the voters, even the strongest adherents on council, Don Saylor and Stephen Souza, said this was going to be the only big box, and they stuck with that notion a few years later.
The city instead has turned its attention toward high-tech economic development. Rob White brilliantly laid out the plan on Tuesday night (his synopsis, the multimedia presentation). High tech will bring the city both increased property taxes through the improvement of existing cites as well as the highly sought point-of-sales tax.
The advantage of going this route is that the city can utilize its biggest assets – location of the university and placement near some of the best agricultural lands in the world to leverage revenue. But those are going to be long-term investments. In the short term, we need taxes and perhaps temporary cuts to services to balance our budget and reinvest infrastructure.
Mr. Tournay is correct that the city had for years had no serious discussions; while that is correct, the public plays a huge role in this, as does the economy. Bottom line, had the city built it in 2009, it would probably look like the Target pods right now, just now growing. But the public wasn’t there and even economic development will be a huge lift.
Finally perhaps comes breaking news – Bob Dunning, after years of ignoring perhaps the most serious issue facing Davis has suddenly discovered, probably because of the tax issue and now the POU (Publicly Owned Utility) issue, that we have an economic crisis in Davis.
In his column this morning, he calls for a “thorough review of city finances.” One problem – we have been thoroughly reviewing the city’s finances for almost seven years now. If he doesn’t want to read me, certainly he could have read Rich Rifkin in his own paper and, even on occasion, the paper’s editorial pages.
Mr. Dunning writes, “While I’m of the mind that the good citizens of this town will more than likely be willing to vote for a sales tax increase to bail us out of our current jam, the public wallet will not remain open forever.”
He quotes “Peter” who wrote that the council meeting was “was another reminder of how eager” the council is “to spend other people’s money.” That sounds funny because the city first acknowledged the fiscal crisis belatedly in late 2008 and June of 2014 is the first time that the council is proposing a tax increase. Talk about not being eager to spend other people’s money, at least acknowledge that.
After attacking the idea of the POU – which seems to be the limit of people’s understanding of city finances, “Peter” writes, “The city is incapable of fixing sidewalk trip-and-fall hazards or street potholes, and we expect a city utility to do adequate upkeep on power lines or gas lines?”
Message to city hall: what we have here is a failure to communicate. Bob Dunning has apparently been completely asleep at the wheel during the discussion of how the city is hundreds of millions in the hole on road repairs. It is not that the city can’t fix them, but that they lack the financing.
Mr. Dunning then writes, “I’ll admit to never sending a Christmas greeting to PG&E, but I can tell you that in the half-dozen or so times over a great number of years that they’ve had to come to our neighborhood or to our home specifically during a power problem, they’ve been prompt, professional and proficient.”
And the fact that PG&E has far more of these outages than other companies is irrelevant, because Mr. Dunning believes that they have been prompt, professional and proficient. But I digress.
Mr. Dunning spends zero time talking about unfunded liabilities, pensions, retiree health care. In fact, I can’t recall a single time in the last seven years when he has mentioned any of these things.
Instead, he writes, “It’s time to convene a citizen-based Budget Advisory Commission to turn over every rock looking for spare change that could get us out of this mess.”
The funniest thing is, the city already has. Maybe Mr. Dunning should be paying more attention to city fiscal matters – he might understand some of the issues and challenges the city is facing better.
That is not to say I give the city a pass on these things – most of them, as we have discussed in the last few weeks, were preventable.
I remain concerned about the sales tax initiative. As I argued on Tuesday, by going with a revenue measure that only raises about $3.6 million of the needed $5.1 million (which we had all agreed was actually far too low), the council has once again pushed off the discussion and the placement of funds needed for road repair for at least six more months.
The second problem is the trust issue. During the run-up to the tax measure, I made it very clear that my support for the tax measure would heavily depend on the degree to which the council could commit that new revenue generated by the sales tax would go to structural shortfalls and deferred maintenance, rather than to increased employee compensation.
There is a history here, as I have recounted many times – in 2004 the council passed a half-cent sales tax that was supposed to keep parks open and prevent the city from having to lay off city employees. Somehow, though, the council turned around in 2005 and gave away the store. The firefighters got a 36% salary increase and other bargaining units got 15 to 18%.
The city has limitations on what they can do with a general use tax. The city cannot bind itself to spend the money a certain way, because that would require that the vote be two-thirds.
The only sure way that the council will not in two years’ time or four years’ time be able to move to go back to four on an engine, or eliminate boundary drop or shared services with UC Davis, and give increased compensation to the firefighters and other city employee groups is if the council does not have the money to do it.
Interestingly enough, that puts us back into parcel tax territory, not sales tax.
The city doesn’t seem likely to reconsider that decision, although they have until March 11 to act to pull the sales tax measure off the ballot.
The discussion in the community shows (A) the voters are not sufficiently educated on this issue and (B) a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.
The city manager in the two months before he heads for higher ground is going to do the whirlwind tour of Davis with a mission to education the public, but I wonder if that is not going to be too little too late. I mean, if Bob Dunning hasn’t even used the terms unfunded liability, PERS, or OPEB, how is the average citizen going to understand these complexities?
—David M. Greenwald reporting
What really happened was Lucas took Rochelle on a trip to the future in his secret time machine he hides in the back room to show her the disastrous consequences a three quarters sales tax had on their political future. When the got back they froze time and convinced their colleagues it was a bad idea.
Does making stuff up and writing it down in the Vanguard make it true or does that trick only work for Enterprise columnists?
Now why didn’t I think of that?
Mr. Tournay is correct that the city had for years had no serious discussions, while that is correct, the public plays a huge role in this as does the economy. Bottom line, had the city built it in 2009, it would probably look like the Target pods right now, just now growing. But the public wasn’t there and even economic development will be a huge lift.
I think this is a key point, but for the life of me I can’t understand what the VG is trying to say.
I can say though that there is definitely a tone of Dunning attack in this piece. I think Bob Dunning is not in the business of leading readers to formulate any complicated solutions. And if our fiscal problems are anything, they are complicated. On the contrary, Bob’s shtick is casting a critical eye on the policy directions of the town using healthy doses of humor, light sarcasm and snarkiness. He goes the opposite direction from or mothers’ admonition to say nothing if you don’t have anything nice to say. And most of us love reading Bob because he has nailed the art of being negative and grumpy while still being humorous and loveable. Personally, I have only mastered the easy half of that art, and admire Bob for what he routinely can do.
But getting back to the topic.
Davis can use more retail and it would only enhance the human condition within the city. Those that continue to block retail development, and business park development, should be called to task to make their specific case for how and why this would negatively impact the city or negatively impact their way of life. It is time to call them out… no more hiding behind a wall of nebulous emotives like “protecting the small town feel”… a response that is completely useless in trying to figure out how to move the city forward into fiscal sustainability while also providing all the amenities that normal people require and want.
Frankly, it appears that a concern over more traffic might be the only definitive negative impact driving the resistance to economic development. While I have similar interests to prevent gridlock on our streets, I am dumbfounded for why more people don’t see the opportunity for Davis to be a leading developer of state-of-the-art solutions for traffic and transportation.
When I talk to those against growth and development and ask for examples of other communities they would like us to model, there is usually a large gap of time before there is a response (I think because there are no comparable communities in the US with as little retail and other business development) and then I hear about some Scandinavian cities. But if you really research these European cities being lauded as having a better design and one that Davis should model, we still find Davis is orders of magnitude less economically developed.
Here is the way I see it. We are Davis version 1.0… not much different than we were in 1970. But it is not a sustainable design at this point in time and it will be less so going forward. So we need to become Davis version 2.0. We need to stop trying to keep Davis version 1.0… mostly because the city will become insolvent due to the lack of economic activity, but also because it harms us doing so… and instead start working on designing the most innovative and progressive 2.0 version.
” I think Bob Dunning is not in the business of leading readers to formulate any complicated solutions. And if our fiscal problems are anything, they are complicated. ”
and if dunning did not have a relatively large following, your observation would not only be accurate but understandable. the problem is that for some, they won’t know something is happening unless they see it in dunning. while it’s fine to object to the pou, we still have to remember that the pou is $60000 spread over a decade of pay back. otoh, opeb is running at $60 million unfunded, pensions are as well, and roads are topping $100 million possibly up as high as half a billion. if you’re worrying about pou, you’re missing the big picture. that’s a critical problem here when for most people in this town, they were completely unaware davis was in trouble for the last seven years.
It would be nice if he could throw in some facts every once and a while.
Snarkiness is dominant in Dunning diatribes with humor a poor relative. He is always critical, his take is rarely informative or well informed and unfortunately, while he may think his role is humor he strays into straight commentary and that’s when he does us the most disservice. He should stick to his shtick until or unless he is willing to educate himself on the issues.
Too bad that Dunning’s pieces are seen for anything other than his actual role as a humorist. I see this as roughly the equivalent of accepting John Stewart or Colbert as presenting “the news”, or virtually anyone of Fox news for that matter.
And with the Fox comment, Tia joins Bob Dunning in demonstrating humor and light snarkiness.
I’m sure she would have included MSNBC if more people actually watched it… right.
Frankly, I’m sure that more Davis liberals watch MSNBC than will actually admit it.
Wouldn’t know. I have never seen anything on MSNBC…… ; )
What is MSCBC? Is that were I can watch old Friends reruns?
So you watch Fox News then?
LOL Frankly, they must watch it all the time since they feel they’re experts about it.
I think that we may have come full circle on my point about Bob Dunning being a humorist. Megyn Kelly, in her quite serious rebuttal of the comments made in response to her assertion that Santa Claus and Jesus were both white, claimed that she was doing a light humor segment. While I would buy that with regard to Santa and the penguins, how about the assertion with regard to Jesus. Light humor ….really ? I’d say much more like profound ignorance brushed off by one liner about that being debatable. Sometimes it can be hard to know what is intended as news and what is intended as humor unless the author or newscaster has clearly labelled it in advance.
I think my preference would be the same as many of you have requested of David…..that he clearly separate and identify reporting from opinion, or in the case of Fox News or any other news agency, reporting from humor.
So you watch FOX but not MSNBC?
Or do you comment on FOX without watching it?
Interesting either way.
There are enough clips floating around available from multiple venues that it is not necessary to “watch” any program to follow news stories of interest. I confess that I am fairly predictable in my news acquisition.
I listen to NPR on my way to work and then follow up on stories of interest to me in the evening by browsing on line for different takes on the story that appear on line. Kind of like readying relevant original peer reviewed articles in medicine rather than relying on the studies provided by a drug rep.
So let me see if I’ve got this right? You don’t watch Fox News but you’ve heard info from other sources that makes you think you have enough data to make the statement “I see this as roughly the equivalent of accepting John Stewart or Colbert as presenting “the news”, or virtually anyone of Fox news for that matter,” and you know enough to say not just some of the Fox newscasters, but “virtually anyone of Fox News”. So, using your own words, you know enough to judge virtually all of them.
GI
Ok, I will provide a full confession. While it is true that I do not watch Fox news ( or any other news program on a regular basis) I have watched multiple clips from Fox news in response to comments made by others. This certainly does not make me an expert and I was guilty of exaggeration when I said “virtually anyone”. So in the interest of educating me, who do you consider the most reliable purveyors of news on Fox.
Any inclusion of Megyn will be considered either tongue in cheek, deliberately provocative or both given her comments about the ethnicity of Jesus.
Oh please Tia, you threw that barb about Fox News out there just trying to be incindiary and a few of us bit. I’m not about to waste my time having a conversation with you about the merits of Fox News.
You probably should not join in the standard left diatribe about Fox News if you don’t watch it. Otherwise you would be bloviating… something that the most popular cable TV newstalk host, Bill O’Reilly, says we should not do.
A lot of people that don’t watch Fox News, or that claim they don’t like it, miss the point that it is based on a point-versus-point conflict format. Many of the show hosts are more ideologically-balanced than others. But they are always trying to get opposing viewpoints aired. Contrast this to the other stations like MSNBC and CNN and even ABC, NBC and CBS… they all stick to a more “civil” format that means they only invite on the people that basically agree… and that tilts is way left.
PBS & NPR do a much better job with opposing viewpoints; but again, keeping more “civilized” ends up eliminating the type of point-counterpoint discussion that helps completely report many of the important issues of our time.
Which Fox News hosts and personalities do you consider ideologically balanced?
To name a few…
Greta Van Susteren
Bret Baier
Brit Hume
Chris Wallace
Brenda Buttner (Business)
Gretchen Carlson
Then there are the second string guys that are liberals…
Bob Beckel
Juan Williams
Kirsten Powers
Alan Colmes
Dennis Kucinich
I also think Bill O’Reilly is not as right-biased as some claim. Depends on the topic.
Sean Hannity is a train wreck of right-leaning streams.
By the way Tia, it is “Jon” Stewart. We would not want him to be confused with the child of a Christian family using biblical names. That would ruin his standing among liberal-progressives.
Frankly wrote:
> By the way Tia, it is “Jon” Stewart. We would not want him to be
> confused with the child of Christian family using biblical names.
> That would ruin is standing among liberal-progressives.
The name “John” may be a little more “Christian”, than “Jonathan” (St. John of Bohemia is the patron saint of the Bohemian Club), the but there are plenty of old money right wingers “christened” Jonathan (The Bohemian club and PU club both have plenty of guys named Jonathan)…
Then Jim wrote:
> How did John the Baptist spell his name?
Since (Jesus’s cousin) John the Baptist was Jewish he probably spelled his name the same way as Jonathan Leibowitz (who goes by his stage name of Jon Stewart when hosting the Daily Show)…
Technically it’s Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz
His articles are taken for straight commentary when they ARE straight commentary. He should do one or the other. Talk about blurred lines. What he does is just as distasteful as the song. If he is a humorist (I don’t find him humorous) he should not stray into serious commentary. He has undue influence when he forgets he is paid to be at least slightly humorous.
Q: How did John the Baptist spell his name? (Hint: it wasn’t with an alphabet containing the letters “j” “o” “h” or “n.”)
Perhaps you meant that you wouldn’t want anyone to confuse Jon Stewart with someone of acceptably Anglo-Saxon heritage.
Guess the things I’ve read about yahweh, jehoveh, were all fabrications… good to know there were misspellings or myths.
I want it known that I am an equal opportunity mis speller !
David wrote:
> the fact that PG&E has far more of
> these outages than other companies
Where did you get the “fact” that PG&E has “far more of these outages than other companies”?
Like Dunning I’m not a big defender of PG&E, but my power has not gone off that much living all over the state with PG&E all these years, and while I don’t have any report that proves PG&E does OK we sure seem to do better than friends in the south who have hurricanes that take out power for days at a time and my friends on the east that have freezing rain taking out power lines most winters…
Part of the study that was posted by the city in December
It is a fact that PG&E has more outages. What has been pointed out to me is that the numbers may be skewed because they include rural areas.
Michelle wrote:
> the numbers may be skewed because they include rural areas.
The numbers would also be skewed if they used the “number” (vs. percentage) of people who lose power since California has more people than any other state.
If 100% of the people in Wyoming lost power last year it would be the same as 1.5% of the people in California having a power outage.
It will be easy to spin that the utility with a 1.5% outage rate is worse than the utility with the 100% outage rate since “more people lost power”…
Can you give a citation?
I had conversation with someone about this in passing, so I don’t remember the exact details. I think that were trying pointing out the numbers given in the report included data from rural areas where power outages tended to be either longer or more frequent or both, I’m not sure.
The implications was that we would have more accurate data about PG&E’s reliability in Davis if we excluded rural areas. I’m not sure anyone has done this, or if they have I have not seen the adjusted numbers.
When we were in the process of buying our house back in the 80’s we were perplexed by the flashlights in all the bedrooms. Did these people not pay their PGE bills or something? Then we moved in and began to experience regular electrical outages and we understood the flashlights. We had over a decade of frequent power outages. We were told it was rats in our substation and/or we had the first underground direct buried power lines in the city which resulted in frequent shorts and the need to dig and repair. Something changed and the outages diminished. Naturally we never had an official explanation of how they fixed the problem but I have never had less reliable electric service anywhere I’ve live in this or any other country.
“The only sure way that the council will not in two years’ time or four years’ time be able to move to go back to four on an engine, or eliminate boundary drop or shared services with UC Davis, and give increased compensation to the firefighters and other city employee groups is if the council does not have the money to do it.”
Of course even with this tax increase there isn’t enough money to do these things and you probably know it so your paranoia is more likely a smokescreen for your Grover Norquist starve the beast right wing anti-tax agenda.
As a young liberal I bet David never dreamed of being called a “Grover Norquist starve the beast right winger”…
Yeah I really didn’t see that one coming.
Keep in mind that close to half of San Francisco (who voted for Ammiano) were calling Willie Brown an extreme right winger a few years back and he just got the Bay Bridge named after him (maybe we will have the “Greenwald Causeway” in a few years if David keeps up the good work)…