Vaitla and Chapman want fewer commissions.
By Alan Hirsch
There is an plan to consolidate City Commissions in the run up to the general plan rewrite. This elimination of 5 commissions is before the Davis City Council on Tuesday 1/30/24 as Item 5 (link). This is being put forth by Josh Chapman and Bapu Vaitla, the council members with the least experience with our diversity of commissions.
The commission reorganization is to reduce the total number of citizen commissioners by about ¼, five commissions are eliminated by consolidation, and one is added. The change is especially historical as it ends the Davis City Tree Commissions, one of the oldest municipal Tree Commissions in the US.
Some people might think commission streamlining is just “inside the beltway” or “meta” process talk. But those who follow city politics see commissions as a reflection of civil engagement, and on what issues citizen can—and cannot—be engaged. It is an allocation of power to participate, much like the US Electoral College is allocation of power to choose a president. Many civically active residents feel city staff has a bias to minimize the role of citizen commissioner not just as it’s time consuming but because the vulnerability of having your decisions questioned may not be pleasant.
What can be at stake is considerable: The Davis Vanguard itself was formed in 2006 when the city council closed the Human Relations Commission after its members refused to stop its questioning of police conduct. It took 13 years (Jan 2019), and the Picnic Day incident for council to finally form a Police Accountability Commission.
(Public can of course comment by attending the Davis council meeting Tuesdays at 7 or call in Tuesday noon to 4 at 530-75×7-5693)
Typical Closed Door Council Process
The Chapman/Vaitla proposal solution seem to have been arrived at without deep engagement of the public. The ad hoc council committee chose to always meet behind closed doors over the last year, failing to have a single public forum for input. Their memo proposal says it is based private meetings with current commission chair, staff and their unnamed self-selected member of public.
Instead of setting up a public task force of community members, having even one open forum meeting, or making an open public solicitation of input from stakeholder, they choose who and what input they wanted.
The proposal notably underlines and boldens the words “Specific” and “Significant” in its preface to emphasize their goal is to focus (narrow?) the citizen volunteers’ contributions.
What Is Proposed
To summarize the Chapman/Vaitla plan:
- End the Tree Commission and merge into the Natural Resources Commission which is claimed to not have enough to do. Form a “Tree Removal Commission” to oversee removals.
- Finance & Budgeting Commission combined with Utility Rate Commission into a new Fiscal commission. It is unclear who oversees utility/city service infrastructure now—this is the commission that would have reviewed Bright Night.
- The state required Historic Resources Management Commission (HRMC) merged into the Planning Commission in the next few months.
(Editor’s note: The city clarified to the Vanguard that only the Planning Commission is state mandated, the HRMC is not mandated by the state). - Split and expand the focus of the existing Social Service Commission into an Affordable Housing Commission narrowing and add a new “Community Health Commission” which focuses on mental health and vulnerable populations. It is unclear if the “Health” includes more universal issues like disease and pandemics. It’s interesting that while Vaitla wants to consolidate other commissions to reduce their scope of work, he wants to split up the commission he served on to expand its scope.
- Elimination of the Unitrans Advisory Commission as part of drive to put all transportation/Infrastructure issues into a new name is “Circulation and Active Mobility Commission.” This will help lighten staff load working with public but also dilute initiatives: When the Bike Commission was consolidated with Road Commission into the BTSSC Commission a few years back staff made no presentation on bike issues to the new commission for a full year.
- Council continues “unchanged at this time” (funny wording) the Planning, Rec and Parks, Open Spaces, Senior Service Commission & Police Accountability Commission.
All the current commissioners will be invited to stay on the new consolidated commissions that will be temporarily expanded until members term out. Then new commissions will then revert to a standard size, usually 7 members.
The result of the Chapman/Vaitla proposal is less focused on hard infrastructure, where most of city budget and staff are devoted particularly in public works: 60% or even 75% (depending how you calculate it) of the Public Works Oversight Commission have been consolidated out of existence over the last eight years. This contrasts with the city manager having split up its public works function into two parts in the last few years giving it too highly paid directors. The Commissions that have been or may be eliminated are Bicycle, Unitrans, Utility Rate, and Tree Commissions.
An A-historical Proposal for an Historic Change
The elimination of the Tree Commission is rather historic. Davis had one of the first municipal tree commissions in the US (1963), we passed one of the first parking lot shade ordinances, we were one of the first cities to be designated a “Tree City” by the National Arbor Day. Foundation. Policy Issues and the Urban Forest Master plan implementation will now be subsumed into the renamed Natural Resources’ Commission (renamed climate and Environmental Justice). A husk of the Tree Commission will live on in an ironically named “Tree Removal Commission.“ the proposal suggests. Chapman and Vaitla have never attended a Tree Commission meeting according to its past chair.
The idea to reduce commissions to “streamline” is old trope: here is a 2010 piece from Elaine Roberts Musser discussing the issue, but their report seems a-historical, possibly reflecting Bapu and Chapman being in their first term as councilmembers.
The proposal makes no reference to history surrounding this commission “reform.” This is especially notable with regard to a Summer 2020 Joint letter from 15 senior commissioners to City Council titled “Improving City of Davis Decision Making.” The letter made page 1 of the Enterprise including specific suggestion for council to adopt.
The Enterprise wrote of this July 23, 2020: :
An open letter released by the group this week said informed and transparent decision making “is an essential pillar of good local governance” but that in Davis, that pillar is eroding. “Recent years have seen multiple alarming instances of secretive action, shortsighted planning, and disconnect between community and leadership priorities,”
In their open letter the authors wrote that commissions reflect “an unparalleled level of civic engagement and civic pride” and were “one of Davis’s greatest strengths.” They continue:
“The more than 120 city residents serving on Davis commissions, committees, and task forces ‘provide expert analysis and propose informed actions on the issues that shape Davis’s present and future.’ Those volunteers also serve as conduits between Davis residents and the government and are referred to as the ‘eyes and ears’ of the City Council.
“Unfortunately, distance has grown between the city’s eyes and ears and its core executive bodies. Council and staff routinely make major decisions following only cursory consultation with relevant commissions…. In the most egregious cases, such as with the Bright Night lease option agreement, relevant commissions are not consulted at all.”
“… This is evidenced in part by the fact that staff representatives regularly participate in council deliberations on key items, but commission representatives are rarely invited or allowed to participate.”
The Enterprise article summarized: “Other issues raised in the letter include a lack of information provided by the council about closed session activities; conflicting guidance from city staff that ‘renders it functionally impossible for different commissions to collaborate on topics of mutual interest’; and a lack of training for new commissioners, which leaves those advisory boards ‘largely populated by individuals who have deep subject-matter expertise, but limited knowledge of how to contribute that expertise productively.’”
In years following, many of the letter signers have express to me disappointment their suggestion were not followed up on beyond an initial council report Oct 6, 2020. This could possibly be explained by the COVID shutdown.
Similar to BrightNite situation mentioned in the letter, I have recently uncovered that the city quietly issued a letter “strongly endorsing ” the controversial plan that the I-80 project should be only for cars—a decision made without robust policy discussion before Council or getting input from the city’s Transportation Commission (BTSSC) or especially the Natural Resource Commission. This I-80 plan effectively negates the city’s Climate Action Plan. Will Arnold has called the proposal “insanity” at the 1/9/24 council meeting but the quietly adopted city policy to support it in 2021, in two lines buried in a 10 page “Legislative Platform” memo.
The commission streamlining proposal by Chapman/Vaitla also does not seem to consider these issues raise in the past:
- Lack of Consensus Building Process to draft winnable J/R Development Proposals. The repeated inability of our community after10 years to craft consensus to develop winnable J/R measure to increasing housing and provide a more robust retail/industrial tax base (Innovation Park). These proposals failed to garner 50% 3 out of 4 times, even as council voted 5-0 for them—a sign city hall consensus building process (commissions) is not building community consensus.
- Brown Act as used to limit Public Input. Overtly controlling and limiting public input by aggressive use of the Brown act by staff a way that turn the law on its head by using it to set a ceiling, not a floor, for citizen involvement. This was discussed in a Vanguard article: Building a More Durable Consensus: addressing Davis’s Government’s Failing Process
- Not reappointing experienced member: Failure to look what they claim is lack of commission focus that is arguably be due to council’s controversial decisions not to reappoint experienced commission member (e.g. Alan Pryor, Matt Williams) and that clear loss of continuity and institutional memory.
The memo from Chapman and Vaitla says the changes are driven by preparation for the general plan but the change affects permanent governance structure that has evolved over last two twenty years. Very different from one time “taskforce” oriented structure for the general plan. No doubt city staff favors the changes to eliminate net 4 commissions as they had made it clear they find commissions and consensus building time consuming.
I am also told the reason for this reorganization is to give city commissions something important to do, as they are don’t know what to work on now. This might be true for some commissions which lack leadership, but this argument makes no sense for others: The Tree Commission, for example has three times submitted a revised tree ordinance (in 2015, 2017, 2021) and City top management filibustered each of them, so they never reached City Council. Yet I am told the Tree Commission is ineffective, even while city top management has been saying it is a “top priority” to rewrite the ordinance. I also note putting the Tree Commission into to the DT Plan was ignored.
Is the fault the lack of real work for commission to do, or is it that staff and/or council does not like or want the work product of the commissions and has send the message to commissions, thus “don’t make work for us by initiating anything—and anyway, if you do, we won’t use it anyway.” The tree ordinance provides a hint this may be the case sometimes.
This council meeting Tuesday will tell us about our community: will stakeholders with long history on issues show up or have they either aged and been ‘termed out” of commissions by council and given up on caring. If not, we may see a repeat of what happened Feb 9, 2023 when commission reforms were also proposed without stakeholder engagement. And with staff proposals council was backed into a corner, defending staff work instead of listening to the commissioner and stakeholder concerns. That meeting ended up with councilmembers and members of public attacking one another with one council member accused a commission chair of having the decorum of an infamous GOP congresswoman.
Far from our finest hour as a community.
For those listening, that February 2023 meeting presented a textbook case of what is wrong with city decision making.
Here’s what I wrote to the City Council this week. I only heard about the outlines of this proposal last week and Council member Donna Neville said then that she had no idea of what was in the content. This sort of constitutional change requires deliberation.
The City is overdue for reexamining its commission structure. As one of the signatories on a series of recommendations to the Council about how to change the manner in which commissions meet, consider issues and convey findings to the Council, I recognize the current system is not working at well as it could. This initial recommendation is a good way to start the conversation on what we want our commissions to focus on and how they should operate. Yet acting on these recommendations is premature, particularly since there has been no real citizen input. I urge the Council to take these recommendations out for public review before moving forward.
The two most important issues facing the City are meeting housing demand and implementing our Climate Action & Adaptation Plan. It is unclear how this restructuring will move these two goals forward. Starting with CAAP (which will strongly affect the direction of housing), while two commissions would be consolidated (NRC & Trees), implementation requires going across as many as five commissions’ purviews. Building electrification will be closely integration with electric vehicles in multiple ways, and increasing transit use will require land use planning. Planning for shade trees will affect use of solar panels. Implementing an effective CAAP will require a more holistic perspective than what has been parsed into silos so far. No one commission (nor any staff members or departments) have sufficient expertise to provide the planning and implementation required. The Council should be looking at how it can integrate the knowledge from these commissions to advise on the CAAP.
Similarly, solving the housing dilemma will require consideration of not only the standard zoning issues but familiarity with innovative transportation solutions, building sustainability, social equity considerations, fiscal impacts and community resiliency. Again no single commission (nor staff members or departments) have the expertise to consider these holistically. A wider range of perspectives than what comes from one commission will be needed.
The Council should be see this proposal as a starting point, not the end recommendation.
My two cents (about what it’s worth) is that I can see less administrative overhead in dollars and time the council and city staff with fewer commissions. But I also see the benefit of more people being involved with studying issues and providing perspective with more commissions that zero in more tightly on a given topic. I’m okay balancing that, but the balancing act has to make it clear what is being balanced and how any losses can be made up for. For instance, maybe fewer commissions means the council has to give up some ability to override recommendations. As I said, just my outsider’s cheap view.
My two cents (about what it’s worth) is that I can see less administrative overhead in dollars and time spent by the council and city staff with fewer commissions. But I also see the benefit of more people being involved with studying issues and providing perspective with more commissions that can zero in more tightly on a given topic. I’m okay balancing that, but the balancing act has to make it clear what is being balanced and how any losses can be made up for. For instance, maybe fewer commissions means the council has to give up some ability to override recommendations. As I said, just my outsider’s cheap view. (I was unaware that I can no longer edit my own comments, so I’m posting with my edited version. What’s the idea of not allowing us out here to edit or delete a badly worded comment?)
I think this is a really really important point, and I hadnt thought of the role of comissions in this at all, but the proposal / feedback loop is indeed broken.
When DiSC was announced to be coming back for a second attempt at an innovation park, I wrote a whitepaper aimed at addressing the specific deficiencies of the previous DiSC plan, and what we needed to do to insure that it “actually helped startups” in our community. I sent it to city hall, and had a direct conversation with Ash Feeney around these points, only to be told “there isnt a lot we can do to change the proposal at this point”… That was BEFORE the council voted to put it on the ballot.
The same dynamic is happening right now around village farms. A lot of people who are otherwise VERY pro-housing in this city have substantial concerns about that proposal, and have shown up and written critiques and suggestions as part of the EIR process.. but there doesn’t seem to be ANY mechanism for actually improving the proposal before it is put on the ballot.
I have written all of that up to being “just how measure J works” and it has deeply informed my opinion on why J needs to be reformed…. but if commissions can be used to get more actually useful input into that process it would be quite welcome.
When I was on the NRC we twice made proposals to change DiSC to make it more acceptable to the community. We were brushed off twice by the Staff and the developer. And we know the results. On the other hand, Nishi came back a second time with a proposal that reflected the input of the NRC and it passed after failing the first time.
Much too often the staff appears to believe that it knows better than the citizens. In my experience, when the Commissions raise concerns, they are are almost always correct over staff objections. We have so many commissions in this town (many more than neighboring Yolo cities) because we have so much expertise to tap into. The City should be looking for how to leverage that expertise, not stifle it.
Seperate topic alltogether… but relevant when talking about commsion structure:
Why no economic development comission?
Business and finance is about control of the city’s spending. Why dont we have a comission dedicated to increasing the city’s income?
Agreed. We need a citizen driven economic plan. The attempt a decade ago to solve our economic development problem with business parks with indeterminant tenants was a bust. A new economic/sustainability director (they are to be brought under one umbrella) will need a strong constituency outside of the development community (which seemed to be prime driver in the previous round.) A commission could be that vehicle, but the City staff will have to follow, not lead, that group.
We have one, it was originally passed as Measure J. Proposition 13 was another ‘citizen driven plan’ that significantly impacts our options. Those are examples of the type of solutions you get when citizen’s (with or without expertise) believe they are smarter than the folks elected to make the decisions.
The City staff follow the City Manager, full stop. They do not answer to the citizens nor to the City Council (nor anyone else for that matter). If you don’t like the results coming from the City’s staff then address the real issue. Otherwise…
Full stop is exactly where economic development is in Davis. We supper from a total absence of economic leaders
“We have one”
Mark hits the nail on the head here.
Matt Williams said no the plan put forward. Now he would argue, well what we really need is a citizen driven plan. But the reality that escapes him is that sometimes you can’t pick and choose. You either take what is proposed or you get as he put it, “full stop.”
David, other than the Nishi 2016 proposal, which had a focused and reasonably rich economic development plan for its commercial/economic component, none of the developer submitted proposals have had any actual plan for real/tangible/focused economic development that they shared with the community.
Further (other than Nishi 2016) there was no effort to educate the public on any form of economic development information/plans.
Even worse, the developer of DiSC, when asked about their marketing plan for bringing tenants and jobs to their proposed industrial park, said the “We won’t start any kind of marketing planning or effort until after the entitlements are approved by the voters.”
Self-inflicted wounds … full stop.
“none of the developer submitted proposals have had any actual plan for real/tangible/focused economic development that they shared with the community.”
I’m sure a lot of people would disagree with your opinion on it.
At the end of the day, saying no didn’t get a better project with a better plan. It got no project. For a lot of people, that’s what they wanted anyway. For you, I don’t think that was your goal.
That’s because, until those entitlements are approved by the voters, they had nothing to market. And going to prospective tenants about a project subject to voter approval in a city that historically has rejected those approvals would be a pretty short conversation.
Mark
I disagree. Measure J was not an “economic plan”–it was a knee jerk reaction to poor housing planning by the Council. It had the unintended effect of curtailing effective planning for one type of proposal favored by developers–new business parks. But it didn’t affect other types of planning that could evolve from what we the community possesses. See the 2018 Vanguard article that Anya and I wrote on an alternative proposal that can move forward without initially hitting Measure J/R/D, and even then could facilitate voter approval in that eventuality.
As for the City Staff, that would be arrogant for the City Manager to believe that he is not responsible to the citizens. You attribute way too much direct accountability through the City Council. In the world you describe, the incestuous relationship created by the echo chamber of Council members and the City manager means that there is no breaking through by citizens except through ballot initiatives. That attitude just encourages more bad policy making through the ballot instead of considered discussion in policy forums. You’re just encouraging more Measure J like policies. City staff are our employees–we are not their corporate “clients”. The City is not a business and should not operate as such. The City was much more effective when the staff worked cooperatively with citizens. Dave Pelz showed best how that worked. The citizens, not staff, created the plan for Valley Clean Energy. Central Park was created via citizen initiative, not staff action. We can’t leave our future to city staff, most of whom don’t reside in Davis and seem to lack a real sense of what are citizen interests and concerns.
This city and others suffer from overprofessionalization of policy making. (There are books about this problem.) City staffers paternalistically thinking that “they know better” leads to decisions captured by wealthy interests that eventually lack public support. Transparency and openness to effective input are the solutions, not the problem.
Matt is correct that we suffer from a lack of economic leaders. One part of this problem is the closed door attitude at the City. Citizens who have come forward with innovative, feasible ideas have been effectively dismissed by a lack of follow up as the staff instead has either just bought into the latest developer’s proposal or cooked up their own ill-formed ideas internally. Why come forward if you’re not going to be listened to?
Richard, in practice Mark is right. The inability of the developers to provide well articulated, comprehendable plans (either for housing or for economic development) has had the consequence of making Mark’s statement correct. But that doesn’t make it right … and it certainly does not help the level of distrust that pervades our community.
Richard:
Your response contains, what I will generously call, aspirational opinions, about how the City should function. Many of them, in fact, are things that I may agree with. Unfortunately, most of your aspirations have no connection to current reality. What I don’t know, however, is if you are choosing to be ignorant of that reality or if you are just that bloody daft.
The City Manager is not responsible to the citizens. The CM is only responsible to the desires of the CC majority. As long as a CM is able to count to three, they are able to function independently of what the citizen’s want. Simply put, a CM will only be responsible to the citizen’s if the CC majority requires it. I challenge you to name one Davis City Manager in the past three or four decades, who was openly responsive to public opinion and input. Our current CM has spent nearly his entire career as an employee of the City of Davis. He may have been the best candidate for the position when he was hired, but we will never know because the CC did not even consider (or interview) anyone else. He was simply handed a sizable raise over the prior incumbent and essentially given free rein by the Council majority.
Yes, that is true, but it is informative that you chose as your example an employee who retired a couple of decades ago. City staff work at the pleasure of the City Manager and unless their actions are illegal, there is no recourse to their poor performance or bad behavior towards City residents, unless of course, the City Manager requires it.
No, they are the City Manager’s employees. We only pay their compensation.
Yes, which is why decades ago one ‘wealthy interest group,’ the owners of downtown retail properties, worked to get city ordinances passed that restricted retail development outside of the downtown, including an ordinance that specifically precluded a new retail store opening outside of the downtown that directly competed with one in the downtown. That ordinance was still in effect at least as late as 2014 (the last time I looked). We are now and will continue to deal with the negative consequences of that choice for decades.
It is also why two other overlapping ‘wealthy interest groups,’ the Residential Developers and Real Estate Brokers in town, combined for decades to push building houses as the primary method for increasing City revenues (rather than commercial development). It was, by the way, the desire to increase city revenues (without considering increased costs) by building more houses that led to rapid expansion of Mace Ranch and ultimately to the wonderful ‘citizen driven plan,’ Measure J.
The overriding problem today is that we have a CM who has no experience in economic development, or likely, even an appreciation for the need, and a CC that doesn’t seem to care. The CM knows what he learned on the job working here in Davis, building more houses and restricting retail, and the CC listens to his advice. Therefore, no one should be surprised that we suck at economic development.
No, they were dismissed by the lack of interest on the part of the City Manager. My problem with your advocacy, Richard, is that you apparently think that you are more knowledgeable than most and so you whine that you are not being listened to. Unfortunately, you fail to accurately identify the problem, which is that the City Manager does not care about how smart you are or what you think, and the CC in turn, does not require him to do so. Whine all you want, Richard, but at least identify the actual problem you are whining about first.
Mark
What you’re saying about the City Manager is analogous to saying the President isn’t responsive to the voters because it’s actually the Electors who elect the President. Of course that’s not true. And the Council members understand that they must be responsive to the voters as well. So the CM doesn’t have an independent base derived solely from the Council. Of course an CM can act that way, but eventually it will create a problem.
As for an example of a CM responding to citizen input, the creation of Valley Clean Energy of which I was prime participant was citizen driven in which we recruited the public works director and the CM in 2015–not that long ago. The resistance to citizen input became much more apparent during the Downtown Plan process just a few years later with a different CM.
As for my use of “staff” I have used it to be less accusatory. I completely understand what the real center of that resistance is. I could see it when we started hearing directives from staff during commission meetings about what we were allowed to consider.
As to the my position on political philosophy versus what’s happening on the ground, making a point about what the core principle of our democracy is, versus what we’re seeing, is what drove the American Revolution and the formation of the Constitution. Subsuming that to pragmatism as you’re suggesting we should do means that we just allow ourselves to slip into autocracy and authoritarianism. So they are not the CM’s employees although he may act that way and we should be raising our voices to demand more responsiveness. You’re just suggesting that we should just give up.
Mark
This is where you’ve hit the nail on the head. Your examples of how poor decisions were put forward by the staff at the behest of wealthy interests illustrate a part of that problem. The last two “economic development” directors have been ineffective and came in with no real experience or ideas. And now the City is struggling to find someone to replace them–the position has been advertised several times.
How do we go about changing that? We’ve gotten at least two Council members to be interested in the economic development blueprint that Anya and I laid out in 2018 in these pages that follows a theme that Woodland and Sacramento adopted.
Also, Matt, I agree Mark is right in practice vs. the principles that I’ve laid out. And you have correctly identified the consequences of Mark’s point of what happens in practice.