Davis, CA – Over the last decade, the Davis City Council has definitely had their share of tragedies and unexpected fires that they have had to address—the shooting of Natalie Corona, COVID and the related shutdowns, the tragic stabbings last year by Carlos Dominguez.
Someone asked me if I believed the council has made a single meaningful accomplishment over the last decade—and while that’s probably a harsher way to put it than I would offer, I think the basic problem is fairly accurate.
I give the council a relative pass on some of the things people complain about. For example, I think the Mace situation which earned a lot of ire from folks not accustomed to dealing with traffic was less about decisions the council made and more about traffic congestion along I-80 coupled with directional apps. Even after the council addressed the road situation, we still see times when traffic just grinds to a halt.
To me, on the big issues, the council overall has not done well and not done nearly enough to address overall concerns.
Let’s take some of the big issues for example.
You have the fiscal health of the city. In 2013 and 2014, the city was set up pretty well on economic development, but that has fallen by the wayside. The council drove off respected Chief Innovation Officer Rob White, three economic development projects lost at the polls, and another fled to Woodland.
In the meantime, the city council is pushing through a revenue measure—this is hardly a new problem.
Back in 2016, Mayor Dan Wolk wrote, “Our budget is balanced and resilient. Due to improved revenues and cost-cutting efforts, our budget is balanced with a healthy 15-percent reserve.”
At the time, however, Mayor Pro Tem Robb Davis wrote on the Vanguard challenging some of the mayor’s assertions.
He concluded, “Is our budget balanced? Not if our budget accounts for all our costs (which it should). Are we fiscally resilient? Not without greater diversification of revenues. Is our local fiscal situation doing very well? I am simply not ready to say that.”
From my standpoint, little has changed since then.
Things have only gotten worse from my perspective because every time the council has attempted to fix these problems, the voters have largely rejected the efforts—not only three economic development projects, but the roads parcel tax in 2018. They are trying again. Maybe it will work.
But there is a method of insanity at work here as well—they are attempting the same thing time and again and hoping for a different result.
From my perspective what the council really needs to do is get to community groups and educate them on the city’s precarious fiscal situation.
In the meantime, the council has repeatedly made things worse by increasing compensation above the increase in revenues and approving the expenditure of certain “toys” such as the ladder truck—which was redundant and really not needed.
On the issue of homelessness, I have run a series of stories criticizing the governor’s approach to clearing camps without having adequate shelter. The city has engaged in some of the same behavior—they cleared the F Street camps a few years ago, but the city lacks enough permanent supportive housing.
The city implemented a Respite Program for daytime use, but the real problem is where people are sleeping.
From my standpoint, the only time I saw a visible decrease in the number of people sleeping on our downtown streets was during COVID, when the state’s Project Roomkey housed homeless populations. The number of people on the streets has been rising and I notice, as I drive to the office in the wee hours of the morning, how many people are out walking around in the dark—and dangerously so.
Finally, if we look at housing itself, I was pretty pointed earlier this week. The council has largely kicked the ball down the road on difficult decisions.
It took three times to get a Housing Element approved. The council knows they will have trouble getting the 7th Cycle approved because it will require peripheral housing. And yet… As I pointed out this week, the council has punted two major decisions down the road—Measure J projects and a Measure J amendment.
These issues aren’t going away. The state is litigating everything. They are cracking down on communities that are not building sufficient housing—and moreover, even if the state weren’t doing that, the city of Davis is becoming less and less affordable.
And, in my view, the real danger is that we end up changing the character of this town—the very thing the slow growthers say they are fighting for.
What’s going to happen when parents with school children can no longer afford for them to go to Davis? What happens when our schools, a huge pride of this community, are even more strapped for resources?
Once again, this problem has been apparent for at least a decade, and yet the council is not leading on this—putting things on the ballot is not leadership. Failing to bring these issues forward to the community is not leadership.
The bottom line: I do not believe the council has done nearly enough to address these and other key issues over the last decade and think that’s to the detriment of the community.
My personal measure of how well we are managing city facilities is the condition of Chestnut Park. This little park tucked in the middle of one of the older parts of the city used to be a hidden jewel with beautiful soft green grass and mature trees shading areas. Hundreds of people from the surrounding neighborhoods used the park every day and it became an important “town square” during the early years of COVID. Then the water was shut off one Summer and the lawn was allowed to die. The City worker assigned to the park disappeared and we now have contract workers showing up to empty garbage cans, etc. Watering, reseeding and fertilizing the turf area has stopped. We lost 7 of the mature trees. Benches have been vandalized and removed without replacement or repair. We now have weeds, dry grass and areas of plain dirt and visitors to the park has dropped significantly. This is Davis now.
Sharla, the sad reality of your comment is that the Davis voters approved an extension of the Parks Maintenance Tax in order to ensure that parks like Chestnut Park are maintained. As you have pointed out, that isn’t happening.
To add insult to injury, the services needed to maintain the parks could have been paid for from the $11 million a year that the 2014 Sales Tax extension produced. However, every dollar of the $11 million per year has been eaten up by the Council granting pay raises to employees that exceeded the percentage increase in Inflation. If the Council had shown the fiscal discipline to keep employee raises to the rate of Inflation, they would have $11 million of available cash every year to provide services and maintain parks.
For the past 3 months I’ve complained about the Central Park playground. Now to the city’s credit it’s said it’s scheduled to fix the playground. But I suspect that’s because the Central Park playground is front and center and demands to be addressed immediately. Chestnut Park is a neighborhood park and and less prominent one at that. So it’s probably “on the schedule” just much further down. And that’s how things are; “on the schedule” The city will tell you that things are being addressed and that they’re on the “schedule” to get done. But we can all tell that the schedule wait time is getting drawn out longer and longer and things spend more time looking shabbier less maintained. And of course as Matt’s comment indicates that it all comes down to the money….or the lack of it to pay for things in a timely manner. So we have a new tax on the ballot to pay for things and zero economic development plan or projects that generate tax revenue that can pay for park maintenance, road repair…etc…
We can’t place all the blame on the City Council. We’ve had a budget and finance commission that has never once brought up severe cuts to park maintenance as an issue. We have a Parks commission that seems to be in the dark as well. We have heard about the condition of our streets, but not maintenance of our parks. I wish we heard about the plans to stop watering and caring for the turf in Chestnut Park and why it was necessary before they carried out the plan.
I’m not sure how you can place the blame on the Commissions. They’re an advisory body(s) to the City Council. They’re not some citizen’s advocacy group (there seems to be a lot of confusion about that in the city of Davis). It’s the City Council that ultimately makes the decisions about the budgets and finance. As for the status of Chestnut Park? I suggest you force the issue with your City Council representative.
Sharla, at one point in time there was a formal liaison between the Parks Commission and the Finance and Budget Commission (FBC) who attended every FBC meeting and brought up Parks issues like the one you described … Travie was his first name. However, staff and the City Council unilaterally did away with all the inter-Commission liaisons because they “created too much work” for the staff members assigned to support the respective Commissions. Bottom-line, staff did not want the Commissions involved with any operations oversight or decisions.
Regarding your comment about the FBC, they have had their monthly meetings cancelled by staff in 11 out of the past 12 months, with the last 6 cancelled because Council had refused to appoint any new Commissioners to replace the Commissioners who either resigned or termed out. As a result, the 8 member Commission had 5 vacancies and that made it impossible to meet the Quorum requirements.
Davis with it many involved citizen is a more challenging place to government: woodland council has no public policy debates at council as no one care- everything is consent.
Why do we have council that want to sing Kumbaya every meeting but can’t push thru changes that are needed?
I believe the council and city staff need a new way to work with the community to build consensus and have more productive, consensus building conflicts. Instead city staff and council try to cut out dissenters from decision making process, and they seek revenge at ballot box on project. The dance of death.
Having a newspaper who’s single city reporter has not background…but calls city council members Dignitaries instead of exercising critical judgement on their work does not help.
The pro/con sales tax measure just next act in Davis dance of death. That said, I hope yes wins…