Moving local elections to November seemed to make a lot of sense as voter participation will be way up in a November General as opposed to a June Primary, which is often a standalone election.
However, there is always a danger that the national election will take some of the air out of local elections.
Not sure that is happening now—but things are definitely quiet. Part of that is that two of the three district have unopposed incumbents. But even in the contested District 2 election, where Will Arnold chose not to seek a third term, the race has been on, but it’s been quite tame by Davis standards.
Someone recently suggested that in addition to district elections, we need term limits, but I’m not sure how much impact that will have. The two unopposed incumbents are running for only a second term, and third terms are rare in Davis—Lucas Frerichs sought one and won, but only served two years before moving on to the Board of Supervisors.
Two others—Will Arnold and Brett Lee—declined to run for a third term.
I have an admittedly crazy idea of consolidating to three multimember districts—for a total of six councilmembers and then an at-large mayoral term for two years at a time, for a total of seven members and three districts.
Then again, this just might be a weird year as everyone waits for the next shoe to fall nationally.
The compelling election issue is still Measure Q—the sales tax.
Measure Q has been hotly contested, which is quite unusual for a rather modest sales tax measure. I still believe it will be difficult for the opposition to get the support for passage below 50 percent—but you never know.
As Councilmember Donna Neville recently argued, “The additional funds Measure Q will generate will allow us to continue providing the services and infrastructure that make Davis a wonderful place to live. Public safety, well-maintained roads, bike paths, parks, a clean downtown, and community programs all depend on a healthy city budget. Measure Q ensures that we can maintain and improve these vital components of our community.”
She added, “Measure Q is a very small price for the huge benefits our community will reap. Paying an additional 1 cent per dollar, or 1 dollar for every hundred dollars you spend on consumer goods is a small price to pay for keeping these services intact. The $11 million that Measure Q is expected to bring in each year is roughly a 13% increase to our general fund.”
For their part, the opposition has focused on fiscal mismanagement by the city. They will point to things like employee compensation and what many considered to be an expensive proposition of adding a ladder truck with more fire personnel during a time where the city’s finances have been strained.
A big driver, however, of this opposition has to do with decisions made by the council—and their process for doing it—to consolidate city commissions.
I have already belabored this point.
I share some of the fiscal management concerns of the opposition. One of the points, however, that I have made is the rapid increase in cost of living, particularly housing, in Davis—as well as across the region and the state.
That’s a big driver for increased compensation costs as people are having to pay far more per month for housing payments than they did even just five years ago. Moreover, because most compensation studies focus on comparative salaries in comparative communities, everyone’s cost of living is contributing to rising compensation costs.
A second problem is the lack of retail sales in Davis. We pointed out a decade ago now that Davis’ per capita retail sales lagged behind the region and also comparable communities. That seems to have only gotten worse.
The estimated tax take from this one percent increase in taxes for Davis is $11 million, for West Sacramento, where the same proposed tax is expected to generate $20 million.
I have been disappointed in the community’s failure to back any one of the three innovation centers on the ballot in 2016, 2020, and 2022.
I was recently talking with someone about the downtown. Some of what has happened is an historic happenstance. Retail was going down in the core even before COVID, but COVID definitely, on the one hand, dealt a huge blow to longtime existing businesses, while it also slowed down the passage and implementation of the Downtown Plan.
Right now the city is reworking G Street, and we will see what impact that and some proposed infill/mixed use projects will have on the downtown.
In the meantime, Davis has moved in the right direction by hiring a new Economic Development Director, but a decade ago, Davis had a robust program with a dynamic director, and none of it came to fruition.
We will see what happens with Measure Q, but, pass or fail, the city has a lot more work to do.
David I respect your opinion, but you and I will have to agree to disagree on this one. Given your history of commentary on this site, I would expect you to be as concerned as I am that the City has no financial plan for how it is going to spend the money if the tax increase passes.
And it isn’t just that they don’t have a plan for how they will spend this $11 million, but they also have no financial plan for how they are going to address the $250 million +or- unfunded debt they have for road/buildings/infrastructure repairs and maintenance. And the $250 million is only a portion of the unfunded debt the City has racked up. The City’s Budget shows over $200 million in employee retirement benefits (pensions and retiree healthcare) that is unfunded.
Together that is $450 million of debt that the City has racked up. To put that into a personal context, if we round up the City’s annual revenues to $100 million per year, $450 million represents 4 and a half years of income. Imagine if you and Cecilia added your annual salaries together, and then multiplied that total by 4.5, that would be the equivalent amount of personal debt that you and Cecilia would be responsible for.
Would having that massive amount of personal debt bother you? Would you be interested in how you amassed that debt?
The City just spent taxpayer money to send out a pro-Measure Q two-page flyer in your utility bill. It provided a lot of Pro-Q information, but nowhere in it was there an explanation of how the City got $450 million behind. Nor was there any description of what the plan was/is for addressing that $450 million debt. Why didn’t they publish their plan? Do they even have a plan? One person at Nugget the other day even asked me, “Do they even have the concept of a plan?.
So, my bottom-line is that until the Council shares with its constituents their plan for getting out of their $450 million plus hole they have dug, then the right vote, the logical vote, the moral vote is “NO on Measure Q!!!”
David, here is a litlle drill down into the $450 million of unfunded liabilities (debt). The City’s documents show the unfunded amount as over $23 million per year. Then you add on the Council’s list of an additional $11 million per year. Together that is $34 million. The proposed tax barely covers one third of that. How does the City propose to deal with the other two thirds?
The reality is that they don’t have a plan for dealing with the other two thirds. As a result, our City is becoming less and less financially sustainable every year due to the “blood” being lost every year. It is becoming less and less financially resilient as well.
Further, a civil/mechanical engineer will tell you that road repair costs grow exponentially the more a road has deteriorated. That is why the Pavement Condition Index of 52 is so alarming. Had we repaired/maintained the roads when they were in the 60s or 70s rather than the low 50s the costs of repair would have been as much as 80% lower.
So, at the risk of repeating myself, my bottom-line is that until the Council shares with its constituents their plan for getting out of their $450 million plus hole they have dug, then the right vote, the logical vote, the moral vote is “NO on Measure Q!!!”
Isn’t the first step in a plan to meet fiscal obligations to generate immediate revenue to pay for those debts and obligations? That’s what a tax is. I don’t like it but that’s how the city (it’s voters) have decided they want to the city to pay for things….not through sensible retail expansion.
Your opposition to Q based on fiscal objections makes no sense. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; your reasoning is like telling a kid that needs to borrow money to pay his rent and for food but instead you tell him to go back to school and study to get a better job…meanwhile the kid can’t pay for basic things.
As always a thoughtful response Keith, and I think your equivalent example in your second paragraph is absolutely spot on. The reason it is spot on is that when I was on the Finance and Budget Commission the Commission members got a report on the City’s investment policy and investment tactics for the over $125 million of cash that the City has on its books. To make the kid in your example equivalent to the City, the kid would also have four years of tuition, room and board in a savings account earning less than 1% annual interest.
The City has the ability and the opportunity to take things back to bare metal and build a culture that is sustainable and resilient.
While looking for some old Vanguard info on the incident reports issued by the Fire Department, I happened on this article by Robb Davis from 2016 entitled “Assessing Our Strengths and Weaknesses As a Community”. It makes very interesting reading https://davisvanguard.org/2016/08/assessing-strengths-weaknesses-community/
The comment by Tia Will in the article comments section is also very illuminating. Its link is https://davisvanguard.org/2016/08/assessing-strengths-weaknesses-community/#comment-332521
Together they show how far we have come in eight years.
Keith, since I am on an old post quest regarding Fire Incident Reports, I am running into other old posts that are relevant to this current Measure Q discussion. Here is one of them from January 2016.
Some of the logic in Dan Carson’s article is similar to the logic I used in making the following formal recommendation to staff and EPS:
I believe the values in the Annual General Fund Expenditures section of Table 1 (Estimated Annual General Fund Revenue and Expenditures Summary at Buildout) on page 132 of the pdf file, should be broken into two separate columns (6 columns in total for the three) as follows.
The first column should include the Incremental New Costs that the General Fund will incur, and the second column will contain the Existing General Fund Costs that are being Allocated to the respective projects.
The result of that change is that we will be able to see both a New Net New bottom-line as well as a Fully Allocated bottom-line, both of which are meaningful to a fully informed decision.
The reason for separating the costs is to transparently deal with prior events. An example of a prior event is the fact that the East Davis Fire Station has already been built and staffed. The cost of building that Fire Station needs to be included in the Fair Share calculations used to determine how much revenue the City will receive. However, for the purposes of evaluating the bottom-line contribution that a project will make to the City Budget it is not necessary to hypothetically duplicate/re-spend the Fire Station capital infrastructure construction expenditures.
A different kind of prior event exists for the staffing and operating costs of the East Davis Fire Station. Adding MRIC isn’t going to cause Chief Trauernicht to modify the current per-engine staffing or the per-shift staffing. For the most part he will cover the Fire Safety needs of MRIC without adding to the East Davis Fire Station’s annual operating costs.
That means the annual amount of incremental building costs for the East Davis Fire Station will be $0, and the amount of incremental staffing/operating costs for the East Davis Fire Station will be close to $0. On the other hand, the amount of revenue the City receives from MRIC for the services provided by the East Davis Fire Station will be equal to whatever the final fair share of the City’s total Fire Safety costs are calculated to be. Currently the EPS report has that fair share cost calculated to be $376,000 per year.
It is worth noting that in his comments at Tuesday’s Council Workshop on Nishi, Robb Davis used the term “Marginal Costs” rather than “Incremental Costs.” Both those terms work.