
On June 17, 2025, the City Council will “finalize” the 2025-2027 city budget, although it is not written in stone and subject to change. The grim reality is the lion’s share of Measure Q funding (recently approved sales tax increase) has already been spent on employee compensation, and there is absolutely no Measure Q funding left.
Thus there is zero money to front load more funding for roads and bike paths as recommended by both City Council and City Staff. $14 million is needed, but only $8.6 million has been set aside, the same inadequate pavement management funding as before. So the pavement will further deteriorate from its current abysmal state, and be exponentially more expensive to fix, adding tens of millions of dollars to the already huge backlog of pavement projects. And it will present particularly unsafe conditions for bicyclists, especially children going to school.
It should be noted the Yes on Q ballot statement, signed by all five sitting City Council members at the time, declared Measure Q was: “To support essential city services, such as…pothole repair… and bike path maintenance”. Instead, the City Council devoted Measure Q funds to increased employee compensation, while the draft budget plan released May 20 would spend nothing more on roads and bike paths.
This is a bait and switch, an abject betrayal of the voters who approved Measure Q.
The labor agreements were approved by the City Council in May 2025—just before the city’s long-term financial forecast came out in June. That dismal forecast shows the city will be short by $4.9 million of the funding needed by next year to operate with an adequate reserve, despite the expenditure of all Measure Q funds. Worse, the city will be completely financially underwater within a few years, facing a zero reserve and General Fund expenditures that exceed revenues by $5 million a year.
If you care about our roads and bike paths, it is imperative that you speak out at the June 17, 2025, City Council meeting. Emphatically tell Councilmembers to cut costs in other areas of the budget and redirect that funding towards roads and bike paths. Then, insist that the Council make further spending reductions to address the serious fiscal mess they have created with their recent overspending on employee compensation. It is never too late to get the City Council on a more fiscally sustainable path.
For more detailed information on the city budget, go to this link:
Please provide public comment on the city budget item at the City Council meeting, either come in person (most persuasive), prerecord a comment over the phone (between noon and 4pm at 530-757-5693), or email a letter to City Council (citycouncilmembers@cityofdavis.org).
The authors state:
It should be noted the Yes on Q ballot statement, signed by all five sitting City Council members at the time, declared Measure Q was: “To support essential city services, such as…pothole repair… and bike path maintenance”.
Here is the text of Measure Q:
“To support essential City services, such as public safety and emergency response; crime prevention; pothole repair; parks, road, sidewalk, and bike path maintenance; and addressing homelessness, affordable housing, and climate change, shall the City of Davis’s Ordinance be adopted establishing an additional 1¢ sales tax providing approximately $11,000,000 annually for general government use until repealed by the voters, subject to annual audits, public disclosure of all spending and with all funds staying local?”
At this point, Elaine and Dan are misrepresenting the wording and intent of the measure. It wasn’t just for road repairs. Others may have different priorities.
It’s also a general tax and thus is not restricted in how it can be spent – this was mentioned during real time and even debated by opponents of the tax.
“It’s also a general tax and thus is not restricted in how it can be spent – this was mentioned during real time and even debated by opponents of the tax.”
True as written, but last in a long line of lies where the City says what is legally required in order to convince the voters to give them more money or pass something, and then does what it is legally allowed to do in another direction. I can see through it and voted No on Q, but to a voter just reading the above, with a list designed to meet the needs of a conservative (pothole repair) or progressive (climate change), of course they vote yes. But where does it say, “lots of money for firefighter pensions that will eventually destroy the City budget?” I don’t see it. Still waiting.
Don, no misrepresentation at all. They used ellipsis very properly to indicate skipped over items in the list. Davis residents are educated enough to clearly understand that.
“Davis residents are educated enough to clearly understand that.”
Educated enough to understand that, yet stupid enough to fall for it :-|
“They used ellipsis very properly to indicate skipped over items in the list.”
They have published several op-eds on this topic. All refer only to the pavement repairs. None reference “homelessness, affordable housing, and climate change.” I know that many Davis residents support use of these tax dollars for homelessness, affordable housing, and climate change. I am not a Davis voter, just a Davis tax collector. But I certainly hope, for example, that some funds will be directed to homelessness issues, specifically mitigating the impact of the respite center that is impacting the neighborhood where my business is located.
The fact that they methodically and repeatedly omit those other specific uses identified in the wording of the tax measure disturbs me. I find it misleading.
I know what their priorities are. I am pointing out that many Davis voters and stakeholders may have other priorities.
Fair enough Don. The question that quickly comes to mind is, “Does the Budget include the spending of Measure Q dollars on homelessness, affordable housing, and climate change? If the answer is “Yes,” then what sets apart pothole repair and bike path maintenance is that there aren’t any Measure Q dollars being spent on them. If that is the case then how are Dan and Elaine misleading anyone by pointing that out?
There is no such thing as “Measure Q dollars.” It’s all the same pool of funds. The nature of this tax is that it is not for a specified purpose. The council is evaluating and balancing budget priorities in the face of considerable financial uncertainty over the next three years. The information you want was presented at the special council meeting in May and is accessible online.
Don, you are indeed correct that there are no earmarked dollars as a result of the passage of Measure Q,
With that said, it is incredibly easy for the Council to be both forthcoming and transparent about what the “last” budget items were (equal to the proceeds the City received as a result of Measure Q passing) that made the cut into the Budget.
You seem to believe forthrightness and transparency are not either necessary or desirable.
Don and David, you’re missing our point. It is true Measure Q was a general tax that could be used for different purposes. But the Yes on Q campaign promised that part of the money would be used to fix our roads and bike paths. For example, and it is just one example, all five sitting Council members, the persons who put Measure Q on the ballot, played up the benefits for roads and bike paths from passage of the measure in the official ballot argument they signed. But here we are now, with the draft budget proposal released in May that provided no additional money at all for the pavement management program. The reason why is clear. Council over the last two years made huge financial commitments to city employees that the city simply cannot afford. As someone who voted Yes on Q, I found that to be very much a bait and switch.
Dan “As someone who voted Yes on Q, I found that to be very much a bait and switch.”
This situation, raising taxes with the promise of addressing constituent needs then giving the money to employees instead, has been the norm in Davis for at least two (possibly four+) decades. That is precisely why I voted no on the new tax. Claiming now that it was a ‘bait and switch’ is silly. If you didn’t anticipate that this would happen and voted yes on the tax, then you were either incredibly ignorant then or completely disingenuous now.
I’m supporting the budget. They included money to fix my street. We have been waiting a long time.
You only drive on your street?
It’s the street I drive on most. We been on the list for at least ten years.
Don, Putting more dollars into fixing the roads and bike paths should be everyone’s priority, because the costs of maintaining this basic infrastructure are spiraling out of control, based on the city’s own recent analysis.
Don’t take my word for it. Check out page 07-9 of the city staff report for the April 15, 2025 City Council discussion on the pavement budget. The graphic on that page documents that, right now, we have about a $90 million backlog in pavement projects. The cost of doing that work escalates dramatically, much faster than inflation, if we don’t increase the budget. If we don’t, the backlog grows to about $170 million by the year 2034. Exploding that backlog even further will have negative impact on all other General Fund supported programs, including the ones you mention.
Members of a city task force and I put together a $34 million plan to keep the city’s head above water on this issue. We got good results, but there is no fiscally responsible way to avoid a bigger investment in this basic city infrastructure going forward.
I will send a copy of the graphic to David so he can publish it here.
By the way, the chart above is only the backlog for roads. The backlog for bike path work would grow to about $14 million.
Don, so what are you saying? That Measure Q funds should be spent on homelessness and not pavement management? The question is moot, however, because all the Measure Q funds have been spent, and there is nothing left for homelessness or roads. The lion’s share of Measure Q funds was already spent on employee raises the city could ill afford. If things are allowed to continue as they are, roads and bike path maintenance and repair funding will remain the same as in the past. Do you see where that has gotten the city??? Drive down just about any street, including the two main arterials (Covell and Russell), and they are riddled with potholes, alligator cracking, crappy patchwork. The longer the city puts off repairing the roads, the exponentially greater the costs to fix them. Right now the roads are “fair” and “at risk”, which is one step below “satisfactory”. Many side streets are in “poor” condition. Do we really want to wait until all our streets are in “poor” condition?
Don, what I also find interesting is your criticism of Dan and me for omitting from the ballot language the entire list of things Measure Q was to be spent on, but apparently you don’t seem to have any problem with the fact the city never mentioned employee raises in that list. And yet that is where most of the Measure Q funds went. To mention roads and bike paths in the Measure Q ballot language, but not employee raises, then turn around and spend it almost entirely what the city didn’t list is a bait and switch! So why is that not a concern for you? Do you honestly think citizens would have voted for Measure Q had they known the revenues from it would almost all go towards employee raises?
And to Ron Glick – so as long as your street is fixed, tough toogies for the rest of us? Nice.
Feeling its appropriate to point out the “forrest” here amongst all the trees:
This issue is not a standalone thing and did not come from nowhere. We have made ALL of the poor systematic decisions possible to handicap our local economy:
1) We have primarily built single family homes, which (through the work of Strong Towns ) we know is net-negative for the city financially. Property taxes on homes would have to be MUCH higher for these neighborhoods to pay for their own maintenance.
2) In the name of “protecting our downtown” we have decided not to engage in any “destination retail” (drive here to shop in davis) kind of development, like automalls, or shopping malls, big box stores etc…. so incoming sales taxes per capita are a fraction of what other cities see… while we all drive up to Costco to leave our own sales tax dollars THERE.
3) we have declined to promote our commercial / industrial sector as well, cutting off yet another source of tax revenue.
Its no wonder we are dealing with this issue…. But its worth recognizing thati this issue is a symptom of a larger disease that we need to fix. Even if the council re-allocates funding, and cuts salaries and all of the things that the authors here want… the primary issue of our insolvency will never be addressed unless we develop a better plan for our housing AND our economy.
Missing middle housing is net positive economically ( again according to strong towns, but where that transition happens is unique to each city). The work of Urban3 shows that Medium density neighborhoods with mixed use commercial are THE most powerful engines of revenue to the city… Yet we seem powerless to plan anything like that because the developers dont “want” to?
You’re STILL advocating for more growth to “fix” the economy? You do realize that unfunded liabilities are a problem throughout California, right?
And have you seen what’s happened to malls across the country? Can you imagine how much worse-off a place like Davis would be, had they already committed spending based upon a collapsing industry?
The technology park that was planned for the site now occupied by housing (Bretton Woods) “moved” to Woodland, added 1,600 housing units during that “move”, and still does not have any announced interest from potential commercial tenants.
At a site that was previously zoned exclusively for commercial use, as I recall.
Not a single shovel of dirt has been turned for it, other than for continued farming operations. In other words, even the inclusion of housing hasn’t yet made it viable.
Meanwhile, housing prices have DROPPED 10% in Davis.
You can try to redefine “missing middle” until the cows come home (as you do with “sprawl”), but that’s the type of housing that ALREADY EXISTS in mass, in Davis. (Modest, single-family housing.)
https://www.redfin.com/city/4690/CA/Davis/housing-market
Tim, I am in total agreement that the city needs more economic development. However, that does not obviate the fact that the City Council spent money it doesn’t have to give raises to employees when the city could ill afford it. Now there is no Measure Q funding for roads and bike paths, even though the ballot language said that that is where some of the Measure Q funding would be spent. We would be in a lot better shape if the city had not given employees those raises. It is a matter of spending PRIORITIES. Roads and bike paths get short shrift, which is rather obvious, don’t you think?
Elaine, i did not intend my comment to serve as a rebuttal to any of your arguments. I think no matter what the budget level, the city is obligated to be good stewards of what we have and follow through on promises.
I just wanted to point out that if we dont do something more systemic to strengthen our economy… we are going to have a lot more conversations like this one going into the future.
Well said Tim!