I’ve just reviewed the new city staff report on the City of Davis budget that will be heard on Tuesday. It’s a doozy.
This report demonstrates just how deep a hole that overspending on employee salaries and benefits has dug for us over the last few years. As is well-documented in this report, we are pulling back on maintenance and repairs of roads, parks and other infrastructure at full speed as our personnel costs accelerate dramatically. A link to the report can be found below.
Here’s just one critical new finding in that report:
“When it was developed, the 2025 Pavement Management Program (PMP) assumed the City would have $84.7 million available over 10 years and this would still be a $25 million shortfall of what was needed in order to meet our average Pavement Condition Index (PCI) for our various roads and paths. However, the adopted FY 2025-27 budget reduced the total amount of funding and the available funding for pavement maintenance is now expected to be $49 million over the ten-year period. This $35.7 million difference combined with the original $25 million shortfall was used to calculate a revised shortfall of $60.7 million, or approximately $6 million per year.”
Table 2 of the report lists almost $9 million in projects to fix, maintain or improve parks and other public facilities that are not being funded in the latest budget plan.
The new long-term forecast is supposed to come out by or on Tuesday. I suspect it will show that the heavy reliance on one-time budget solutions in 2026-27 — like millions discovered from long-overdue audits of the city books — will leave a formidable funding gap for both city operations and infrastructure unsolved in 2027-28 and beyond.
It’s important to remember that we got into this serious fiscal mess despite recent voter approval of a substantial $11 million-a-year tax hike.
Below, please find the official ballot argument signed by all City Council members in office at that time (before Linda Deos was elected to the council) in support of Measure Q. Measure Q, you may recall, was the November 2024 ballot measure that increased our sales tax by 1 percent. As you can see, the City Council led voters to believe that the sales tax money was needed to (a) bring city employee pay and benefits up to those of other public employees in our region and (b) fix our deteriorating roads, bike paths and parks.
What the City Council actually did was spend that new tax money on a series of labor agreements that awarded rich bonuses and pay hikes and increased city spending to a level that, collectively, significantly exceeds what other workers in our region are getting. These excessive labor agreements left next to nothing for our infrastructure repair needs, as the new city staff report now clearly shows.
Nevertheless, City Council members are already promoting the idea of putting another tax measure on the ballot someday. However, after the recent Measure Q bait and switch, another tax measure will face strong headwinds.
Rising inflation rates are about to trigger additional large hikes in city pay. The cost of medical insurance coverage paid by the city is already surging well beyond what the city expected.
That’s why I’ve been calling upon the council to renegotiate those bad labor deals to suspend employee cost-of-living increases for one year and to seek contributions from employee paychecks to help address the dramatic increases in health care costs. There is little chance of making our city fiscally sustainable, including repair of our roads, bike paths and parks that are critical to our high quality of life, if our political leaders won’t face up to what I believe is out-of-control spending on employee compensation.
Dan Carson is a former member of the Davis City Council.
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Seems to me that the city would be in better shape (and the school district would have less undue influence) if the money for DJUSD parcel taxes/CFDs went to the city, instead.
Would have to look them up again, but I’m pretty sure that they’re more than $1,000/year (possibly depending upon the neighborhood/CFD. (The manner in which they’re charged are HOUSING costs, by the way.)
Unlike schools, the city serves the ENTIRE community.
I still can’t quite get over the sheer gall that DJUSD has – excessive taxes that are directly linked to housing, poaching students from other districts, AND advocating for sprawl.
Time to cut them off and focus on the city, instead.
You are so out of touch. Everyone of those taxes was passed by a super majority of Davis Voters. So pay up buttercup.
They were passed because of the disingenuous manner in which they’re structured (with an increasing number of voters not subject to them at all – but able to foist them upon others).
Those are HOUSING costs – foisted primarily upon those whom you claim to be concerned about in regard to housing costs in the first place!
Your oldtimers there (the residents, at least) aren’t subject to them, along with district employees, etc.
In any case, you and the district will be “sucking it up” when voters reject your latest campaign for sprawl.