The Davis City Council addressed some of the concerns from the firefighters and their fellow councilmembers about the language in the JPA agreement, including getting rid of all reference to the term, Joint Powers Agreement itself in an effort to assuage concerns about the process.
Despite their efforts to address his concerns, Mayor Pro Tem Dan Wolk went from supporting the proposed Shared Management Model in October to opposing it on Tuesday.
Two weeks ago, the Council received a letter from Senator Lois Wolk, Assemblymember Mariko Yamada, Supervisors Don Saylor and Jim Provenza and former Supervisor Helen Thomson that urged “the Davis City Council to take another look at the serious long-range consequences of this proposal before contracting out any of these core municipal functions. There is a key difference between sharing or coordinating services and merging governance with the constitutionally separate and unelected Regents and Chancellor.”
UC Davis Vice Chancellor John Meyer, himself a former City Manager, responded to their concerns. “I think frankly the bigger issue here and the real challenge is some of the other cultural change,” he said. “I think we’ve crafted something that really does have each agency retain local control.”
“One of our challenges though in this proposal is how do you honor both cultures. How do we make sure that we’re proceeding with the proposal that isn’t a take away from one or a takeover by another,” he continued. “How do we really do this in recognition that we’re serving one community and that’s really what this has been about since 1993 when we’ve been talking about it.”
There were several key sticking points including the fact that the UC Davis Fire Chief jumped the gun in terms of advertising for a new position prior to the approval of the shared services agreement and the fact the joint agencies would fly under the flag of the West Valley Fire rather than their respective departments.
Davis Fire Captain and Union President Bobby Weist complained about the West Valley patches and coats along with the job announcement for the Deputy Fire Chief.
“One of the concerns is that the city of Davis will lose control of at least at a minimum our management,” he said. We will retain our current management, however “as we hire new people into this, apparently they’ll be hired under the West Valley Fire and Medical and then they’ll go into the university pension system.”
“Once our people begin to retire all of the management will be under the university pension system,” he said. “In my opinion that’s who they’re working for now.”
Vice Chancellor John Meyer addressed the West Valley Fire Issue concerns.
“In a well-intended approach to try to create a brand that’s having no agency take over another, try to create a neutral brand, I think that’s become a distraction,” he said. This was an effort to create a name that was not any one agency.
As City Attorney Harriet Steiner added, “The agreement doesn’t require new patches, it is solely and only the sharing of management and employees.” As legal staff, “Our feeling right now is that while we believe it’s a good thing to create a joint identity, or not so much an identity as an esprit de corps…”
She said that it is not unusual for a public agency to share employees and “This is just one example.” She added, “I think right now there isn’t going to be a West Valley patch because there isn’t an organization that has that patch.”
John Meyer also addressed Mr. Weist’s concerns about future management hires noting that “any future hires, the recommendation for fiscal reasons because the benefit rates for the two agencies are dramatically different, so it was for a cost reason that you would have new management employees only… for cost control to shift to the university retirement system.”
Captain Joe Tenney would also urge the council to follow the example of Santa Cruz and join the two departments into one fire department.
Dan Wolk added, “I think the ideal is the full merger of both departments and I think this is an important step in that direction.” However, he also expressed concerns about the morale in the department and their trust in the leadership. He added that while he supportive of shared services in general, “the fleshing out of details leaves him with a number of questions.”
His first question went back to the Santa Cruz issue that was addressed in the letter sent by Senator Wolk and others. “There is no getting around the fact that the presentation last time was that it was comparable to Santa Cruz but it’s not. In Santa Cruz the UC is being absorbed into the municipality there.” He asked, “Why should we be acting any differently than Santa Cruz.”
John Meyer explained that Santa Cruz is going with the UC Santa Cruz chief. He added, “The culture of the rank and file firefighters is not rife for a full merger at this time. I don’t think you could get both labor groups to agree.”
“Somehow we have to build the culture so they’re more supportive of one another, a little less hazing in the field, in the trainings, and things like that,” he added with the Davis firefighters smirking and chuckling incredulously in the background.
The disparity of compensation was part of what undid the agreement from 2010. As City Manager Steve Pinkerton noted, for management there is a $47,000 difference in compensation and over $20,000 difference for management employee.
“It would be a huge financial burden on the university to do a full merger at this point,” he said.
John Meyer added, “I don’t disagree by any means that that would be a best outcome. But I don’t think it can happen in one step. Without some of these interim steps, I don’t think the trust is built.”
Mayor Pro Tem Dan Wolk also raised the issue of the automatic renewal.
The Council majority on this issue, added quarterly check in dates starting on January 31, 2014 to monitor the progress of the shared services and believes that this addition will address concerns about the lack of oversight and checks and balances that were raised by skeptics and even supporters of the agreement.
The Council agreed that the West Valley Fire label was inappropriate. As Councilmember Rochelle Swanson stated, “We’re Davis. The university’s Davis, the city is Davis. Just so there’s no mistakes, moving forward we’re Davis. People wear two patches, I don’t know.”
“It’s unfortunate because I’m already unsettled by the tenor in the room,” she said noting “it’s surprising with the cooperation our two entities have up until this date that there’s this much tension. We work together on so much.”
She said, “Change is tough. It hard but we have to start somewhere.”
The bottom line is that everyone acknowledges that there are going to be hiccups. The first hiccup as Ms. Swanson noted was the patch and title. Mayor Krovoza noted that this was a wake-up call and merging two cultures will have growing pains.
As John Meyer noted, “There does have to be a tolerance for a few of these little things going sideways because I think that just happens.” He joked, “because the water project (also a JPA) was smooth of course.” He added, “So going in you sort of have to fasten your seatbelts and keep your eye on the prize.”
The motion that was ultimately passed attempted to address many of these concerns. It set the initial check in date at January 31 with a friendly amendment for a quarterly review. They also removed all references to the JPA from the language of the Shared Management Agreement.
There was some discussion about creating a mechanism that would enable management positions to remain with Davis except by approval of the council. That was ultimately not agreed to, but that concern was certainly noted.
Ultimately, the motion passed 3-2 with Lucas Frerichs indicated that he was still not convinced of the assurances and believe that this parcels out key city services, particularly public safety to another entity.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
