Vanguard Interview: City Council Candidate Rochelle Swanson

Vanguard: What would you describe as your general philosophy on land use, development and the ag-urban boundary?  And when should we develop on Davis’ periphery?

I think that’s the first place you have to look at, is what kind of community is it and what kind of values.  Are there a lot of big houses and development outside the communities, let’s say outside of Sacramento or is it supposed to be more of an older, small town community like I believe we have here in Davis, where you have a mix of different kinds of homes.  In some ways there are very reflective of the time period in which they were built.  So in old town, you’re going to find smaller homes, especially on E, F, G Streets, and as you move away from there you are going to see places that are more reflective of a more rural environment.  It shouldn’t be a mish-mash.  Good land use policies are forward thinking and also have the design review element at the beginning so that there is clearly a vision that has gone into play.  So even if something is coming into an infill site, it should reflect the community that it’s in.  That may be a different reflection depending on what part of the community it’s located.

Vanguard: And when should we develop on Davis’ periphery?

Rochelle Swanson: I don’t think there is any magic time for that.  I don’t think we’re going to be in a place anytime soon to start looking at peripheral growth.  We do have a couple hundred houses for sale on the market.  We have entitled land throughout the city.  It’s one of the things that we need to see a demand for before we start to build more supply.  I think until we know what our future is going to look like right now, we need to not look at peripheral building.
I say that in a general build out, just houses for the sake of having houses.  I think that there can be exceptions if there are some special needs that we have in our community, that we can build to that and look to that if we need to.  That is something that we don’t have a crystal ball to see but I think we always have to build an exception.  I know we have in our housing element, that if there’s something that’s extraordinary that we’re able to make some exceptions.  I think that’s something that we would have to look at but it would have to be something extremely extraordinary and even then I don’t think it’s necessarily something that happens on the periphery.  That could be built in any part of town that could accommodate that kind of special use.

Vanguard: You state in your literature, “Support the continued excellence of our public schools both K-12 and the University, by supporting policies that support steady enrollment, can you explain what you mean by “policies that support steady enrollment?”

Rochelle Swanson: One example would be that we have some sites that are already entitled, I am thinking, should Grande be built out as an example, if we had some other cells of sites in the community.  In the past we’ve allowed development to get entitled and then built and it’s not phased and it’s not slow.  We end up having a spike in enrollment, try to play catch up and then we end up in a declining enrollment after that spike of change.  I think one of the policies we have to have should we do things in that area would be slow phased building so that we would not impact the schools without having infrastructure.  That’s the one that kind of comes to the foreground. 

The other piece would be that when we are building any housing or doing retrofitting of our existing, that it’s something that can accommodate people of varying income levels especially people who are young families.  That can just be smaller – whether they are condos or homes – so that we’re not limiting ourselves to a higher income bracket.

Vanguard: One of the outcomes of the current city’s water projects is increased cost to the ratepayer, how concerned are you about this and what steps will you take to mitigate cost particularly to low income and fixed income ratepayers?

Rochelle Swanson: I’m very concerned about that.  That’s why I’ve slowed down and support things like the last charrette with Tchobanoglous and Schroeder.  I think we need to look at what’s the most cost-effective way that we can protect our water supply.  I don’t think it means that we can abandon the idea of getting surface water rights because our wells are not going to last us and it’s not about building to a larger capacity, it’s about maintaining the current capacity and having high quality water. 

So we’re going to have to look at and there does come a point of where you have to choose either way – you’re going to have to pay at some point whether it’s now or later.  Typically if you’re preventative you pay less in the beginning rather than waiting until later if we have later failures of some of our wells.  That would be a very large expense if we don’t have anything built in.  I think it’s prudent to have savings to be able to accommodate looking at how we’re going to have improve our water supply. 

But there’s other things going on.  There’s the Senate Bill currently that is to look at the minimum-maximum penalties that need to be paid – it was five years and now they’re looking at trying to extend it to ten years.  I think that’s something the city should keep an eye on and be willing to support as they can, that would give us more time to look at what do we do for our sewer treatment.  I think some of it is consistently left out of the equation is that people think of water quality and think our water is fine to drink now.  The reality is that we don’t meet our effluent standards and we can’t afford $10,000 a day and the state’s aren’t given a pass anymore.  They are going to start requiring those penalties and so I think just like with anything else, we have to be responsible.

It’s my understanding that we can’t just make changes for people who are on fixed incomes or for seniors.  I know it’s been looked at before.  I think conservation is a big part of it and looking at how are those communities impacted.  Is there something that we can help impact their usage to help keep their rates low because something that we can do is do tiered water usage.  If take an example of say a small senior community, what is that cost there, is there something that we can help by doing conservation or looking at where they sit in the tier of their water rates?  But I think that concern alone can’t stop us from being forward thinking and being responsible for the water that we’re going to need for our community in the future.

Vanguard: What do you believe should be the role of government both at the local level and more globally speaking?  And why should liberal Davis look towards a former Republican who supported McCain-Palin to lead its city?

Rochelle Swanson: Number one I think that globally and locally are two different things.  I think the general sense of government is to provide for what those that we can’t provide ourselves.  It’s a pooling of resources.  We pool resources to do things like police and fire.  We pool resources to be able to educate.  We pool resources to be able to do things like a water project.  We pool our resources to be able to improve our quality of life.  If we look at the national level that would be the infrastructure of our roads, rail, different kinds of transportation.  There’s a place for the government to be sure that people are treated similarly throughout the country.  Those are roles that government can do against just what we don’t do for ourselves.

Locally those are more important I think programs as far as you look at from a leader standpoint in that it’s not just general services, but what are the specific needs of the community – and that’s going to change community to community.  I think that at the national level, government would have a more limited role, but I think at the local level it’s very important that you have incredibly engaged leaders and that you would see a more active role of government at the local level.

Vanguard: and the second part?

Rochelle Swanson: If it’s simply a matter of why liberal Davis should support a former Republican, it’s because I do believe in fiscally responsible policies and fiscal responsibility.  I do think it’s important for our city to make sure they’re being very conscientious about the way in which we’re spending our money and how we’re doing compensation programs.  What do we do so that we can be solvent today and in the future? 

I would see myself as a centrist.  I think that that’s consistent by the way that I live my life and the way that I’ve done my policy.  I think that perhaps people are concerned because I voted for McCain, but that’s consistent with my beliefs fiscally.  He has a very long history of making responsible decision, reaching across the aisle and trying to limit the spending that we do so that we can be fiscally sound.  That’s why I supported him then.  I don’t vote for people based on their identification whether it’s party or otherwise and I’ve done that consistently. 

I formerly was declined to state so that I could vote in primaries and feel more comfortable as an Independent.  I don’t see that that’s something that I would change. 

Vanguard: Road repavement has virtually no money for things beyond basic road repairs, how serious a problem  do you view this as and what would you do if elected to address any shortfalls?

Rochelle Swanson: I think it’s very important, I actually asked for a report on transportation and where we’re at one our roads and we have some roads that have incredibly low ratings.  We don’t have a lot of money in that budget.  What a lot of people may not understand is that the painting and striping that people see as eroding from our roadways, we no longer have that budget, that’s something that we have to contract out for.  Just with transportation and road repair, we need to go through and do a prioritization of our budget and look at what should we be providing as a city.  I think that the integrity of our road system and other infrastructure is vital and if that means that we’re going to have put resources into there so that we can continue to fund our infrastructure, we will.  That is why I think it’s important for us to go through and look at all of our departments and reprioritize.  I think if we’re at a place now where we’re not able to maintain the minimums, then we’re not funding properly.  Something else is going to maybe have to give.

Vanguard: Describe in your view what you see as the current problem with compensation to public employees.

Rochelle Swanson: I think that some of the biggest problems are that we’re living with policies that were created years ago.  We’ve had a lot of changes.  I think that if we’re going to be looking at compensation we have to look at the why the current is and the when.  One thing that I think that stands out is the age of retirement.  These were age brackets that were put in decades ago and we have a different reality now.  People live much longer.  People are much healthier as they age.  I think that is one part to look at.  Because what people need to remember is that when one person retires, we hire somebody in their spot and so you end up with a system where you’ll potentially be paying for the same employee slot.  Because there is a position for a number of people depending on how we’ve stacked our retirement.

I think we need to look back at what are the benefits that we’re offering and is that still in line and in standard with us trying to maintain our financial ability to move forward.  I think we have to get really serious about looking at things like maybe we need to start capping things, moving our retirement age, look at our compensation program we’re providing.  Look at not just salary, salary is something that is often looked at, while the benefits stay on the side.  I think we need to have a really good conversation about what is each individual’s full blown compensation and see if that’s truly in line and putting a dollar figure to that.

For the unfunded liability piece, we’re going to have to bring those into line; we need to take steps to get to a place where we pay within the budget cycle they are owed instead of moving things out to the future. This not only would this method work to decrease long-term debt, but also give the City a more realistic view of the financial impacts of compensation packages today and in the future.  I think that what we risk doing and have done in some of the past negotiations is that we’re trading today for tomorrow down the road and I don’t think that’s responsible for us to do that for the future of the city or future generations.

Vanguard: Are you willing to eliminate the market comparisons which were used to justify past salary and benefit increases that have occurred over the past ten years?

Rochelle Swanson: Yes.  What I think we need to be looking at is what does it take to hire and retain good, quality people.  I think that’s the first step.  Look at where we’re in our community.  I think that often we risk, when we look at comparisons, to which comparisons are we doing it, are those cities like cities and it is a like job demand.  So yes, we have to look at that.

Vanguard: You’ve partially addressed this already, but how can we address future pension costs and unfunded retiree health liabilities?

Rochelle Swanson: With new employees typically we’re able to change what we do.  I think we need to look at what the contributions are.  We typically in our city, we cover some of the percentages that our people pay in and I think we’re going to have to look at shifting some of those onto employees or we need to look at what the outline are and how we’re going to change that.  One of the things that concerns me is that we’re still moving forward on the assumption of higher or decent rates when it comes to compensations on their investments, and I think it’s going to be much lower.  The last number that I read was about seven percent, and some go as low as four percent.

I think if we really want to be prudent in our planning, we need to think that those are not going to grow by those margins.  I think we need to look at also are just caps on some of the spending.  My understanding is that we don’t have it (the money to pay for) now on some of our health compensations down the road.  I think we need to build in some flexibility that allows for market changes down the road.  While it’s important that people can plan for their future and I certainly support that, I think though that everything being guaranteed across the board, it’s perhaps an unrealistic promise that we made to people, that people don’t see in the private sector.  We just need to make sure that what we’re providing for compensation allows them to have a good wage and to be able to live well today.

Vanguard: How would you differ in your approach to the most recent employee bargaining negotiations?

Rochelle Swanson: I would have preferred to have seen the bargaining units all at the table at the same time.  I think that by the way that we stagger, we potentially we end up pitting them against each other on varying timeframes.  I think that it also allows for focusing on one group at a time and not taking account all of what we’re providing in our compensation program.  What I think that leads to is being able to make promises to one group or another and down the road realize that we can’t have an equitable outcome.  But it also eliminates a “keeping up with the Jones’” potential as well where one unit may have gotten something more than another. 

Vanguard: What about a professional negotiator?

Rochelle Swanson:  I absolutely support us having a professional negotiator.  I think it’s important.  I think that typically the people on the other side have a negotiator; I think that the city should.  Not that it has anything to do with the level and integrity of the people that we have in this city, but I think it’s prudent for us to have an independent negotiator not that that’s somebody that stands in the stead of council.  But that provides a framework for negotiations but also recommendations so that the council truly has all of the best information and the best ability to make decisions.

Vanguard: How would you change the budget process to change what appears in retrospect to have been an overly rosy revenue projection in the budget models passed by the council?

Rochelle Swanson: I think moving forward we have to go to a flat-line budget assumption.  Most economists agree that best case scenario, we have a flat budget.  I think we need to pull out any percentage increases that we show both in property revenue and sales tax revenue.  I think that by having as you say, a rosy outcome, it also leads us to make expenditures currently in the future based upon those.  When we don’t have those increases, we still have those anticipated costs.  That’s the first thing we need to look at.

Going along with the flat-line budget, I think we need to look at doing multi-year budgets.  I think that when the new council sits down, we also need to have a conversation about reaching out to the community, looking at what are the services that people feel are mandatory on the three tiered basis of what do we need to provide, what should we provide, and what would we like to provide.  And do so accordingly, so that when we’re looking at the basic things that the local government’s supposed to provide first and perhaps consider that some projects that we’re looking at may need to wait until we get to where we’re no longer operating in a potential deficit.

—David M. Greenwald reporting