Council Acknowledges Details Need to Be Worked Out on Core Elements: Traffic, Sustainability and Labor
With most of the council wanting to send the message of approval for the project, and none of the council having strong concerns about going forward, the council unanimously passed a motion that approves the project but has staff come back with some recommendations – in particular, dealing with the traffic issue.
The motion was to pass the staff recommendation for the project, with the additional request to return for the second reading and to come back with an outline of further details and recommendations about what is to be included in the traffic management plan, to make recommendations on sustainability and to encourage meetings and discussion between the applicant and the labor union, UNITE HERE.
The motion reflects a number of concerns that were raised by the public on issues of the traffic analysis and sustainability, as well as wages.
The council heard various concerns from a variety of people in the community.
Former City Councilmember Michael Harrington raised the issue of planning process, stating, “I think we have a situation here where the city staff is recommending the use of a ‘neg dec’ to avoid a full CEQA analysis and I think that the facts and law are against that process.”
He added, “I think that the weaknesses in the traffic report and the fact that the historic resources were not really evaluated, I think that that places you out of the ‘neg dec’ status and I believe that if you continue this and look at it some more, you’d have a good project.”
Alan Pryor, continuing on his line from his guest column in the Vanguard, stated, “I think there are many problems with this project that we really have to work through.”
He said, “For one, the traffic analysis was deficient in that it relied on unjustifiably low pre-existing baseline traffic counts taken by humans only over a two-hour period last year. I certainly don’t think you can say that’s representative.”
He further stated that this is compounded by under-counting or underestimating the number of vehicles that would come to the facility during maximum occupancy events. He argued that they do not have near enough parking to handle that.
Chris Granger from Cool Davis expressed concern about the sustainability, suggesting that we have not developed a Davis-based Climate Action Analysis that includes our emission goals alongside the information provided in this project’s table – which she did call the best presentation of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) that we have seen on projects recently.
She suggested including an EPA figure on cost per metric ton of GHG, which would help determine the cost of this project, “thus looking at what real mitigation might look like in terms of dollars.” She said this would allow us to work with developers to determine how we get to net-zero in the future when we get new construction or renovation.
Francisco Garcia, one of the representatives from UNITE HERE, has worked in the food service industry for 20 years. “I’ve seen the difference between non-union jobs with minimum wage and the good union job I have today.”
He explained, “All we’re asking for is workers at this future Embassy Suite have the right to choose. We just want the owner to agree to not run a campaign of intimidation against them and to respect the majority choice of whether to have a union or not.” He said he was not asking the council to vote yes or no on the project, just to think about the employees to ensure they have labor peace.
Michael Bisch from Davis Downtown noted that he first read about this project in the newspaper four years ago. He noted that he had a lot of respect for the stakeholders who spoke and does not think concerns should be dismissed, “but by the same token there are stakeholders that have participated in this project for many years, asked critical questions, had those answered and still support the project. I do not think that support for the project by those stakeholders should be dismissed out of hand either.”
He said that “there is no doubt that there is market need, not only for the conference facility but also for these rooms that are going to be developed.” Studies show the need for greater number of rooms and more diversity of type.
Clearly, the biggest question before the council was the traffic impact and how to separate the currently impacted roadway of Richards Boulevard from the new impacts that this project might bring.
There were also some key misperceptions. Several commenters were concerned that a system of valet parking would mean more traffic impact, as the people would have to drive in and the valet would drive the car offsite to park, multiplying the traffic impact. Instead, the project spokespeople explained that the valet parking would enable them to pack in up to 50 percent more vehicles at the onsite parking facility.
They would also create policies to discourage people from using their vehicles during their stay – instead, encouraging them to walk downtown or use buses or bikes to get around.
Still, the council was not satisfied with the current state of traffic analysis. Councilmember Brett Lee said, “There are probably things we can do to address the existing situation which would then allow for the project applicants’ very modest increase in traffic to be less problematic.”
He continued, “Before we approve a project at this specific location, it just seems that it would be reasonable to take another week or two to work out some of these concerns specific to the traffic aspect.” He added, “My view is really just another week or two I think would give us all a little more comfort… because what we don’t want is the public to see traffic jams in the area and immediately assume it’s because of the project.”
Councilmember Rochelle Swanson agreed, adding, “We all know there are some existing problems, how do we make it clear what’s existing and what would be part of this project.” She added that there may have to be some fine-tuning here, everything will not be solved with this one project.
Robb Davis said, “I don’t want the idea of going to another commission to slow this down.” He added, “I think we have a rigorous traffic study and, as bad as this area is, what we’re hearing is that the marginal impact of this project is not huge.”
On the issue of labor, Harriet Steiner, the city attorney, made it clear that council could not give conditional approval on any sort of labor agreement. However, the council made it clear it was an issue they were concerned about and part of the motion would urge the owners to talk with union representatives.
Mayor Dan Wolk stated, “I found what has been said very compelling.” He continued, “The issue of poverty and income inequality are major issues, not just in our state and region, but locally.”
Mayor Wolk made it clear that “all the folks are asking for is the card-check neutrality, the ability to organize. We cannot condition this project tonight on requiring the applicant (to negotiate), but we can send a strong signal.”
“It seems very reasonable to me,” he said. “I’m very supportive of the project but I am very cognizant of the concerns that are being brought up about what the workers are going to earn. These are some of the lowest paid jobs in our society – and we as a council need to be cognizant of that.”
The project representative addressed this issue head on. He said, “I think the applicant team has a lot of sensitivity to that issue. I think Ashok (Patel) and his family also pride themselves on their record as an employer.”
He didn’t dispute concerns raised, but said that “they apply to other hotels.” He then got out of the general and to the specifics of the record of Ashok Patel and his company. “He has a long history in this community. None of his employees get paid minimum wage. His lead house cleaner gets paid $13.50. They have a health care plan with Kaiser that their employees are part of.”
“Those are the facts,” he said. “That’s not to take away from anything that the folks from UNITE HERE said.”
He would also add that, on the issue of the ability to organize, Mr. Patel would honor the wishes of his employees, and if they wished to unionize, he would allow them to do so.
The council was not necessarily aligned on how to proceed. Councilmember Lee suggested they postpone the vote and deal with mitigation issues on Olive and vote on the project after that.
Robb Davis pushed in the other direction, along with Rochelle Swanson. The mayor pro tem said that we are approving this project. He said that the issues are not about the applicant, but rather about the preexisting conditions.
Both City Manager Dirk Brazil and Planning Director Mike Webb warned the council that their hope to return to this issue in a few weeks may be too aggressive, but in the worst case scenario they may have to defer the second reading by a couple of weeks, not a couple of months.
Robb Davis summed it up: “The reason I want to do it tonight is because I think we all agree that we want to support the project and it’s on the agenda tonight. I want to move past it. I want to do it right and I think we’ve sent a clear message to staff about our expectations about what we need before our second reading.” He added, “There’s no one up here saying it’s a bad project, it’s not even close.”
The vote was unanimous and staff will come back with more recommendations on Richard Blvd. and traffic impacts.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
What did the anonymous woman in the photo have to say? Did she request anonymity? What is her name?
I’ll have a video of all the comments later. I was under extreme time constraints this morning as my daughter begins Kindergarten at 8:10 this morning.
Understood. A bittersweet morning for your family! Hope you & Cecilia have a good day.
Congratulations, big day.
Ill give you the cliff notes version. She works at a union hotel in downtown sacramento, her job is very laborious, but because of her union contract, she is able to live a dignified existence. She can help make sure her children have school supplies, and can have a decent start in life. She has affordable benefits. She also said that non union employers in the hotel industry do not enjoy dignity at the job, they do not have livable wages, or affordable health care. She was asking the council to consider this while making their decisions to approve the project.
“…asking the council to consider this while making their decisions to approve…”
I hope they do. Thank you.
What a surprise that Mr. Wolk was the one to speak out in favor of the union being able to negotiate terms to organize before the project is built. With all of the complexities and concerns that this project brings having the mayor question the future labor practices of a long time local employer is ridiculous.
Let’s hear how Embassy compares to hotels that have unions. Remember Davis is a very expensive town, housing wise. It would be great if the hotel workers were not forced to commute, if for no other reason than their carbon footprint. Wonder f those rentals on Olive are affordable? Then they wouldn’t have to own a car to get around town.
The average rent for a 2 bedroom apartment in town is 1200 a month. Certainly not affordable for your average low wage worker.
The apartments on Olive Drive? Wow.
Sounds like Lexington apartments, on Olive Dr., are mostly students & overpriced. Here is one review, although most of the first few Yelp reviews were very positive, except for bike thefts & homeless folks in the area.
Per Yelp review:
“I sooooooo regret living at the lexington. The location, although close – is not even worth the headaches. Not only was this place overpriced – like ridiculously.
They basically screw you over when you move out. If you don’t detail your apartment, you’ll lose 500+ from your security deposit. All the maintenance and managers said our apartment was one of the cleanest, but they still managed to squeeze money out where ever they could – like a dusty window seal, not cleaning UNDER the washing machine, or the most ridiculous cleaning the inside of the ceiling lights.Also, for such a high priced complex – I would expect the overall location to be better. I understand it being super close to campus, but the street which is on is mostly low income housing; therefore, you end up biking home on a street with homeless people. This wouldn’t normally bother me. but then people not apart of the complex would sit and sleep under the overhands where we park our cars. This doesn’t really feel safe to me. Especially when you are paying the high price the lexington asks for.”
Actually its not. While the Council does not have the authority to force such an agreement, they can voice their opinion, which I certainly think they did. Moreover, the employment practices of the employer in question do not have a good track record. The worker cited by the project applicant is a long time supervisor… who makes 13.50 per hour. Every worker (who works at a hotel owned by the perspective employer) I spoke to made under 10 an hour, and could not afford the benefits plan “offered” by the employer because it was prohibitively expensive. Past actions are all we have to rely on to determine what a person will do in the future.
It is not the Council’s job to set wages in private companies in Davis.
The health and welfare of the citizens of Davis are certainly the business of the elected officials in town.
Absolutely. Otherwise, Sutter will see an increase in ER visits, it’s that simple.
There will also be more ee’s filing workers’ comp claims because they cannot afford dr. visits, so they will claim they were injured on the job. Especially back strains & knee injuries, soft tissue, hard to prove where the injury occurred.
Everyone deserves affordable health care in a country this wealthy.
“The health and welfare of the citizens of Davis are certainly the business of the elected officials in town.”
Well spoken.
That is correct, that is why programs have been established to provide health care for those who can’t afford it. But the health and welfare of the community does not include dictating wages.
I thought that’s what liberals wanted Obamacare for.
Liberal – Webster
#2 Appropriate and/or fitting for a broad or enlightened mind
“I thought that’s what liberals wanted Obamacare for.”
given that you live in davis, i would think you would understand what liberals want better than you do. most liberals preferred single-payer. most liberals also understand that you get a better plan through your employer than relying on cover california or some variant. for one thing, as i understand it, you don’t get vision or dental.
Have you checked the record of Unite Here? These are just a few articles I found with a quick search.
http://www.sutterhealth.org/about/news/news06_uniteherelawsuit.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/business/19labor.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
A press release from a business where the union was trying to unionize hardly qualifies as unbiased journalism. The fact is that the workers at the employer in question work for poverty wages. They do not have access to quality health care. These facts are not in dispute.
Did you even read the articles? Excerpt from the article:
The other story is from the NY Times.
the quote you have comes from here: http://www.sutterhealth.org/about/news/news06_uniteherelawsuit.html
Yes, I posted the link above already. So what was your point?
BP
I don’t dispute your articles. I dispute their relevance since the City Council is not voting to approve or disapprove of the suggestions of the union but rather of the petitioners for this project.
When the mayor states:
When the “folks” are most likely Unite Here those articles have much relevance.
Looks like my family will not try Embassy when we make our annual visit to Davis, if they cannot provide affordable health care to their ee’s. Thank you very much for sharing this info. I’ll also pass it along to my family/friends in the bay area who sometimes stay in Davis on their way to and from Tahoe.
and while there is nothing to prevent you from trying embassy, it’s really being set up to host conferences for a specific clientele in hopes of generating revenue for the city.
I would have tried it because I love hotels with a suite. Same with my family/friends. And my sister occasionally has to organize events for the company where she’s employed, so it does make a difference. We’ve actually stayed at Embassy before. (Now that I’m retired, I can research the pro’s and cons more, for all types of businesses where I spend my hard-earned retirement dollars, and my husband’s social security dollars.)
That’s ok sisterhood. My family and my company will do plenty to make up for that lost business. Except if the employees unionize into a labor cartel and jack up the prices and cause the service quality to fall… then they will have to rely on your business and not mine.
Here is what I suggest instead of the union labor cartel. If the company pays too little and provides too few benefits then employees: DON’T WORK THERE!
If too few people will work there, the company will have to increase wages and/or benefits to attract enough quality employees. If people are willing to take the jobs at lower pay and benefits, then people need those jobs.
And if people are willing to take jobs that pay too little or provide too few benefits (from the perspective of some that believe it to be the case) then get with the program to demand government reduce all the business-strangling taxation and regulation and implement pro-economic-growth policies.
Isn’t it ironic that it is generally the same no and slow-gowthers that stand up and demand unionization and government mandates on pay and benefits? They demand scarcity in economic development over fits of change aversion and then agitate to force those few businesses that are allowed to exist to pay higher compensation because of the broken labor supply-demand balance that they in fact caused.
They cause the problem, then they scream at business for being unwilling to fix the problems they cause.
“If the company pays too little and provides too few benefits then employees: DON’T WORK THERE!”
I agree! But I disagree that every private sector company has superior quality services vs. union companies. Bottom line, if employers were kind and generous, no one would need the union! I kind of liked my weekends off,, except when I was paid overrtime. And my holidays, and flex time. (Funny how the ex-Sheriff I worked with complained about the union, and only paid fair share, not the full dues. Yet his hours were 7:00 – 4:00! His wife took her full paid maternity leave, and paid sick leave. He used his 3 weeks paid vacation every year. And he rec’d extra seniority credit for his previous peace officer status!) Unions are a necessity.
Kindness is certainly something I would advocate for. But being too generous can lead to employees being laid off or the company failing due to losses.
But I have a great problem with this basic premise. Let me explain.
There is a dichotomy of essence related to work. From a more pure business/economic perspective it is employee trading the value his/her skills, abilities and efforts for monetary pay and benefits.
But then there is the emotional component…. where the employee craves to be cared for and treated with dignity and respect… and values other things like having meaningful work wanting a positive work culture and having coworker friendships and good management, etc.
We have copious studies on employee motivation and retention… and pay and benefits are third or forth on the list. Emotional-based returns take up the top items. Making a difference, management/leadership quality and coworker friendships tend to be the top issues that employees care about. In other words, if these top things are strong, employees would accept lower pay and benefits… up to a point. If pay goes too far below market, it then becomes the top issue for employee motivation and retention.
Good companies understand this and put a great deal of effort into maximizing these emotional returns while also keeping tabs on the labor market to ensure that pay stays in sync for the market. They do this to attract and retain the best employees.
Unions ef this all up. Unions focus on entirely pay and benefits and other economic-based returns. They don’t give a shit about market rates… they are there to leverage their cartel status to extract as much as possible from the company. They don’t even seem to care about company profitability. As has been seen over and over again they will suck the lifeblood from a company until it collapses and everyone loses their job. Except if they are public sector unions… in this case they just take a growing percentage of our public treasury… while their puppet politicians raise taxes or stop paying for needed infrastructure maintenance to meet the growing size of the payroll.
Why would any employee work for a company that did not treat them well?
There are two reasons:
1. Ignorance and/or lack of drive to go find another job.
2. Lack of jobs relative to their marketable labor value.
There is a third reason if they are an undocumented/illegal alien worker… they lack leverage to make demands of their employer, and have fewer options.
But getting back to the first two. Number one is a personality flaw issue. There is not much we can do about that. Just like the person that would stay in an abusive relationship, a worker that stays working for an abusive employer has only him/her self to blame.
But number two is the key. This is where, frankly (because I am) liberals really piss me off. It is liberals primarily that are attacking the free economy with demands of greater taxation to pay for the growing list of unemployed… plus regulatory excess to “save the planet” and try to attain unattainable perfection in everything else related to economic activity. And because of this and other screwed up government policy, it has become too expensive to start and grow business in this country. There is plenty of capital, but it goes into real estate and stock market speculation instead of being invested in new business starts and growth strategies.
Now liberals that actually know something about economics will make the case that the real cause of low GDP is that there is not enough global demand for products and services. This is BS. Demand and supply are always a dance. And when one dance partner is hobbled by too extreme taxation and regulation, then the dancing gets all messed up.
Nobody knew they “needed” an iPod or iPhone before they were invented. Few thought to put solar panels on their homes until innovation made them effective and affordable. The list goes on and on and on. If we don’t innovate, we don’t grow our economy. If we don’t grow our economy, we have too few jobs. If we have too few jobs, then labor lacks the negotiating leverage to expect higher wages.
And when we rely on unions to extract those higher wages it is just another tax increase which puts even MORE negative pressure on economic growth.
Labor unions become another source of the downward spiral of an economy. You can see it all over the world… those countries the most unionized are in the most economic trouble.
Unions made sense decades ago when companies did not have to comply with thousands of pages of rules and laws for things like workplace safety, work hours, discriminatory hiring, and freedom from harassment, etc. Today unions are not needed and they are only a cartel that destroys the economic opportunities for many only to fatten the wallets of a few.
Frankly, you are more well read on this than I (my guess). How big a role did the unions play in driving the car manufacturing business out of the country? It seems like we have lost much of our mnf and steel business… and look at what good that did us on the $7 Billion leaky Bay Bridge. (Imagine the hundreds of Billions that will be wasted on our high-speed train to nowhere.)
I support good wages, very good wages… but not endless regulations and taxes and fees and constant change. Business likes stability (at some level).
Unions drive out the jobs that could pay $20, $30, $40. $50 an hour… and then lobby for jobs that pay $15 an hour. It makes no sense.
That is a good question. The simple answer is “a very big role”; but this demand a more involved explanation.
First, we need to note that the US economy was orders of magnitude stronger than the rest of the world post WW2. Labor wanted a good share of those returns, and so they organized and collectively bargained and striked… and since the economy was growing the companies mostly gave in. US manufacturing jobs became some of the highest-paying… with full healthcare and pensions.
The other thing that happens with strong unions is that company efficiency and quality falls. This is because it becomes more difficult for management to demand greater efficiency from labor, and also it is more difficult to make the constant changes and adjustments needed to reduce defects and ensure high quality. Workers want their jobs to be easy and stress free and to pay a lot. So that would become the goal of the unions… even when it was/is in direct conflict with long-term success for the company.
Then the rest of world started to catch up and the age of economic globalism started to cause US companies to face more foreign competition.
Now here is the other complexity of unions and labor pay in general.
When a company begins to see negative trends in revenue, managers have to cut costs in order for the company to stay solvent and make profit for their stockholders (ironically, those stockholders include pension funds for the unionized workers). They make the business decision to cut when needed and where possible.
But workers are not that financially nimble. They develop a strong emotional attachment to their standard of living, and will not easily accept any reduction in pay. Also, in general the average person spends everything they earn. They get in debt to a point where they need every penny from their paycheck. (This is why I think everyone should listen to Dave Ramsey on the radio). Lastly, there is another human behavior issue related to pay… it is the feeling of growth/advancement/progress with a raise. And it is in our human nature… our survival instinct… to fight against anything that feels like we are going backwards in progress.
For the company that forces pay cuts on employees in order to balance the books of the business, the typical result is a drop in employee motivation that they hurts company productivity and service quality. This too then impacts the company’s ability to compete in the global marketplace and results in a spiral downward toward failure.
The bottom line here is that paying too high wages is a terrible thing to do for a company because there is no easy way to ratchet then back when needed. And unions make it next to impossible.
The only viable strategy for most companies is to lay off people and rehire new employees as needed at the market rates. Those companies that cannot do this… (and no company with unionized labor can do this) will typically just fold and close the doors.
And this is what happened to American manufacturing. Labor costs could not be ratcheted back to market reality, the operations had grown inefficient and quality was not great… and so the companies closed their doors due to their inability to make the needed changes due to the union control of the labor.
The US would have lost the auto industry for these same reasons had not the federal government bailed it out.
The lessons we should learn from all of this is that labor rates should always be market rates. Labor should be looked at as a commodity where the supply of a certain skills and abilities have a market value. The more experience, generally the more value and the greater pay. But when some skills are in short supply relative to their demand, they should get a premium.
Also, all employees should have part of their compensation at risk and connected to the company performance and other metrics in a performance bonus plan. Then if the company has a bad year, the bonus can be cut or reduced, and the employees get to keep their jobs helping to make the next year a better year. This isn’t a perfect solution because employees begin to expect the bonus and spend it before they get it, and it can zap motivation even though the company fully discloses the finances and the justification for less bonus.
The bottom line is that unions have been a big reason the US lost most of our manufacturing jobs. Today it is government policy that prevents those jobs from returning. If they do return, we should all opposed unions taking control and screwing it up again.
i came away impressed by the spokesperson who laid out rather eloquently the family’s business practices. i’m glad the unions raised the issue, glad that council was receptive and it sounds like there is nothing to worry about.
Nothing to worry about unless you are trying to find an apartment in Davis when your income is $10 per hour. But who cares about the maids and the handymen and the busboys? Just get on the bus & spend your paycheck in West Sac or Woodland. We only want you here to make our beds and clean our toilets and fix the a.c. in our rooms. At the end of your shift, please get out of Davis.
You’re assuming a lot here. You’re assuming that someone who works there is single, lives alone and has no other income. Many of those jobs will be taken by people whose mate has a job and this new job will be supplemental income to the household. If single, whose to say they aren’t sharing rent with someone else, a friend or family member? Thirdly, nobody is forcing them to take a job in Davis if they can’t afford to live here.
You are just assuming the worst case scenario.
Even if there are 2 people, sharing a 2 bedroom apartment at 1200 per month, each working 40 hours a week (thats a crazy assumption but we can roll with it for the sake of argument), well over half of each person’s income will go directly to housing costs. Thats assuming two incomes, full time, sharing an apartment. In your “other” scenario both tenants are both living below poverty standards.
That’s a crazy assumption why? Because it doesn’t fit the scenario you want to present? Plus you’re assuming that both residents are making $10/hour. How about someone’s mate who might have a higher paying job and the job at the hotel is just adds some more supplemental income to the household?
$1200 split = $600 each or $7200/year
A $10/hour job pays $20,000/year
My concern regarding the pay issue is twofold.
I believe that workers should be being payed a living age in the community in which they work. I am not saying anything at all about the accessibility of this housing and am addressing compensation only.
Secondly, since the lower paid workers in the under $ 13/hour range will not be able to afford housing in Davis, I do not believe that the environmental and other transportation issues are being adequately addressed as the proposal stands. It would seem from the above reporting only ( since I was unable to attend council last night) that some council members share these concerns and are hoping that additional mitigation factors will be addressed.
It is clear that you don’t complete any economic analysis and only stop at the point that feels good to you. Force the raising of labor costs and you increase the cost of living which them gets you back to claiming that there is a need to increase labor costs… in an unending loop of you needing another government mandated Tia feel-good placebo.
I really don’t understand how your heart can be so myopic caring so much about the pay and benefits for people working, and not all the people that cannot find enough work.
You do understand economic cause and effect, don’t you?
Stop patronizing folks who disagree with you by telling us we don’t understand economics, the economy of scale, etc. You’re getting boring, telling us we are too emotional or we don’t understand economics. Maybe we do.
You need to come up with some new arguments to support your point of view, which occasionally I agree with.
Do you care about all the people unable to find enough work? If not… well I rest my case. If so, then what do you suggest we do about it? Or is that just a thing that conservatives have to worry about while you agitate for higher wages?
There is no verifiable study that shows that living wages will cause job loss. All credible studies show that there is a net zero effect on minimum wage increases.
Keep up the good work Frankly, I always enjoy your informative posts. We conservatives in Davis are performing an important public service in balancing out the majority liberal views.
Thanks BP. You too. There is really no easy way to provide this view well enough to make the points without irritating the senses of those having the opposite view. And they are much more numerous here. Their irritation is a cost of useful debate. Or we could just post in a Kumbaya style so everyone feels good… and nobody else gets to really understand the contrast of the views.
All of these $15 an hour living wage (not really), benefit / union demands, etc., are dwarfed by a porous southern border.
When you allow 30-40 million people to come here illegally, you blow up the Supply Curve, thereby depressing wages. On top of that, contractors and service providers know that many of these illegal workers are compliant, and don’t require all of the perks Americans want (like weekends off, overtime pay, benefits, higher wages, etc.).
Which is why I think Trump has gained so much traction, though I think his own mouth and ego will do himself in.
Trump does have some good points but he’s alienated too many groups to ever get elected. Supposedly he’s at war with Fox News, that alone should get him a few liberal votes.
“I thought that’s what liberals wanted Obamacare for.”
I do not know anyone, myself included who believed that Obamacare was a panacea. I wanted a single party payer system and see Obamacare only as a step in the right direction. For anyone who sees Obamacare as a failure, I would suggest that you try seeing it from the point of view of someone unable to previously unable to obtain care because of a pre-existing condition, or who could not afford care in any venue other than an Emergency Room where of course there is not ongoing care for diabetes or asthma or no care at all for breast, cervical or ovarian cancer. While you may personally see it only in terms of lies, or broken promises, I see it in terms of lives saved, contraception provided with consequent decrease in the number of abortions. It is far from perfect. It is far better in my eyes than what we had previously.
And how about those who lost their coverage, saw their premiums skyrocket, or got unneeded coverage?
BTW, ERs are still full, we didn’t solve that problem, so there is no cost savings there. Most people signed up for Medicare.
moderator it gets annoying when you allow stuff to get so far off topic. this is a critical local issue and people are carrying on with their national crap.
I’ve known UCD employees who live in Woodland and Dixon, a 10-mile commute is a piece of cake in most areas in America.
Do they bus, ride their bikes, or drive? My son briefly rented a nice room in a home in Woodland, owned by a married couple who both worked in Davis. All three of them drove their cars to Davis; carpooling couldn’t accomodate their work schedules. He tried the bus. It was just too long a wait, not convenient, added an extra half hour onto his work day. He finally moved back to a dumpy apartment in Davis & walked to his job, until he found a way better paying one in San Francisco. He just got rid of his car & walks to work.
Bus and car. Half an hour commute? A paradise to many! Read a book or surf the iPhone.
Or simply live in the community where you work, and ride your bike or walk everywhere. It’s wonderful.
Funny how the anti-immigration folks never seem to push for stiffer penalties for the ER’s that are hiring them. And never want to talk about the fastest growing population of illegals, which is Asia, not Mexico.
Fastest growing, maybe… but still a pittance compared to Mexico and central and south America.
But Europe is having the biggest problem with Muslim immigrants. Have your been reading about the flood of, most Syrians, into Macedonia and Italy? What a freakin’ mess. It is a consequence of European and US failure to want to wipe out ISIS and deal with the Syrian crisis. Europeans are starting to understand the cost of passivity and isolationism with respect to global conflict. The US might actually find that our illegal immigration problems are less troublesome than are Europe’s. But right now, the US has the bigger mess.
I’m with you, let’s mandate eVerify. And I’m no fan of the General Contractor’s who drive around in $50,000 trucks and pay men $10-15 an hour off the books and with few or no benefits. Back in the day, those would be union jobs with benefits, but we’re screwed on both ends … I’m told the union wage for a carpenter is $45 an hour (for the worker), plus worker’s comp, etc. $90+ an hour for the home owner. Trump does endorse eVerify.
We still need to build a wall, plus a huge increase in border patrol and security. Trump has it right on building a wall, and he actually did come up with a way Mexico would pay for it!
Your comments prompted me to look at Trumps plan for the wall and for American jobs, and he has a number of proposals to help American workers. Take higher wages for H1B visa workers, which would increase the hiring of American workers, including Latinos and African Americans. He wants to eliminate the J-1 Visa for foreign youth workers, and instead create a job bank for inner city youth.
Ideas to chew on.
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/immigration-reform
It would be interesting to know how much of the improved wages are collected by the “union”, as dues, and how well their [union’s] employees are paid/compensated, particularly those who act as “spokespeople”.
“since the lower paid workers in the under $ 13/hour range will not be able to afford housing in Davis, I do not believe that the environmental and other transportation issues are being adequately addressed as the proposal stands.”
Tia, two questions … (1) if those employees don’t work in Davis will they not be contributing to the aggregate regional greenhouse gasses at whatever other job they procure? (2) are the current employees already contributing greenhouse gasses by coming to work at the site? If that is true, shouldn’t we be talking about incremental additions to greenhouse gasses? And shouldn’t those incremental additions be at the regional level rather than the city limits level?
It is offensive to citizens and our Commissions that Robb thinks we should trust Staff and our Council, in their infinite wisdom, to do the right thing on a $40M project without any citizen involvement through those pesky little Commissions. Seems that Robb is singing a different tune about the worth and value of our Commissions now that he is on the Council and not on a Commission himself.
I talked with Robb very briefly after the vote and he said he thought the Traffic Commission would do a constructive job making suggestions about car lanes and bike paths but he didn’t think any of them had the experience of reading a traffic analysis before. After listening to Robb’s seemingly confusing comments from the dais downplaying the obvious inadequacies of the traffic analysis, I am not sure Robb has ever objectively read one from the perspective of a CEQA analysis either.
“Obvious inadequacies of the traffic analysis”
None of the City Council members seemed to think the traffic analysis was inadequate. In fact, they conceded there were problems at that traffic interchange that had nothing to do with the proposed hotel and the city needed to address those problems, and not the developer.
“they conceded there were problems at that traffic interchange that had nothing to do with the proposed hotel and the city needed to address those problems, and not the developer.”
I think it is self evident that there are problems at this intersection that have nothing to do with the proposal. I also think it is evident from the evidence to date that there will be adverse consequences brought about by the development. The subjective part is whether or not one considers this impacts to be minimal. As someone who already diverts around this intersection many times from work to home because of the backup, I cannot imagine that almost any addition of traffic to this intersection would not have a major impact on those who use this routine regularly.
I do not see this as a reason to block the project, but I do see it as a reason for the developer and the city to work in conjunction to alleviate these problems and not to pretend that the developer has no obligation to help to solve the portion of the problem that will be worsened by their project.
But how much more will traffic really be effected? Cafe Italia and the existing hotel already cause traffic to that location so with the loss of those two businesses how much more traffic are we really talking about on a daily basis with the addition of Embassy Suites?
I hope Cafe Italia will decide to stay in Davis and find a suitable new location.
As far as:
I’m with Robb Davis on this one. We don’t need a commission like, for example the NRC, getting involved and mucking up the process.
also the timing matters. the road is really only impacted during the commutes and the lunch hour and it’s far from clear that the traffic added would follow those patterns.
Tia… the problems with traffic in the Richards corridor cannot be “allieviated“. No matter how much time, effort, and money are thrown at it. Maybe $25/gallon gasoline costs throughout the state would have an effect. Maybe. The problems cannot be ‘solved’ by engineering. The problem is a behavioral problem.
There is a likelihood, however, that some measures may be able to be taken that would somewhat reduce further degredation, but unless you believe in magic wands, etc. no one should expect improvement from today’s situation.
It would be helpful if Nishi had access to West Olive ONLY for bike/ped/EVA, or if Nishi never happens. But none of those would ‘allieviate’ what’s happening now.
“I hope Cafe Italia will decide to stay in Davis and find a suitable new location.”
Consensus! Oh, happy day. 🙂
Alan, as you know from my comment in the general public comment at 6:30 last night, I strongly believe this application should have gone to the NRC for sustainability discussion and to the Traffic and Safety Commission for the traffic issues; however, neither of those things happened … and just as importantly neither of those two Commissions made any effort to ask for a review of the project.
Is it reasonable to ask why neither of those Commissions spoke up when they found they were being left out of the process? Further, the Planning Commission held its two most recent discussions of the project, the first on May 27, 2015 and the second on July 8, 2015 (which was IMO a very unfortunate scheduling choice given its proximity to the July 4th Holiday Weekend), and to the best of my knowledge (the City website is down now so I couldn’t confirm) no one from either of those two Commissions, or for that matter the Finance & Budget Commission, came to register their concern about the lack of review.
Further, is it reasonable to ask why the citizen objections that were raised last night weren’t raised by public comment at either of the Planning Commission meetings?
I’m afraid that what we have here is a Pogo reality . . . we have met the enemy and they are us.
As I said in my public comment, we clearly need to take steps to avoid a re-occurrence of this kind of process breakdown for future applications of substance like this one. I also believe we need to beef up our public noticing efforts. I believe conspicuously posted notices/signs on the property edges, like the example below, would be a good idea. If such signs had been posted on Koso Street and Drummond Avenue prior to the Planning Commission hearing for The Villages at Willow Creek proposal, the process would have been considerably more inclusive and transparent.
Matt, where are your examples of the posted signs?
Link problems fixed sisterhood. Thanks for the heads up.
Is a widening of the tunnel still a no go for the foreseeable future?
Widening the tunnel is a no go – because it helps control traffic coming into the downtown. To widen the tunnel would just gridlock the downtown at first street.
i’m hoping staff comes back with something more concrete than the council was talking about. there seems to be a lot of ways to deal with this issue but a lot of willingness to fix the road.
TBD, what would a widening of the tunnel accomplish?
The current tunnel issues have very little to do with the tunnel itself, but rather to do with the capacity of 1st Street and E Street to accept the volume of cars coming out of the tunnel.
And actually it’s even more basic than that Matt. I dropped my daughter at Montgomery, drove to my office in downtown under the underpass at 9 am this morning. If UCD had been in schedule, the traffic would have been backed up to the top of the overpass, but the traffic flowed freely. The problem is that people driving to UC Davis take Richards to First Street, to B St, to Russell and enter by Howard. Reroute that traffic and the Richards Blvd bottleneck effectively goes away.
You help make a point that I made elsewhere… a behavioral problem, not a traffic engineering one.
Interesting that Mr. Harrington was there threatening a law suit. That is sure a unique position for him to take.
having voted for the man twice, sorry to see him lose particularly to saylor and souza, particularly to guidaro’s larceny, the man is not helping anything by suing here.
Gawd, I can’t believe I’m saying this… Mr H has a point. To an extent. The correct CEQA document, in my opinion, would have been a “focussed EIR”, related only to traffic/circulation, and heavily drawing from previous studies, updated to current/proposed conditions. Had that been done, the project would be “bullet-proof” on the analysis. MR H has a ‘thin opening wedge’, procedurally, but the bottom line would not change. Mr H is a “litigator”. Kinda’ like washing your hands before eating, you should take precautions to ensure that you don’t introduce pathogens into your body.
the far bigger issue locally is not the labor stuff but the traffic and yet the debate is 90% on labor stuff, 90% of which has nothing to do with the issue at hand.
Frankly
“Do you care about all the people unable to find enough work? “
I have posted my opinion on this previously and you have totally dismissed me as “chasing rainbows and unicorns” or some such. I will repeat. You and I view the economy and what is possible very differently. I know that yours is the popular American stance, but I do not believe that this makes it inevitable.
I think that the basic problem is that we cling to the outmoded belief that only those who earn wages, or have a traditionally defined “job” typically meaning that they sell their time to whomever gives them the best offer.This would in theory be fine if there were always enough high paying jobs. However, the fact is that there are not, and never have been in this country or poverty would never have been an issue. This simple fact is not changed on the basis of which side of the political spectrum you are on or who you prefer to point the blame finger at.
I would argue for a complete restructuring of our economy. My proposal is simple. Every man, woman and child gets enough to live above a defined poverty level for the area in which they live provided automatically for any positive contribution they happen to be making. Students get their stipend for going to school and progressing. Interns and apprentices get their stipend for progressing in their chosen area of craft or skill. Homemakers or in home care givers get their stipend for taking care of those they raise or assist. Maids, doctors, mechanics, lawyers, professors, firefighters get their stipend by performing their jobs satisfactorily. Every one is fed, housed, clothed, educated and provided medical care at a level that allows them to live free of poverty for what ever number of hours is agreed upon weekly. If people want more income, they put in more hours either in their chosen field or for instance volunteering in an area of need. I will use my example.
If I work for example 40 hours in my clinic to earn my stipend but want to make a luxury purchase, I choose to tutor in the currently volunteer program my daughter runs for the benefit of young readers who are below grade level. The students win because they have an experienced tutor/teacher working with them, my daughter wins because she continues to earn her stipend by coordinating the program full time as her contribution, I win because I gain additional money to spend on my luxury item.
Time is the medium of exchange that we should be using since it is what is equal for all of us. Your hour is precisely the same as my hour. No subjective and often ridiculous assignment of worth to someone’s skill set.
An hour for an hour. Clean, objective, precise…..oh and yes, egalitarian.
Dr. Will, Okay! Let’s do it. Ever consider running for office?
You have an inaccurate view of economic class status in this country. It is not a static thing.
First, there will always be poor people. The challenge isn’t to count the poor people, but to count income mobility. Young people are poor, and then they should move up in economic class over time.
Income mobility has always been strong, but difficult, in the US. It is not much different today than it has been for the last couple of decades. Prior to that going back to the post great war expansion, income mobility was on more of a tear… because the economy was growing at a higher clip and there were just more opportunities.
But again, in the US is is always difficult because we are a free country with an more open free-market economy and a lot of individual competition.
You seem to have a problem with the “difficult” part. I think it is common with a liberal and a mother to want to remove or lessen the struggle from the human condition.
As a conservative and father, I KNOW that yours is a recipe for overall decline. Instead of working to reduce struggle to some unattainable utopia… we need to improve the capability for people to compete, increase the opportunities they have to do and try… and allow them to keep more of what they earn when they earn it.
But here is the MAIN point I wanted to make in response to your silly “pay the same hourly wage rate idea”… we have flooded our country with poor people from other countries. It is a bit disingenuous for you to opine for open borders and then cry so many crocodile tears for the poor. Many of these people that are poor are MUCH better off having come here. They have advanced many times in their economic class/circumstance. I’m sorry but you don’t get to import poor from other countries to be able to make your classism war arguments.
The honest truth, if you care to understand, is that poverty rates for Americans has been steadily declining since the 1940s. But today about 20 percent of immigrants have less than a 9th grade education as compared with a little less than 3 percent of non-immigrants.
In 1940, the age-adjusted average wage of first-generation male immigrants was 5.8 percent above the average wage of non-immigrant males. This figure fell to 1.4 percent above the average wage of non-immigrant males in 1970 and then dropped dramatically to 20 percent below the non-immigrant male wage in 2000. Today it is about 25%.
This also explains much of the wage-gap-crap that the left throws out in their class wars. We import massive numbers of poor and uneducated people to swell the ranks of poor while the US moves out of an industrial economy to a technology and innovation economy… and yes, those poor and uneducated immigrants are looking worse by comparison.
The left exploits the flow of uneducated and poor in many ways that are really disgusting. But none as much as how they use them to corrupt statistics in their class war rhetoric to gain and retain political power so the looting continues.
Frankly
“You have an inaccurate view of economic class status in this country. It is not a static thing.”
I agree that economic class is not static. I have never argued that it is. However, I do not agree with your next paragraph that there will always be poor. This is only true because we choose to repeat it, teach it to our children and avoid doing the things that could make poverty a thing of the past.
Ok… so an hour sweeping floors should be the same value as spending an hour making professional judgements that might have a direct effect on lives lost/saved? I just can’t get there.
Or an hour of piloting a 747 equals an hour of driving a few drunks home in a taxi.
Actually, BP, with the avionics, etc., I suspect the degree of difficulty/risk is higher/same for the cabbie in your example [depending on City and degree of inebriation of the passengers]. But, that being said, point taken.
My understanding is that airline pilot salaries are nowhere near what they used to be, lower by maybe half or more. Once upon a time just about every large-vessel commercial pilot was former military, and they commanded very high salaries due to the level of required skill and scarcity of available candidates. Nowadays they’re basically airborne bus drivers, highly-trained but not scarce. Some (all?) major airlines maintain their own flight schools, and thus are able to keep supply in sync with demand. As hpierce suggests, advanced avionics have no doubt play a role in reducing the required innate ability.
hpierce
“so an hour sweeping floors should be the same value as spending an hour making professional judgements that might have a direct effect on lives lost/saved? I just can’t get there.”
And your point of view, and inability to “get there” is the common denominator in our country. But, as a doctor, I see things differently. Let’s take a common scenario from my profession since almost everyone would agree that I deal in life and death situations.
So let’s suppose that a patient needs an emergency Cesarean due to a life threatening hemorrhage. While it is true that the obstetrician is the one with the knowledge to make the decision and to actually perform the surgery, let’s drop back and look at the broader picture. If the operating room has not been cleaned by our housekeeping staff, I can’t operate. If there is not a nurse to start and IV, draw blood and push meds, I can’t operate. If we don’t have a runner to get the blood to the lab, I can’t operate. If it is night or we are in a windowless room unless we have electricity and people who maintain that power, I can’t operate. None of these people make even close to the amount that I make per hour, and yet we are a team dependent upon the correct performance of all. So please explain to me why, if we had all been paid the same stipend either for staying in school and learning to be a surgeon, or for cleaning operating rooms instead of studying why each of the people in these equally essential functions should be payed far less than I am when the patient is just as dead if we do not all do our jobs ?
You say you “can’t operate” to save a life without all your team there, perfectly doing their jobs. Glad you weren’t a medic in WWII. Dad, who was a battlefield medic in the Pacific in WWII, got the same ‘salary’ as the others, but got a BIG side compensation… the Marines he served with really protected him as they knew he had the training, bandages, and meds to save them if ‘stuff happened’. He got ‘differential compensation’ as it were. And yeah, he saved a lot of lives in conditions that you might shudder to even consider.
Oh, and you have an easy remedy… share your hourly salary equally with your team, so that at the end of the day, everyone gets the same. When you do that consistantly, I might be able to “get there”.
I get your attraction, and see how you are thinking about it. But it really not well vetted. It makes me think that you might live in a bit of a professional bubble as a Kaiser doc, and probably lack enough outside professional interaction to put all the pieces together.
The main thing you are leaving out is the challenge to attain the skills and credentials to effectively do certain jobs. It isn’t just capability, it is actual persistence and hard work. For example, I slept 5 hours a night working full time while earning my degree and then teaching myself how to write progam code. And then starting a business… that meant the same and weekends too. And putting my savings at risk. Why the h e l l would I or anyone else do these things if I would make the same hourly rate pushing a broom?
And related to this, although I see your thinking in this collaborative model where everyone is needed in their job role and should be valued; it is really wrong from the persective in that some jobs are absolutley more valuable and more difficult than others. It is actually a bit freaky… reminds me of the book/movie The Giver. Where students’ career are chosen and everyone makes the same and wears the same and rides the same state-provide bike and lives in the same state-provided house. You see, to get to your egalitarian utopia, you would have to eliminate freedom. Because with freedom there is always going to be that more ambitious, more creative, more capable, more hard working, more talented… person that will want to break from the collective and do things that other enterprising and interested people will pay more for. So, to prevent that you would need tyrannical control.
Your thinking seems unidimensional and way too static… that everyone attends so much school and ends up doing that one thing for the rest of their life.
I think ladders… where peope grow in capability and can climb higher their entire life until they reach some pinnacle of professional utility that pays well enough for them to have a reasonably good life. I want to see as much climbing as possible. I want there to be plenty of hands up and opportunities. But leave the freedom and competition… otherwise we end up like Venzuela.
Perhaps Tia can convince the City Council to adopt her plan for the City employees. Every city employee would be paid the same. The Department Managers would make the same as the clerical staff, the Engineers would make the same as the Parks maintenance workers. The lifeguards would make the same as the Fire Fighters. The lazy employees would make the same as the hard working ones, the employees with 20 years experience would make the same as the new hires.
I wish Tia the best of luck getting her proposal adopted.
Those that went to college for 8 years will make the same as high school dropouts.
This would only serve to bring quality down as the lazy ones won’t have to improve and the good workers will say “what the Hell, I give up, why try”?
Oh, but the goal is not to have “Quality” but rather that everyone should get paid the same hourly rate. We want to have a worker’s paradise where there is no poverty and no unemployment.
Davis could be the first city where everyone gets paid the same, no matter what they do, how much education they have or how hard they work.
Tia Will: “I think it is self evident that there are problems at this intersection that have nothing to do with the proposal. I also think it is evident from the evidence to date that there will be adverse consequences brought about by the development. The subjective part is whether or not one considers this impacts to be minimal.”
The finding of the traffic expert was there would be no significant traffic impacts from the proposed hotel. Additionally, the hotel would actually add some improvements that would make the traffic situation better.
There was concern by the City Council that the interchange in front of the hotel had a myriad of pre-existing problems, that should be spelled out and solutions proposed – to be fixed by the city (in consultation with the hotel developer). However, the City Council wanted to approve the project, because 1) they wanted to send a strong signal the city is open to welcome economic development and this project in particular, and 2) so the developer could begin the lengthy process of obtaining funding.
DP: “the far bigger issue locally is not the labor stuff but the traffic and yet the debate is 90% on labor stuff, 90% of which has nothing to do with the issue at hand.”
The irony is the labor “stuff” is a complete nonissue; and the traffic issues are de minimus in regard to traffic impacts by the hotel.
1. The city cannot require a private hotelier to unionize its workers or control what the hotel pays its employees as a condition of approval of the project.
2. Traffic problems at that intersection are most likely going to IMPROVE because of this hotel being built there.
i would completely agree and add:
1a. not only can the city not require the hotel to unionize, they seem willing to allow the employees to decide.
2b. the problems exist independent of the hotel. some of these problems could improve with the mitigation. and more importantly the council seems willing to take this issue on at least.
Its true that the council cannot require the employer to enforce card check neutrality. However, it can send the message to the employer that the community supports card check neutrality. What in essence this term means there is an agreement between a union and an employer for the employer not to intimidate the employees into not organizing into a union, and the union in turn agrees not to picket or boycott the employer. Some employers are notorious for running illegal union busting campaigns. The enforcement for the law is so bad, it takes years to resolve cases, and even after a case is resolved, the penalties for employers who blatantly break the law are woefully toothless.
All this forces unions like UNITE HERE to take on militant tactics like picketing and boycotting or even wildcat strikes. That intersection would be a super easy target to protest/picket. A labor peace agreement would benefit everyone, the employer, the union and especially the workers, who would get actual living wages.
So when I point out and give examples of how unions use “mob like” extortion to increase membership by requesting something and either inferring or outright saying that negative things will happen if there request is not granted:
Mr. Wolk, force the new hotel to hire union labor or you will not get elected.
City of Sacramento/Kings, use only union labor to build the new Arena or we will file lawsuits to shut down the project
UFC, unionize your Las Vegas hotels or we will kill the bill to allow UFC fights in the state of New York.
Mr. Patel, make your new workers unionized or you will have “labor issues”
Somehow those statements were considered to imply violence.
However, when a union advocate posts “All this forces unions like UNITE HERE to take on militant tactics ” There is no mention of referencing violence.
mil·i·tant
ˈmiləd(ə)nt/
adjective
1.
combative and aggressive in support of a political or social cause, and typically favoring extreme, violent, or confrontational methods.
You seem to miss the point entirely. Unionism is inherently non violent because violence is counter productive to positive social change. If you have to use violence to prove your point, you have already lost.
Now, I would suggest you read my previous post about how broken the NLRB is before you question the tactics used by modern unionists. For example, the OUR Walmart union uses old IWW and some civil rights tactics. Exposing the companies terrible labor practices through protests, interviews, media coverage etc.. In these cases, the unions are simply exposing the truth to the public, which damages the brand of said company. There is a reason why so many people do not like Walmart. They do these kinds of actions to force the employers to bargain in good faith, to get leverage.
Now if this concept of collective bargaining is offensive to any of you, I would ask what is more offensive; collective bargaining or poverty wages? Moreover, an excess of profit whilst keeping those who generate that profit (the workers) in poverty? Is that not shameful? I certainly think so.
There are many productive relationships between labor and employers where disputes never ever go into the public sphere. Not all employers are so rational and wise to see the logic in this and must be shown.
In my opinion you just made the case why we might not want union represented workers at that location.
Davis Progressive: “having voted for the man twice, sorry to see him lose particularly to saylor and souza, particularly to guidaro’s larceny”
Thank you.