At the last meeting of the previous city council, the Davis City Council approved the budget with the understanding that city staff would bring back the matter of tree trimming services for a full discussion.
In the wake of the Davis City Employees Association decision by the Public Employment Relations Board, the city laid off nine employees, including tree trimmers, effective July 1.
The item brought back is informational but basically argues that the “urban forest division has the responsibility to manage and maintain the community forest,” lists the core functions and argues that “these functions have been performed by a variety of service models.”
At the last council meeting, City Manager Steve Pinkerton said, “Citizens of Davis are not expected to see a decrease in service, but contrarily may in fact see an increase in service levels since we do not expect to have the down time that the City has previously experienced due to employee vacations or illness.”
City staff performs removals and off-cycle pruning of mature trees and minor pruning from service requests. The bulk of the work seems left to the non-profit organization Tree Davis and contract services through West Coast Arborist.
“Tree Davis, a non-profit organization focused on tree planting, young tree maintenance, and education helps perform some core functions each year. Partnering with the City of Davis since its founding in 1992, Tree Davis plants new trees in neighborhoods, parks, and greenbelts,” staff reports.
“A professional service contractor has performed removals and the regular maintenance pruning of street trees,” the staff reports.
The city has contracted with West Coast Arborist to provide these services to the city since 2001.
“During these years the city has utilized cooperative purchasing agreements to renegotiate the service contract with West Coast Arborist,” staff continued.
Rob Cain, the city’s arborist, said in June, “Depending on when the discussion happens and continues, I think we can keep the service levels where they are now with the different options we have presented tonight.”
But others are not so sure.
David Robinson, a member of the Street Tree Commission, reported that the commission voted unanimously the week prior to the late June council meeting to protest the cutbacks of the tree trimming staff. He said their basis was not emotion but hard numbers.
Mr. Robinson strongly disputed the city manager’s June 12 words that “Having a dedicated city staffed tree crew to perform tree maintenance is no longer a necessity to maintain the City’s urban forest at its current level.”
He countered that, while none of us can predict the future, “this statement is factless and based on absolutely no evidence that is apparent to anyone to whom I have spoken.”
Greg McPherson, a research forester with the United States Forest Service, believes the result will be a decrease in levels of service for the public.
“With an undercut staff, you can expect trees to be more prone to failure,” Mr. McPherson told the Vanguard. And higher incidences of tree failure come with more emergency response and service requests.
Such changes may result in more inefficient uses of the available services, said Mr. McPherson.
Tree failure, according to arborists, include falling or breaking limbs or blown-over treetops. Generally, such failures can be prevented by service requests or remediated by emergency responses.
One of the biggest questions, though, is not just on tree maintenance but also with maintaining the city’s connection to the public.
Greg McPherson wonders whether the remaining arborists can continue to provide sufficient training for volunteers.
The city staff maintains that Davisites are not expected to see a decline in service but rather an increase. Down time from employee vacations or illnesses would no longer be an issue since the city would rely more on services from West Coast Arborists.
“As with any urban forest, living around trees carries an inherent risk. Trees will fail from time to time due to a variety of circumstances,” according to Rob Cain, the city’s Urban Forest Manager, “Davis has not seen large scale tree failure unless it has been during a large scale weather event.”
From the city’s perspective, the budget issue since the 2008 economic downturn and the slow recovery has forced the city to make cuts to the urban forest budget for the past three years.
At the same time, staff argues, “While the program has absorbed these cuts without significant reductions to service, the continued reduction in available resources to the program has forced the city to reassess the service model for urban forest management.”
They continue, “The urban forest program is moving toward a competitive services delivery model in which professional services providers will perform the majority of the regular forest maintenance functions. This model provides for the maintenance of current service levels and the opportunity to increase those levels.”
Staff continues to argue, “The modification to the urban forest service model will result in greatly reduced cost and increased service levels for street and park tree maintenance.”
The block pruning of trees will move from an 8-year cycle to a 7-year cycle. In addition, for the first time, park trees will have a regular pruning cycle for preventative maintenance.
But council and the public remain skeptical.
“I’m finding it difficult to understand from this budget how you can eliminate 29 FTEs and still maintain service levels,” Councilmember Dan Wolk said in the last meeting.
“Eliminating the experience and attention that we currently have by the last two tree crew members is a terrible way to respond to the strong support that Davis Citizens demonstrated to support Measure D,” community member Eileen Samitz said during public comment in June. “Do you think that the same level of support and vote percentage would have been so high would we [have] known that these two crew members would be eliminated? I don’t think so.”
She argued that the savings by eliminating these positions is “miniscule compared to the canopy loss and energy savings that we can lose.”
“The City of Davis strives to maintain the city’s community forest in the best way possible, in accordance with the Community Forest Management Plan and Arboriculture industry standards,” city staff argues. “While having to adapt to organizational and economic changes, the urban forest division is focused on providing the highest service levels possible with limited and reduced funding resources.”
“This significant asset of the Davis community shall continue to bring the benefits enjoyed by the residents living under a healthy and thriving urban forest canopy,” they conclude.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
“The urban forest program is moving toward a competitive services delivery model in which professional services providers will perform the majority of the regular forest maintenance functions. This model provides for the maintenance of current service levels and the opportunity to increase those services. The modification to the urban forest service model will result in greatly reduced cost and increased service levels for street and park tree maintenance.”
Sounds pretty impressive. Where are the figures that support these projections?
“Greg McPherson wonders whether the remaining arborists can continue to provide sufficient training for volunteers.”
How many arborists did we have in the old “model”? How many will remain after the planned reductions? I had the impression they’d be wiped out.
“The block pruning of trees will move from an 8-year cycle to a 7-year cycle. In addition, for the first time, park trees will have a regular pruning cycle for preventative maintenance.”
Their present work plus all these additional services added by the savings from this curent firing of, what, two/three people? And we’ll still be left with money in our pockets? Sounds good.
Sounds to me like this is a move to privatize services by the city to save money…
[i]”Citizens of Davis are not expected to see a decrease in service, but contrarily may in fact see an increase in service levels since we do not expect to have the down time that the City has previously experienced due to employee vacations or illness.”[/i]
This is an interesting statement and confirms one of the significant, but largely ignored, problems we have with much of our public-sector labor pool. The problem is excessive paid time off that leads to:
[b]Quantitative Service Problems…[/b]
– excessive absence (costing us more to backfill resources)
– excessive unplanned absence (causing scheduling problems and service breaks)
[b]Qualitative Service Problems…[/b]
– a general reduction in the sense of urgency for work (employees thinking “I can just do it later”)
– a general reduction in a sense of ownership for work (employees thinking “someone else will have to do it, since I am taking the day off”)
– Lower continuity of customer care since multiple employees are more often required to cover a multi-day or complex task due to greater absence.
Per the BLS data, the average number of paid holidays for the private sector is 8. The DCEA MOU has 12 regular paid holidays and 2.5 floating paid holidays… 6.5 more days than the national average for the private sector.
Per BLS data the average number of vacation days for a 20-year employee in the private sector is 18. Based on the DCEA MOU, paid vacation caps at 28 days after 16 years of service… or 10 more days.
The BLS calculates a CPHW (cost per-hour worked) figure for paid time off. It is not surprising that state and local government CPHW for paid leave is significantly higher ($3.12 and 8.2% of total compensation) than it is for the private-sector ($1.80 and 6.7% of total compensation). Of course, we also need to factor that the benefits given to the Davis DCEA employees is significantly greater than the average for all public-sector workers.
Statistics on sick leave are more difficult to locate. However, from BLS data, the CPHW for private sector sick leave is $0.22 and for state and local government employees it is $0.78… or 3.55 times greater than the private-sector.
All of this begs a question about how we might reduce the number of lay-offs required by simply reducing the paid time off benefits of all state and local employees to better match the national averages for the private sector.
The picture I see…
There is a boat adrift on the ocean filled with well-fed public-sector employees. The food is running low. But now, instead of accepting rations that should satisfy the nutrition requirements of the average person, they are throwing people overboard to protect the excessive appetites of the shrinking number of more powerful elite employees. These more powerful elite public-sector employees are hoping the national media will help them exploit the tragedy of all those poor employees thrown overboard, to encourage the rest of us in other boats to give up more of our food stores to prevent more from being thrown overboard.
[quote]The picture I see…
There is a boat adrift on the ocean filled with well-fed public-sector employees. The food is running low. But now, instead of accepting rations that should satisfy the nutrition requirements of the average person, they are throwing people overboard to protect the excessive appetites of the shrinking number of more powerful elite employees. These more powerful elite public-sector employees are hoping the national media will help them exploit the tragedy of all those poor employees thrown overboard, to encourage the rest of us in other boats to give up more of our food stores to prevent more from being thrown overboard.[/quote]
LOL Very interesting analogy!
Mr Boone… at no time, recession or not, should any public employee get more in compensation than their counterpart in the private sector… and, if the ‘tide’ rises, private sector employees should have increases in compensation (bonuses, etc.), but public employees should have increases lesser or equal to CPI… do I understand you correctly?
ERM: the same can be said for those drawing Social Security checks… they will reap (currently) much more than they and their employers contributed to the fund. They are “precious”, and should be sheltered from any concessions, be that SS or Medicare, right?
hpierce – my experience is that you periodically do mark-to-market studies and change the salary-grade structure based on the averages for compensation and benefits for a given role. You need to do this to retain talent (prevent them from jumping ship to higher-compensation).
The tech sector was/is unique in that trends in technological advancement/adoption can cause a run on people with specific skills and it can drive the compensation levels up from the laws of supply and demand. However, for the most part, management should be responsible for optimizing the cost of resources by making sure the compensation levels match the market for a given role. You will see in most employment ads “We offer competitive salaries and benefits”.
It is corrosive to pay more than market. A couple of things happen. One – employees get used to a level of compensation and it is next to impossible to maintain moral and motivation while reducing pay and benefits. Two – employees that should move on, do not move on because they would suffer a pay cut going to another employer.
A much bigger problem is that the organization has higher labor costs than is necessary.
The management lesson is to NEVER pay more than you need to for any employee. It is in fact bad management performance to pay more for human resources than required.
If you are in a position where the market heats up for specific talent, and your salary survey indicates that you have under-paid or over-paid employees. The practice is to adjust the pay-grades and ratchet compensation up or down over a period of time at performance review time while also making adjustments for new hires. There is rarely cases where this causes significant imbalance. However, I have had cases where I the market heated up so much for a given technical skill set, that I had to work with my HR department to implement a special retention bonus program to retain good employees until their regular pay rates increased to better match the market.
There are 130,000 qualified job applicants for every state prison guard job opening. There is almost 100% job retention for prison guards. That is a gross example of a public-sector job that is grossly over-compensated.
The problem here is collective bargaining. It separates the pricing of labor from the labor market. It has the effect of creating an artificial and isolated labor market that has no connection with economic reality.
I am surprised that more people are not supportive of the need to lower compensation for public-sector labor. It used to be that people rejected tax increases on the wealthy because they considered themselves as potential future wealthy. Now the tide appears to be turning with populist animus against the wealthy (thanks in part to the class war rhetoric of leading Democrat politicians); and support for these excessive public-sector compensation and benefit levels. This leads me to believe that as a country we are becoming lazier… dreaming of a cushy public-sector job instead of working 60-70 hour weeks for starting a business and growing private wealth.
“I am surprised that more people are not supportive”
I should have written: “I am surprised that there are not more people supportive”
[quote]ERM: the same can be said for those drawing Social Security checks… they will reap (currently) much more than they and their employers contributed to the fund. They are “precious”, and should be sheltered from any concessions, be that SS or Medicare, right?[/quote]
I thought Jeff’s analogy that we only have so much food to go around and we have to figure out the best way to divvy the food up to keep the most people surviving was an interesting one…
[quote]The picture I see…
There is a boat adrift on the ocean filled with well-fed public-sector employees. The food is running low. But now, instead of accepting rations that should satisfy the nutrition requirements of the average person, they are throwing people overboard to protect the excessive appetites of the shrinking number of more powerful elite employees. These more powerful elite public-sector employees are hoping the national media will help them exploit the tragedy of all those poor employees thrown overboard, to encourage the rest of us in other boats to give up more of our food stores to prevent more from being thrown overboard.
[/quote]
I also found this analogy interesting. I would like to offer another. The picture I see:
There is a boat on the ocean filled with adequately fed public sector employees. Food is running low.
Next to this boat is another boat with private sector employees. They still have food, but less than that in the boat of the public sector employees.
Next to this is a boat that is a skiff, leaking and needing constant bailing, no food except that which they can catch with their hands or is tossed down to them in charity from the people in the only other boat around.
The last boat is a huge yacht, more food than could conceivably ever be eaten by the people on board, carefully prepared by their chefs and sous chefs.
The people on the yacht sometimes remember to toss food down, sometimes not. Sometimes they hire a few more people from the smaller boats to replace a crew member or chef or nanny, and talk about their job creation as a reason why they must stay in the yacht while saying that anyone can reach the yacht if they just work hard enough. In the meantime, they are busy convincing the people in the private sector boat that the people in the public sector boat and the people in the skiff are the problem.
medwoman: Your ocean is too big filled from the tears of a bleeding heart! Maybe I should have just confined my analogy to Putah Creek! 😉
Seriously though… to distill your picture down, I think you are making a point that private sector labor and the poor have it worse… and so if we would just take more away from the “obscenely” wealthy to give to them, public sector labor would not look so better off by comparison. Correct me if I am wrong here.
I can see how you connect the dots for this thinking. But it is problematic of course.
First, you cannot enslave the wealthy. They have more shifty and dynamic options to slip away from government’s slow and bureaucratic methods to grab more of their wealth. The wealthy will always be more motivated to shelter wealth from taxation, than will be those that loot it through government taxing authority. What happens is that the wealthy still get away, and we hit the middle class again.
Second, the wealthy will just pass higher taxation as increased costs to consumers… i.e., the poor and middle class… hence taking away more of their “food”.
IMO, at some point you and other need to accept that market forces are much more powerful than the hand of government. The best government can do with direct manipulation is to cause short-term changes… but that risk ending up in long-term disasters of unintended consequences. Frankly, the market rules in a free capitalist society like ours. The only way to change that fact is to more toward more pure economic socialism, Marxism, communism where government actually owns and controls industry. But take a look at history for examples of how that has works… causing copious REAL misery and suffering of humans… not just our style of glass-half-empty-by-comparison suffering.
Now I know the arguments for regulation and taxation are seeking a more nuanced conclusion than these forms of collectivism. But, there is a tipping point on the economic system teeter-totter that starts to slide us down to toward them. We are either free market capitalist or we are not. If we are, then we need to accept market forces as a controlling feature… paying homage to it, accept it and exploit it.
Assuming we are a free market capitalist system, the state of all those non-public-sector workers is the state of economic righteousness. To use our analogy, their boats are stocked with as much food as the market provides. The public-sector workers are the state of excess. More importantly, it has proven to be unsustainable excess mostly disconnected from the core of our free market capitalist system.
Look at it this way… if you increase redistribution, you will have fewer people working. You will pay the remaining people more and then have to tax them more to fund the social services to support a growing number of unemployed. Not being paid over market wages and having to contribute more dollars to a later retirement is not a real tragedy of humanity. Not having a job is a tragedy. It is the equivalent of being thrown out of the boat is our water-world analogy. I would rather we have many more people working (in boats) than to have fewer elites raking in the dough.
I think you should agree with that for humanitarian reasons instead of protecting the status quo.
I think that it is a mistake to completely turn management of the city’s trees over to private firms under the supervision of city arborists.
[i]”The modification to the urban forest service model will result in greatly reduced cost and increased service levels for street and park tree maintenance.”[/i]
Reduced cost, yes. Increased service levels? Unlikely.
I’d guess pay and benefits for public employees could be scaled back gradually if necessary to get them more in line with private sector. It is unclear to me why this small part of the city’s work force was singled out for complete elimination.
I’d guess taxes on the wealthy could also be raised somewhat, and while there would be some income flight it would not be as drastic as conservatives predict.
[i]We are either free market capitalist or we are not.
[/i]
We are not. We are a mixed economy.
What level of services does the 2012 contract provide? Can the public review the contract? If the contract is up for renewal in 2017 and was reduced by $50,000 in 2010, I would like to know how how the same level of services be expected, especially with reduction of two full time positions. I would like to understand the city’s intentions on spending Measure D funds for tree services.
Don, It is a matter of degrees. We are mixed thanks to John Maynard Keynes and FDR. Before their influence, we were more a pure free market economy. However, we are STILL more of a market economy than most other industrialized countries. It is a big reason we have kicked their economic ass for decades. The problem is that we tilting more away from it… going the same direction shrinking our private economy while growing public business. That does not work. China is going the other way for a very good reason.
Even Adam Smith agreed that pure capitalism was not desired. Property rights require a legal system. The creative destruction correction mechanism of capitalism is often too difficult for a society to tolerate. We need social structures to help implement and enforce rules that keep the system serving us well… but only that.
Jeff,
Thanks for the laugh ! At the risk of totally derailing this conversation ( David or Don, you can feel free to banish Jeff and I to the bulletin board), I want to respond to one of your points.
[quote]First, you cannot enslave the wealthy. They have more shifty and dynamic options to slip away from government’s slow and bureaucratic methods to grab more of their wealth. The wealthy will always be more motivated to shelter wealth from taxation, than will be those that loot it through government taxing authority. What happens is that the wealthy still get away, and we hit the middle class again. [/quote]
I have no intention of enslaving anyone. But you have made my point with your choice of words about their
“shifty” options. I do not believe that it is true that the wealthy need always be motivated to “shelter their wealth”. I believe that the world of humans is what we choose to make of it. We can choose to say…”well there will always be rich and poor, and as long as I have enough, things are fine….or the glass is half full” Or we could choose to raise our children with a different message. We could choose to teach them that the world is not about how much an individual can acquire, but about how much the group can accomplish and how valuable sharing can be both for the individual and the group. This does not mean we have to embrace a Marxist philosophy. There are many societies, both large and small that function on a much more equitable distribution of wealth and a much smaller gap between the richest and poorest than we have achieved.
[quote]I think you should agree with that for humanitarian reasons instead of protecting the status quo.[/quote]
I suppose I would agree with you if I felt that the only three options were the status quo, a “free market” as you describe it, or a Marxist state. I simply do not agree that those are the only options. I see humans as having a much broader range of options with much richer and more nuanced options and that it is only our greed and lack of imagination that stops us from adopting a more just, moral route. Many other societies have done it.
I think we can too if we only chose to.
Jeff
[quote]Seriously though… to distill your picture down, I think you are making a point that private sector labor and the poor have it worse… and so if we would just take more away from the “obscenely” wealthy to give to them, public sector labor would not look so better off by comparison. Correct me if I am wrong here. [/quote]
And, closer to the topic at hand. You are wrong here. This is not about appearance for me. Again, I am fine with the people in the yacht having gourmet food, as long as they have not obtained it at the expense of the people in the smaller boats and as long as everyone else has enough to eat.
medwoman,
Like your analogy about the boat flotilla; it is the more complete analogy!
Jeff, I do not think you need to worry about the wealthy losing their wealth anytime soon. Under Obama, consolidation of wealth by the wealthy has continued apace, as have the decreasing fortunes of the poor and middle class. It seems to me we can be assured this consolidation of wealth into the hands of the few will continue for the next decade or more; perhaps until the system breaks down or until are social structure is more like some of the capitalist countries in South America.
Somehow during the 1950s and 1960s when tax rates on high income were much higher than they are now, there were people who still seemed to have incentive to create both outstanding and profitable businesses, I suspect if the Bush tax cuts are terminated businesses won’t grind to a standstill.
Having said that; I agree that public pensions are way too generous; the age of pension eligibility should go up to 65-70 years of age; and also a lower percentage per year service (e.g. from ~3%/year service to ~2% per year service). These changes alone should cut pension obligation costs by roughly half or more.
Westrup brings up some very salient questions which I think need to be reiterated as well as some other questions on this topic.
After reading the Staff report which desperately tries to assure us that “all is well” with eliminating our Urban Forest Department and going to a sub-contracting of West Coast Arborists (of Stockton) and Davis citizen volunteers some obvious questions come to mind:
What is the understanding of what would be the expected delay in time for service when a wind storm hits Davis over a weekend or on a holiday and the City has put itself on a position of relying on a tree service located in Stockton, which is over an hour away minimum travel time? This does not even take into account IF and how long it would take to make contact with this company on a holiday or weekend and how long it would take them to respond (i.e. contacting and recruiting available employees, gathering equipment and vehicles to get on the road to Davis).
What exactly is the expectation of the City that citizen volunteers are being expected to perform in this proposed new scenario in the staff report?
What exactly DOES this contract say with West Coast Arborists and the public wants to see the contract conditions that the City is claiming will provide “improved services” for less cost in addition to 2 tree crew staff members being eliminated?
Specifically how much and how is our Measure D tax money being used for trees?
My understanding from more than one source, including the “City of Davis Urban Forest Management Plan”, is that the city has over 30,000 trees, not 20,000. This is a significant difference so what is the correct number and why is there a discrepancy? Also, this significantly matters in considering any “level of service”.
The City Staff Urban Forest Management report actually raises more questions than answers.
Jeff, the part of capitalism and free markets which you do not address at all is competition. Unfortunately, capitalism is and has always been under attack from both ends of the spectrum. The wealthy/powerful are incessantly undermining free markets by forming monopolies, oligopolies, engaging in collusion, advocating for government licensing, price fixing, government subsidies, tax code distortions, payoffs/graft, etc. In my view, these market distortions have been rampant under both Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. The notion that the US economy is a free, capitalist economy is far, far fetched.
PS: If it were me, I’d ban mergers and acquisitions almost entirely. You want to compete, then compete.
-Michael Bisch
All this talk about private vs. public fails to examine the core issue:
Will the trees be better off or not?
Only Don Shor approaches this question. Higher frequency of pruning means trees take less time to prune each time you do it. That means you save money. Does that make a healthier tree or not? Who knows? Will a rotating cast of private tree trimmers care more about the trees they are trimming than a long-term city employee? Probably not, but maybe. You get what you pay for.
Privatizing services doesn’t mean the services will be better, just cheaper. A company doesn’t make decisions based on “what is good for the public” but maybe “what is good for the public” has gotten too expensive and the public would rather keep their tax dollars for themselves.
Based on the 2002 Community Forest Management plan, optimal service of the 31,000+ trees on public lands or public right-of-ways, you would want 2 FTE supervisory arborists. As I understand it: there will be, with the reduction of city staff to one supervisory arborist, just above minimal level of service for the city’s trees. That supervisory arborist will oversee a private contractor who bids on a unit basis for a five-year contract. The current contract is $55 per tree. In 2001 it was $98 per tree.
I have difficulty believing that service levels improve with reduced unit cost. I have difficulty believing that service is improved when supervisory levels are reduced.
I would have to look at the contract to see how ISA standards are specified. I assume city tree staff reviewed the contract, but I don’t know how much input they got. The Community Forest Management Plan is due for updating (I assume that is underway). A key question will be how the species mix has changed, and how the problem species have matured. Older calleryana pears need more frequent maintenance pruning, for example; mistletoe removal is needed on the many Modesto ash trees in east Davis, etc.
I strongly believe that outside review of that plan by qualified tree professionals such as Greg McPherson will be necessary when you have city staff acting on a budget-constrained basis and a contractor bidding on a unit basis. That combination is a recipe for disaster – literally, in the case of some tree species.
Tree pruning is like surgery in many ways. You don’t want to go to the lowest bidder.
Re: Bisch–“Unfortunately, capitalism is and has always been under attack from both ends of the spectrum.”
Exactly! Most comments I see address either only the low end (e.g ‘welfare Queens’) or high end (e.g. ‘Banksters’) of the social class scale; when serious problems lie at both ends (seems to me the bigger problem now is at the high end rather than the low end), and the main working-class middle is getting the squeeze!
For the record, I support and have respect for hard-working entrepreneurs operating small businesses; wish the political/legal/tax/regulatory playing-field was leveled so that the Big Boys didn’t have so many advantages over independent local start-ups.
Re: Don Shor: ‘Tree pruning is like surgery in many ways. You don’t want to go to the lowest bidder.’; and Don’s other comments above;
I had suspected the points Don has made; but didn’t have the specific expertise to be sure or to articulate these points as well as Don has. Don’s comments resonate with me; they have that ring of accuracy!
I contemplate this as I visited an apartment of a friend of mine earlier this evening; seeing the butchered remains of some trees (on apartment property, not city property) that had been quite nice-looking last week. It was evident that the owners of the apartment complex went with the lowest bid ‘pruning’ contractor; some of the trees had been hacked willy-nilly, with no regard to good pruning practices. There is also a sign not far from some of these trees, advertising apartments for rent. Maybe some student renters won’t associate the presence of mangled trees with an indication of other cost-saving measures the owners might employ at the apartment complex…
“….a sub-contracting of West Coast Arborists (of Stockton)….”
Is this contract covered by “prevailing wage” requirements?
In addition, I’m surprised that the council puts up with staff reports that are so short on fact and figure research and so full of unsubstantiated “don’t worry…things will be great” commentary designed to gain confirmation of decisions already made be city staff.
I agree that Dor Shor’s comments are extremely relevant and come from a very well respected professional who is well known for his knowledge and expert opinion in horticulture and arboriculture for many years now. Other professions in this area also have the same opinion that the City’s budget cuts in the area of Urban Forest Management is a terrible direct action to take and we can expect serious negative consequence to our urban forest which has taken decades to mature.
Even our City of Davis Tree Commission has sent a strong message of opposition to cuts to the City Council when the budget was discussed there two weeks ago . The Tree Commission also strongly disagrees with the City Manager’s assumptions that the urban forest level of service would be maintained with these significant cuts.
Professionals like Greg McPherson (Urban Forest Specialist), Warren Robert’s (former head of the UCD Arboritum), Robert Mazalewski (Horticulture Consultant) are just a few other professionals which have written to the City and testified strongly against these budget cuts. Bob Cordrey is yet another professional who retired a few years ago as our City of Davis Superintendent of Parks who wrote a letter to the editor in the Enterprise two weeks ago with important comments also in opposition to these budget cuts. I am posting it for those of you who may not have seen it since this former City employee has a pretty good idea of what our City’s urban forest needs are since he was in charge of it and all of our parks and greenbelts for many years.
Dear Council Members:
While I fully understand the dilemma of budget shortfalls, I have serious concerns regarding the proposed elimination of the in-house tree crew as a partial solution. This action may initially save money, but the resulting lack of care and maintenance of mature city trees will most certainly create future expenses and liabilities.
Davis’ parks, greenbelts and streetscapes are among the favorite features of residents and visitors alike. In large part this is a result of decades of city commitment and investment in the publicly owned trees which compose a significant portion of the overall urban forest. These same trees have been cared for by the well qualified and deeply dedicated large tree crew, currently being proposed for elimination.
Unfortunately, the city tree crew historically responsible for the imperative care and training of young and small trees has been previously eliminated.
In response to increased development and infrastructure during the 1990s, the Parks Division began contracting out the trimming of street trees, those planted within the ten foot city easement behind curbs. By 2000, the contractors had achieved a pruning cycle of between 6-7 years. In 2010, the budget for the tree contracting was reduced by $50,000 and consequently the street tree pruning cycle today is over 8 years between trimmings.
The point here is that there are two categories of mature city trees: street trees trimmed by a qualified contractor and all other city trees (parks, greenbelts, etc.) historically maintained by trained city tree staff. Due to reduced contract funding, street trees are not being trimmed as frequently as they had been. Without a city tree crew, thousands of city trees will no longer be maintained. There is no way that the same or even a similar level of service can be achieved with the proposed budget and labor reductions.
Without reiterating the numerous benefits of trees, I will point out that the City of Davis has a sterling reputation for its urban forestry programs and its long standing commitment to the trees that make all of our lives more comfortable in so many ways.
Over the years we have invested wisely in this beneficial resource now worth millions. I would therefore ask Council members to consider carefully the elimination of the city tree maintenance program as a cost saving measure – it very well may be more expensive in the long run.
Respectfully,
Bob Cordrey