Former Davis City Manager and UC Davis Vice Chancellor John Meyer had it right, it was a strange “new world order where columnists” were essentially sitting at the table, able to ask questions of the city council.
And if anyone wants to understand once and for all why David Greenwald is a blogger, columnist, writer rather than a politician, watch my opening salvo where I point the finger at Bobby Weist for twenty years of delay on boundary drop.
The problem, of course, is that someone needed to tell it like it was, and so that meant Rich Rifkin and I had the job of calling a spade a spade on Tuesday night.
We got immediate push back by John Meyer, Mayor Joe Krovoza and Brett Lee, saying that this could not get personal. At that same time, the move served its purpose. All Mr. Weist could do after that was meekly contend that “[w]e’re not necessarily opposed, nor have we ever been opposed to dropping boundaries, providing the best service to our community and the campus.”
“We have never so-called opposed boundary drops. We just had questions and we never got them answered,” he tried.
Or, as Joe Tenney said, “There’s currently a system in place. We’re not opposed to the boundary drop, we just want the right system in place.”
At the same time, it allowed Vice Chancellor Meyer to be more direct when it came to the question about the management chance and the failed merger. When Bobby Weist and Joe Tenney pushed for the full merger, John Meyer let the council know on no uncertain terms that they were not ready for that.
John Meyer was not ultimately opposed to that type of merger. But he said, “The last several years have shown a number of issues have arisen – cultural issues where I was frankly concerned with how our firefighters were being treated.”
“Once we get to a point of mutual respect and common goals, I would not see that out of the realm of responsibility, but I have to protect my folks,” he said.
Behind the scenes, we had heard that the issue of respect and how UC Davis firefighters were treated by their Davis counterparts was huge, but no one had ever come forward and stated it on the record. Well, Vice Chancellor Meyer did exactly that.
And while Joe Tenney would come back and state that was not his impression, the idea that the vice chancellor would have to say, “I have to protect my folks” certainly trumped any meek denial from Captain Tenney.
Moreover, Mr. Meyer’s comment opened the door for me to ask whether the concerns that led to his January 2012 letter stopping the merger are different with this proposal, and whether he believes things have changed enough to go forward with something more along the lines of the full merger idea.
The vice chancellor responded, “Basically the reasons I recommended to Steve that we pause those current efforts is we weren’t meeting the objective we set.”
He said we did not implement standard operating guidelines, and we did not complete a shared policy manual. “We were not able to drop boundaries, which was a fundamental discussion of these joint committees that we had between the two departments.”
“In addition, the Citygate report showed quite a disparity between the total comp within the two departments,” he said. Citygate, he said, suggested that the university come up to that level of compensation. “My response to the letter was that will not be sustainable for us. If that’s the assumption that we’ll come up to the total comp level, I can’t make that work financially.”
This was my first time really dealing with John Meyer at a personal level – let me just say, I see what all the fuss was about. He was articulate and shrewd at the same time. It was very impressive.
Finally, the structure of the roundtable exposed the firefighters’ union as completely out of touch with reality.
“My concern here is that the last couple of items that this roundtable is addressing is nothing has changed in the city of Davis since 1999,” Captain Tenney said.
Apparently, Captain Tenney is unaware of September 15, 2008 when the world’s financial systems almost collapsed leading to severe budget shortfalls for municipalities.
He would say, “I know the budget thing has been trouble, but that appears to be making a change in a different direction.”
Which is why the city cut $8 million from the current budget and why five of the seven bargaining units have taken concessions. And we wonder why the firefighters’ union is one of the holdouts?
Joe Tenney continued to step in it. He asked why it seemed like the firefighters were the only ones being asked to make these sorts of cuts.
That allowed Joe Krovoza to point out that they had to close a pool and make numerous cut backs.
But at least the most shocking thing to me is that, after all we have been through, the firefighters still want their fourth fire station.
“At what point does the city and university, instead of putting on more bandaids, take a look at the resources that they need,” he continued. “My point has been the fire department has done the best that they can up to a certain point to provide excellent service, and the university has done the same, why do we want to lower any of those standards?”
“I know the budget thing has been trouble, but that appears to be making a change in a different direction, at what point will the city and university decide it’s time to start investing?”
Mayor Krovoza was pointed but perhaps too nice. Mayor Joe Krovoza said that the four recommendations are “trust building between the two communities that we have to get through before we talk about more. I can’t go to the community and say that we need a fourth fire station and we need more resources when we haven’t done the boundary drop to show that we have the most efficient system between two organizations.”
“I can’t go to the community, I won’t go to the community and say we need more resources when we haven’t done everything we can to think about whether we have a smart management structure that integrates the two systems,” he added.
He argued that we cannot address those kinds of questions until we show the community that we’re running the most coordinated and efficient system that we can.
In fact, had I decided to speak at that moment I would have been far more pointed. I would have asked why the firefighters thought they alone were special. Why they believed everyone else in the city, and indeed the state, were having to take cuts in terms of compensation and personnel and supplies, but not them.
I would have asked why they felt that they could hold out on taking the same deal as everyone else in the city and then, when it comes time to talk about personnel changes, they can argue against that as well.
Do they really not realize how close this city really did come to bankruptcy? And while the state has finally moved out of the deep red hole that they were in, that is because they had multiple years of cutting double-digit billions from the budget – and the city hasn’t made their huge cuts just yet, so that we can deal with the bloated retirement system that the firefighters played a huge role in creating.
If people want to defend the union leadership as doing their job, that’s fine. They are entitled to fight for their membership, but that certainly does not make them any less out to lunch about the budget realities. It is just that usually these conversations take place behind closed doors and, thanks to this roundtable, we got to see it in all its glory.
The council has done the right thing here, and in a month or so will do the right thing by finally reducing the number of personnel on an engine to be in line with 90 to 95% of the rest of the state.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Maybe if we weren’t paying $100,000 per year for each employee, we would be able to afford expansion of the department. Right now, we seem to be forced to spread our resources as far as possible.
[i]Apparently, Captain Tenney is unaware of September 15, 2008 when the world’s financial systems almost collapsed leading to severe budget shortfalls for municipalities.[/i]
David, I appreciate this point and the final related points you make. They are the same fundamental problem that I have with unions. By design, unions pursue their interests selfishly. They frequently exhibit behaviors that are anti-Darwinist… the Hostess collapse is a perfect example. They are a form of semi-managed anarchy… where the members are the underdogs… the Davids against the Goliaths… the victims… the heroes… the ____ (fill in the blank from our country’s PC-correct, media-driven, pop-culture mythology).
The fact is that is not the union member’s fault. They are simply pursuing their self-interests. The problem is our social and political impulses, mythologies and sensitivities that prevent us from addressing the obvious problems head on.
It is not personal. It is just math. Those that keep making it into a personal thing are not helping.
[i]”They are the same fundamental problem that I have with unions. By design, unions pursue their interests selfishly.”[/i]
In most endeavors, most people, in a union or not, consciously or not, pursue their interests selfishly.
In a reasonably well-functioning market, this is not a problem. The workers ask for all they can get; the owners/managers offer as little as they can. And, most of the time, they meet somewhere in the middle. In the long-run, if a union is too successful in its bargaining, and a business can no longer produce a cost-competitive product, the company will collapse or most of the union’s jobs will be lost. We see this over and over where industrial unions have destroyed companies, and that allows new (non-union) competitors to win market share and become dominant players.
The great problem with public employee unions is that they not only don’t operate in a well-functioning market, they have worked tirelessly to corrupt politicians in order to benefit themselves.* It takes a lot longer, but Californians who vote for these corrupt pols are soon going to realize, as most cities and counties go bankrupt, that this corruption cannot last forever.
In Davis, I think most (but not all) of the members of our current city council are not corrupt. This is the first time since the late 1990s that has been the case.
*This same problem of corrution exists with so-called trade unions. No one would ever hire these guys on the terms they get to build public works projects, like schools or roads or water systems, if the law did not force the employers’ hand, by eliminating all labor competition.
[i]”In Davis, I think most (but not all) of the members of our current city council are not corrupt.”[/i]
I should explain ‘but not all.’
No one on this council has taken any money (as far as I know) from any City employees. However, some members of this council have great ambition for higher office. In our region, an ambitious pol has to be on good terms with the active public employee unions who own and operate the Democratic Party.
The most important union, by a long way, is the teachers union. It’s not just the DTA, but the larger statewise CTA. But other unions are very important, too, and they talk with each other all the time. So for an ambitious Democrat, he risks a lot if the CPF or the CCPOA or the Plumbers & Pipefitters, etc., thinks he is too honest, meaning someone who cannot be controlled like a puppet.
Even though Local 3494, the firefighters union, has lost a lot of its ability to control our city council in the last 4 years*, the ambitious Democrats on our council have very good reason to publicly make it appear that they are fully on board with that union. Listen to their rhetoric when they talk about that union (in public) and blow smoke up Bobby Weist’s tushy: “I share the concerns our exceedingly brave and heroic firefighters have expressed here at this table tonight. I admire their courage. None of us would want to see the things they have to see every day. We are lucky to have Capt. Weist. He is a hero. He is our lord and savior. Blah, f#cking, Blah, blah.”
*Largely because Weist greatly overplayed his hand and it became widely evident that he had corrupted members of the city council, no one running can win if they accept firefighter money.
I agree Rich……nothing wrong with wanting higher office as long as you keep ideals at every level…..
It was apparent to me watching the Tues night roundtable that two members of the CC were solicitous of the FF union and their comments. Seemed very awkward and transparent to me…..
“In Davis, I think most (but not all) of the members of our current city council are not corrupt. This is the first time since the late 1990s that has been the case. “
I think corrupt is too strong a word. I don’t think any of the current council is “corrupt.”
[i]Listen to their rhetoric when they talk about that union[/i]
I agree, but I think there is another driver for this… it is media-driven public opinion that makes out public safety, teachers, nurses, and a few other unionized labor roles as some protected class of people.
So, our politicians are also motivated to stick to their friendly and supportive public rhetoric out of fear of repercussions from a media and public that would crucify them for being mean to these mythological employee heroes. Governor Arnold learned about this early in his job and never challenged them again.
Let me use an example… I have employees working with deadlines, stress, complexity, and difficulty… they are often working with very unsophisticated small business owners… often a family-owned business, with owners that speak poor English. Even though they require a college degree and seven-ten years of work experience before they qualify for the job, the total compensation for my employees is about what a teacher makes. They certainly make a lot less than a firefighter or nurse. My employees do heroes’ work on a regular basis. Yet, how would the media and public respond if I had to lay employees off our cut their pay or benefits? Crickets….
The employees working in these union jobs should be no more worthy of praise and protection than many other employees that get zero attention. But, for some reason the public gets all protective of these public sector union jobs even as they bankrupt our cities, and cause our healthcare costs to skyrocket. Does anybody know why?
Which CC were overly friendly?
David wrote:
> I think corrupt is too strong a word. I don’t think
> any of the current council is “corrupt.”
I think this has to do with how you define “corrupt”…
It is perfectly “legal” to take thousands from a union and give them millions in pay increases (like almost every Republican AND Democrat in Sacramento does with the prison guards union), some think this is “fine” while others think it is “corrupt”.
I was very involved with politics (working for Democrats, Republicans and even a Libertarian) when I was younger. Like I was bummed to find out that close to 100% of pro athletes “cheat” using performance enhancing drugs I was also bummed to find out that close to 100% of politicians who are in it to keep running for higher office and make a career out it are “corrupt” (as I define it in that they give special favors to the people that give them money and put the interests of big donors in front of the voters as much as they can)…
“It is perfectly “legal” to take thousands from a union…”
But again, I point out, no one on the council has taken anything from the union.