Budget/Fiscal

Perhaps the Davis Enterprise on Sunday buried their lead – leading with tier praise for the city…

On November 26, 2013, the factfinder appointed to hear the labor dispute between the City and the…

The Davis City Council addressed some of the concerns from the firefighters and their fellow councilmembers about…

On October 15, 2013, the Davis City Council voted 4-1, with Councilmember Lucas Frerichs dissenting, to enter into an agreement with UC Davis for Shared Management of the City of Davis and UC Davis Fire Departments.

Staff has now returned with the language of the agreement that is effective for one year from January 1, 2014 until December 31, 2014.  There will be an automatic renew if neither party withdraws from the agreement on or before June 30, 2014.

While many believe that Davis Mayor Pro Tem Dan Wolk is the frontrunner for the 2014 open Assembly Seat currently held by Mariko Yamada, the Wolk campaign has to thread a rather perilous needle.

On the one hand, they want to avoid the linkage between Dan Wolk and his mother, the current State Senator Lois Wolk.  But on the other hand, they need to be able to take advantage of her reputation, experience and network in order to bring in endorsements, money and ultimately votes.

On Tuesday, the Davis City Council did what they had to do, in fact they did what they were elected to do – make tough decisions with regard to the city budget.  The process is broken, it took way too long, it cost way too much money.

But there was no mistake this time – the council dotted their “i’s” and crossed their “t’s.”  There will be no 11^th hour PERB board ruling to turn this back.

The Davis firefighters’ union may have lost their influence and hold over the city government, but the power and influence that they have outside of the city boundaries was on ready display earlier this week when four current and on past elected officials co-wrote a letter to the Davis City Council filled with concerns about the proposed Fire JPA.

Unfortunately for them, they did not do their homework.  There were numerous errors in the structure and content of the letter.  The most stunning thing is that not one of those individuals met with either the city of Davis or UC Davis Vice Chancellor John Meyer to express their concerns or learn more about the process.

City Objects – Letter Contains Inaccuracies and Misinterpretations of the Proposed JPA: Tuesday was supposed to mark the meeting in which the city council would formally approve the Joint Powers Agreement for shared management services between the city of Davis and UC Davis Fire Department.  Early on Tuesday morning, the Vanguard learned that Senator Lois Wolk, Assemblymember Mariko Yamada, Supervisors Don Saylor and Jim Provenza and former Supervisor Helen Thomson wrote a letter to the Davis City Council opposing the agreement.

The letter argues, “We believe that governance of public safety is and must remain a core function of the elected City Council of Davis. Community oversight and accountability is an important element of municipal services.”

At tonight’s city council meeting, the council, following a long and tedious process, will finally hold a public hearing to make the determination as to whether they can impose their last, best and final offer to the Davis City Employees Association.

DCEA has be operating for the last two yeears under an MOU that expired in 2009, since the PERB Board overturned the city’s last imposition of last, best and final offer.

The Davis firefighters are taking a two-pronged approach to combating the proposed Joint Powers Agreement for joint management of the fire department with the UC Davis Fire Department under a single chief.  In addition to the reported distorted public signature campaign, the union is attempting to leverage the process through legal means by filing a complaint of violation of the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act (MMBA) with regard to a failure to meet and confer.

While city officials would not comment on the content, they did indicate that they believe that this is another fruitless attempt by the union to prevent the council from implementing the JPA that was agreed to in principle back in October and would be ratified in December.