Budget/Fiscal

Model Heavily Dependent on Water and Personnel Costs Being Properly Addressed – On Monday the city’s Finance and Budget Commission will receive the preliminary analysis of the Cannery Fiscal Model.  Staff writes, “The Cannery development is the first project to have its fiscal impacts modeled with the City’s updated Fiscal Impact model. The fiscal model attempts to create a reasonable representation of the General Fund impacts of new development.”

While acknowledging that “there is no way for a model to completely predict the future,” city staff concludes “on balance, this project would be expected to generate a positive net general fund balance at buildout.”

At Tuesday night’s Davis City Council meeting, the firefighters’ union President Bobby Weist and two other firefighters came forward to speak about their vote of no confidence against Landy Black and Steve Pierce, who have been acting as interim chiefs for the fire department as the city continues to restructure staffing and other operations.

During the course of his talk, Mr. Weist discussed his concerns about boundary drop.

In July, firefighters’ union President Bobby Weist issued an email to his membership indicating a vote of no confidence, “The firefighters in the City of Davis have no confidence in the ability of Chiefs Black and/or Pierce to carry out the Fire Department’s primary duties to the community.”

The standard view of folks who have been critical of the firefighters has been to separate the economic and fiscal impact of the firefighters from the vital service they provide.  After all, my firefighters are our heroes.  They rush into burning buildings and put their lives on the line fighting forest and brush fires.

And so for several years I bought into the idea that the problem with the firefighters is that we are paying too much compensation to them for this city to remain fiscally solvent.  Their union was able to purchase influence through their numbers and unity in supporting political candidates that would support four on an engine, 3% at 50, 36% salary increases, hiding the fire report critical of their union and their chief, and resisting most other policy reforms coming out of city hall.

Imagine that this is a private company setting and that, after a series of long negotiations, you have formed a partnership to conduct regional training.  It’s a big deal and you get to show off your company’s stuff.

However, your shift supervisor has other ideas and complains loudly and in front of the employees he supervises about this “bullshit training,” and whines that the company better buy him and his employees dinner because the training is in the evening.

Union Alleges City Disciplined Union President In Retaliation For Union Activities – The Davis Professional Firefighters Association has filed an Unfair Labor Practices Complaint against the City of Davis, noting that the two parties reached impasse in April 2013, and that the city has unilaterally initiated a performance improvement plan (PIP) for Fire Captain Robert Weist, which sets forth areas in which he needs to improve his performance within a year.

The complaint goes on to allege that the city unilaterally changed its vacation procedure, and that it did so in retaliation for lawful union representational activity.

Yesterday we highlighted four possible initiatives that could be on the ballot by June 2014.  While you may be overwhelmed at that prospect, in a way we actually underplayed our cards by looking only at four possible citizen-based ballot measures.  Again, right now, we only see the water initiative and a Cannery referendum as likely.

However, that is just the tip of the iceberg as to what faces Davis voters.  Right now, it looks like the primary battle is between Joe Krovoza and Dan Wolk – and, oh by the way, there is also Matt Pope, Anthony Farrington and Bill Dodd in that battle.

Council was impressed about the impact of the potential Cannery Park development on fire coverage.  An individual writing as Karen G asked, “Where is the fire department for this side of town?”

The individual continued, “Can someone please address how an already thinly stretched fire department is supposed to handle MORE? How are the people needing services supposed to WAIT even longer in a life threatening emergency? How is this town supposed to grow when it is having a hard time providing for itself (police, fire, schools) now?”

The projections for the city of Davis’ budget are headed in the wrong direction over the next five years and, while some of these blows are self-inflicted in the sense that the city is finally addressing their unmet needs and dealing with rising water costs, some of it is coming from the state and changes to CalPERS (California Public Employees’ Retirement System) accounting rates.

Last year, facing similar problems in San Jose, the voters overwhelmingly approved a pension reform plan and now that plan is going to be tested in court in a trial that started a few weeks ago, but has yet to receive a verdict.

The report in the California Professional Firefighters Second Quarter publication is entitled, “Davis Firefighters Battle Organized Campaign to Discredit Local.”  Ironically, the article itself is full of half-truths and distortions, with veiled and pointed attacks on many in the Davis community.

The tone gets heated from the start, referring to critics and reformers in the city of Davis as “haters.”

By Rob White

In just the last two weeks, I have had several interactions that are good examples of how broad-reaching networks can increase opportunity for additional resources. Each of these initial discussions has resulted in subsequent follow-up discussions about potential new investment and funding resources in and around Davis.

Chinese Trade and Development

The first discussion to highlight was with former City of Sacramento Council member Rob Fong, who is now the director of a newly formed nonprofit centered on increased trade relationships between the Sacramento area and Chongqing, China. The nonprofit is formally known as the California-Chongqing Trade and Commerce Organization and is focused on creating robust trade and technology development investments between the two regions.  If this sounds familiar, it is likely because his efforts were covered in the Sacramento Business Journal last week.

How much money will the holdouts of DCEA and the Davis firefighters end up costing this community?  We are now a year past the expiration of the last contracts.  All other bargaining units had reached agreement by December of 2012.

By the time the contracts are settled and impasse is imposed, it may be the end of 2013, or 18 months after the expiration of the contracts.  We could be looking at several millions of dollars in costs.  The firefighters in particular fought staffing cuts, arguing that it was not about their personal interests, but rather their commitment to the community.  Where is their commitment to the community when it comes to compensation and taking the same concessions as every other employee in the city will take?

Last week, the firefighters’ union president sent out an email outlining the union’s position of no confidence in Police Chief Landy Black and Assistant Chief Steve Pierce, who were assigned to head the fire department’s administrative operations.

“The firefighters in the City of Davis have no confidence in the ability of Chiefs Black and/or Pierce to carry out the Fire Department’s primary duties to the community,” stated Mr. Weist’s email to the firefighters’ union, under the heading of “vote of no confidence,” which was subsequently forwarded to Landy Black and Steve Pierce.

Firefighters Desperate Moves Backfire, Series of Failures Pile Up- As I exited the Council Chambers in the early morning hours of January 14, 2009, having watched the firefighters union who showed up, nearly all of them united and successful in getting the council and city staff to whitewash the fire report, it was difficult to imagine that this would be the pinnacle of their power.

Sure it was a 3-2 vote, but it was a strong and solid 3-2 vote as it would be at the end of that year when the council by the same vote approved the 2009 MOUs.  Union President Bobby Weist in 2009 was arguably the most power political figure in the city of Davis – inspiring fear and respect.

Late on Tuesday night, Firefighters Union President issued an email to his membership indicated a vote of no confidence, “The firefighters in the City of Davis have no confidence in the ability of Chiefs Black and/or Pierce to carry out the Fire Department’s primary duties to the community.”

“California State Law is very clear about the required qualifications of a City Fire Chief.  Government Code section 38611 requires that a “fire department shall be under the charge of a chief who shall have had previous training and experience as a fireman,” the vote of No Confidence stated. “While Chiefs Black and Pierce are both good people – and probably excellent police administrators – neither have had any previous training or experience as firefighters.”

Former Interim Chief Tasked with Overseeing Merger and Developing New Fire Station – The city is bringing back former Interim Fire Chief Scott Kenley “to work on a special Fire project,” according to a Memorandum from City Manager Steve Pinkerton to the City Council dated July 12, 2013.

Mr. Kenley, who served as interim fire chief until his time ran out and drafted the fire report that recommended sweeping changes such as boundary drop and the fire staffing change, will report directly to City Manager Steve Pinkerton, working out of an office located at the Police Department.

City officials said at the recent budget item during the Davis City Council meeting that they expect the contract situation for the two holdout bargaining units – the firefighters and DCEA – will resolve themselves within four months.  As the time ticks down on the city imposing the last, best and final offer, rumors are starting to fly.

On Friday, the Vanguard received an anonymous email: “Members of DCEA are claiming that they have been told by the city that the city is hiring lawyers to help them get out of the ‘Me Too’ clause in several of the other bargaining groups’ contracts. They are saying that that the City has informed them there is a loophole in the clause that the groups are not aware of and that DCEA is going to get a much better deal than the other groups who cooperated.”

by Rob White

I was privileged to be part of several exciting activities this week, which put the City of Davis (and UC Davis by proxy) right in the middle of discussions on advanced manufacturing and sustainability.

The first activity was a two-day series of Congressional and federal agency briefings on the state-wide collaborative partnership known as the California Network for Manufacturing Innovation (CNMI). It is a nascent organization made up of California-based organizations including the federal labs, MEPs (a federally funded manufacturing assistance program), universities and community colleges, municipalities and economic development organizations (including the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development [GO-Biz]).

When the Davis City Council unanimously passed the budget on Tuesday night, they included for the first time funding that would allow the city to actualize the move of the fire station from Fifth Street to a still unknown location in North Davis.  In the process, they provide clarification to the issue of STEAC’s location at the corner of 5^th and D as well as concerns about the impact of the Fifth Street Redesign on the ability of fire engines to gain access to the road.

The council on Tuesday voted to add $2.3 million to the Fire Station Relocation Project, which will be funded by public safety impact fees.