Budget/Fiscal

Council Makes the Tough Call But This is a Bittersweet Day At Best – It was not quite as dramatic as the scene three weeks ago when the Davis City Council voted in a contested 3-2 vote to reduce fire staffing – an issue we have been touting for five years now.  Instead, it was a 5-0 vote with little fanfare, relatively late in the evening but not absurdly so, and that fixed a vexing problem we have been covering since February of 2009 – roads.

Those who do not want to read about the past, avert your eyes, because we need to ask this critical question – what if the council had acted with the vigor and resolve we saw from this council on Tuesday night in dealing with the pavement issue head on back in 2009, when Bob Clarke first sounded the alarm on the issue – back when it was believed we could deal with the problem by pumping in a mere few million per year?

When the city of Davis originally entered into a contract with their professional labor negotiator on December 6, 2011, the contract with Renne Sloan Holtzman Sakai, LLP, authorizes negotiator Tim Yeung to serve as chief labor negotiator  to provide labor negotiation services for the labor negotiations with all the employee groups.  It was originally set at $50,000.

It seemed a small price to pay for a professional negotiator in what figured to be a challenging round of negotiations, as the city would be looking to make major reforms to things like pensions, retiree health care, and cafeteria cash outs.

Yesterday, we responded to the op-ed by Glen Byrns, the Davis resident who recounted his story about the garage fire.

“There’s been a lot of talk about reducing staffing levels for the Fire Department. During the discussion, it was often mentioned that Davis doesn’t get a lot of fires, as fire calls apparently amount to 1 percent of the call volume,” Mr. Byrns writes. “Well, here I am, the 1 percent. The 1 percent who always thought of firefighters as a group of people who live down the street from me and are there for other people.”

If you thought the fire issue was put to rest with the 3-2 vote a few days ago, you would be incorrect.  In today’s Enterprise, Glen Byrns, a Davis resident, writes in to argue that, while there may be few fire calls, he was one of them.

“There’s been a lot of talk about reducing staffing levels for the Fire Department. During the discussion, it was often mentioned that Davis doesn’t get a lot of fires, as fire calls apparently amount to 1 percent of the call volume,” Mr. Byrns writes. “Well, here I am, the 1 percent. The 1 percent who always thought of firefighters as a group of people who live down the street from me and are there for other people.”

It was only a matter of time as the city found out the bad news back in February, that it would have to spend a huge amount of money on roads if it wished to avoid a prognosis of failed roads within thirty years with a price tag of 444 million dollars.  However, the abstract is still the abstract, and until now we have not seen the specifics of what roads will cost us now.

Staff recommends four components to the roads plan.  First, that the council approve the funding and budget strategy for pavement maintenance, in concept, for the multi-year period.  Second, staff would be directed to proceed with the first year, planning the project, obtaining a design consultant and a public outreach consultant.

by Rob White

Over the last few weeks I have spent much of my time talking with Davis businesses and community leaders about their views on the City, the university, and the role that each of these play in the region.  It has been informative and interesting, especially as a relative newcomer.

Some of the thoughts expressed appear to be based on activities that occurred years (and sometimes decades) ago. Some of the impressions are from more recent examples. But in the midst of almost every discussion was a common theme that Davis should receive more recognition for the leadership it has provided in such areas as sustainability, technology research, agricultural conservation, and community involvement. Digging a little deeper in to the conversation, you also hear themes about Davis that clearly set it apart from most communities due to its quality of life.

During last week’s budget discussion,  City Manager Steve Pinkerton and Mayor Joe Krovoza laid out the bleak fiscal picture facing the city.  The question from the audience came almost immediately: given the limits of revenue enhancement and cost-cutting, is growth the only way out of this?

In the short term, the answer is that growth is not going to make much difference either way.  The city is primarily going to have to cut spending, they may be able to pass some limited revenue measures, but most of the heavy lifting has to be on the spending side.

I was reading Rich Rifkin’s column on the fire staffing vote from a week ago this past Tuesday, and he argues that he was not surprised by the vote of Councilmembers Dan Wolk and Lucas Frerichs on the fire staffing vote.

He noted that in his March 13 column he had written, “It is clear, when listening to Dan Wolk and Lucas Frerichs, both ambitious young Democrats, that they are willing to bend over backwards to not come across as anti-union. They know that label could imperil their futures in higher office.”

by Rob White

I was recently challenged to describe why innovation is so important. And more specifically, why does this matter to Davis and its efforts around strengthening its economic prosperity and quality of life.

These are excellent questions. And though I can quickly come up with many singular answers, let me quote three paragraphs from a study done by Collaborative Economics in September 2008, titled “The Innovation Driven Economic Development Model” (page 9).

Part One – Overview of the Current Problem and Challenges – It was a small but intimate setting on what turned out to be a rainy Monday. Mayor Joe Krovoza and City Manager Steve Pinkerton came before between 20 and 25 members of the public at the Avid Reader to discuss the past, present and future of the budget.

Mayor Joe Krovoza said that their goal was to avoid the kind of sterile public budget workshops in “unattractive community buildings” with “public attendance almost non-existent” and welcomed the more friendly and intimate setting of the Avid Reader.

The city of Davis announced formally that in conjunction with new water rates, which take effect this month, the city of Davis “has introduced a Water Assistance Program to help low income homeowners offset water costs.”

It is not a huge discount, and only a small number of people would be initially impacted by what could be called a pilot project.  According to the release, “The first 250 eligible homeowners to apply for the program, will receive a $5 discount on their water bill every month.”

It is hard to call something easy that was a five-year battle and took six months after the audit report came out, but in a way it is.  The savings of nearly half a million dollars was already factored into the current budget that will be due by the end of this month.  The heavy lifting is yet to come.

Tonight from 7:30 to 9 pm at the Avid Reader will be Mayor Joe Krovoza and City Manager Steve Pinkerton addressing “the city’s sources of income and expense, the costs that are fixed and those that are flexible, as well as the city’s ongoing liabilities.”

The Davis Enterprise, in their Sunday column, praised the actions of the Davis City Council, writing, “Despite protestations that Davis’ public safety will be compromised, a majority of the Davis City Council took a courageous stand Tuesday and voted to adopt a new fire staffing model.”  They argue, “Money-saving change will not jeopardize public safety.”

“Currently, each of the city’s three fire stations is staffed with four firefighters per shift. Under the new, more flexible configuration, three firefighters will man each station – in Central, West and South Davis – and a second, two-person crew will staff a rescue truck stationed downtown that will serve as an emergency rover,” the paper writes, adding, “While all concerned acknowledge that four firefighters are better than three, this configuration actually will provide more stable emergency service throughout Davis.”

The council cast their 3-2 vote on Tuesday, but it is clear that the war is not over on the issue of fire staffing.  In a piece co-authored by Alan Fernandes, Lori Duisenberg, Gina Nunes and Sean Cowan, “We value our firefighters” they write, “Every time we hear the wail of a siren, or jog past the fire station, or hear news of a local tragedy; we are thankful for our first responders, and in particular the firefighters in Davis.”

The reality is that no one thinks otherwise in this community.  The three councilmembers who cast the deciding votes on Tuesday all took time to praise the firefighters.  It was Councilmember Rochelle Swanson, however, who admonished the opposition that, just because people are not favoring the status quo does not mean they are anti-firefighter.

There was a moment on Tuesday night when Davis Fire Captain Joe Tenney was expressing his frustration that there were people “telling us how the fire department should be run.”  He added, “It would be nicer if there was a fire chief who was vested, you know actually committed to being here for five or ten years to actually put together a professional program.”

“We have experts, those who have been doing it for 20, 25, 30 years,” he said.  “They are the experts, the experts are those who have been here tonight that are doing it every day.  And it doesn’t match up.  We can see between the lines of the information that’s been given.”

If it seems like I have been fighting this battle for a long time, it is because I have.  It was nearly five years ago, that I realized, despite the justifications for four on an engine, most fire stations have three on an engine.  While it is true that they have more fire stations than Davis, it is also true that Davis has one of the fewest calls for service per capita of comparable communities.

Couple that information with the asset that we have at UC Davis, and suddenly we have a no-brainer.  While I disagree with the council on a number of their points of justification, I understand that, unlike them, I am not running for political office and I can say this: the current system makes little sense from a public safety standpoint, and looking at a map makes it clear we need to move the central fire station.

Nearly six months after Chief Scott Kenley’s  audit report recommended the city move from four on an engine down to three, the Davis City Council voted by a 3-2 margin to reduce overall staffing to 11 firefighters while looking at either moving or adding a fire station in northern Davis to better align the city’s resources.

Councilmember Brett Lee moved the staff report.  His motion was seconded by Councilmember Rochelle Swanson who stipulated that her support was conditioned on approval of a friendly amendment that would call for the city to either move the central fire station to the northeast of central Davis or add one in the future.

Fire Policies Aimed at Fourth Fire Station Endangered the Public – It was not a complete shock when yesterday’s column on fire staffing and calls for service was met with a post by a retired firefighter that represented a veiled threat to myself and the Vanguard.  After all, it was the summer of 2011 when the Vanguard learned that the firefighters were boycotting the Westlake Market due to their advertising on the Vanguard.

In 2008 when I spoke out against the firefighters during the city council campaign, my wife, who was running for council at the time, dared to call 3% at 50 unsustainable.  The union president, Bobby Weist, we would learn, responded by trying to get my wife and some others fired from their jobs.

Yesterday’s article laid critical groundwork arguing for the moving of the central fire station, north from its current location on Fifth Street to Covell Blvd., to take advantage of the city-UC Davis agreement to drop boundaries between the two departments.

As we showed yesterday, by enacting boundary drop, UC Davis’ fire station could serve much of the core area within a four-minute travel time.  By moving the existing Davis fire station northward, it would be able to cover northern Davis, including Wildhorse Ranch, within existing response time parameters.