Budget/Fiscal

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.

Vanguard Analysis Demonstrates that Public Safety Was Sacrificed in An Effort to Show Necessity of Fourth Fire Station – On Tuesday night, the Davis City Council will hear yet another iteration of the fire staffing report.  This time, it will be in the framework of a broader budgetary discussion.

The Davis firefighters are organizing some in the community around the idea that reductions in staffing from 12 to 11 will risk public safety by increasing response times and delaying entry into buildings that are on fire.

By Rochelle Swanson and Rob White

April 25, 2012 (Davis, CA) – It has been about a week since we returned from Washington DC and the Davis/Yolo County legislative advocacy trip that was done in conjunction with the Sacramento Metro Chamber’s 2013 Capitol-to-Capitol program.  Portions of the team have met up to debrief and work on sorting through the long list of potential action items that came from the trip and team meetings are scheduled for the weeks to come.  Thank you letters have been started, follow-up calls have been made, and strategy sessions have been calendared.

It is important that we take time up front to thank the people that invested their time and effort to make this a reality.  As you may remember from earlier posts, the representatives that were part of the Davis/Yolo County team that went out in advance of the Cap-to-Cap program included officials from the City of Davis, Yolo County, Davis businesses, Davis Chamber of Commerce, and UC Davis.  Everyone on the team paid some part of the trip out of their own funds, and some paid for the entire trip on their own.  That is a testament to the engagement by the team and the importance of our efforts.  Additionally, the team members spent many late hours and very early mornings before the trip preparing briefing papers, working on handouts, and identifying some of the key policy areas that are important to the Davis and Yolo communities.

According to new data that the Vanguard has received from the city of Davis, a comparison of Davis to ten other regional communities plus UC Davis found that the city of Davis firefighters received, both in salary and total compensation, more than all but two other communities (Fairfield and Vacaville), while their police counterparts received less than both average and median income and total compensation.  Only Sacramento and West Sacramento police received less among cities.

These data continue a trend that the Vanguard has reported on since the seminal May 2009 article that asked, “Why Do Firefighters Make Substantially More Than Police Officers in Davis?“

On Friday the Vanguard covered a story developing in Los Angeles where the fire chief has made the controversial proposal of transferring firefighters to work on ambulances, given the changing needs of the fire station.

This week, Los Angeles’ fire chief, Brian Cummings, rocked the world with the announcement that he is planning to “reassign dozens of firefighters from engines to rescue ambulances beginning next month to handle an increase in medical emergencies,” according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

The Davis firefighters’ union, in a recent video, touts the fact that they get 4500 calls for service in a given year.  What they fail to differentiate is how many of those calls for service are fire versus medical.  The reality is that, from almost all municipalities, firefighters these days primarily deliver paramedic rather than firefighting services.

Amid the calls for reform in the wake of the city’s ongoing budget crisis has been a call to re-examine whether bringing a fire engine, fully loaded with firefighting equipment with four firefighters, is the most efficient, the most cost-effective, or the best practice for public safety.

During the long and protracted debate over the surface water project, one of the chief concerns of most – regardless of which side of the issue they found themselves on – was the cost of the water project and the impact on water rates.

While Measure I passed by a 54-46 margin in early March, the Woodland-Davis Clean Water Agency has continued its efforts, post-election, to reduce costs overall to the project, with the hope that it will reduce the need for water rate increases.

By Councilmember Rochelle Swanson

April 18, 2012 (Davis, CA) – I am writing this recap one day later than I wanted to because yesterday was such a long day.  Wednesday was absolutely dual-purpose, with appointments in the morning and then travel back home for the majority of us.  Details about appointments that I attended are below, but let me start by saying that due to weather and higher security concerns, travel back to Davis was extremely difficult.  Many of us were completely rerouted and spent many additional hours in airports across the country, arriving at Sacramento International Airport in the very wee hours of the morning.  Some even got delayed overnight and came in this morning! I personally spent numerous hours in Dallas waiting on my connection flight and landed at about 3 am this morning. All said, it was a hard travel day!

Now for the meetings that we had yesterday (Wednesday) morning.  These were extremely positive meetings, really capping off the whole effort.

By Councilmember Rochelle Swanson

April 16, 2012 (Washington DC) – Today was the longest of the days we have experienced so far. Some of us had appointments starting at 8 am, which means we had to be at the Capitol and congressional office buildings by 7 am to ensure we could get through security.  And security was most certainly heightened at all of the DC office buildings due to the tragic events in Boston yesterday, making for long security lines and lots of waiting.

The Davis/Yolo group was again split up to be on several different Sacramento Metro Chamber Cap-to-Cap teams, including Innovation, Transportation, Flood Control, Water Resources, Food & Agriculture, and Job & Business.  Most of my time was spent on select appointments with either the Metro Chamber Leadership or the Innovation Team.

This week, the city of Vallejo, emerging from bankruptcy, is becoming the first city in the nation to allow, on a citywide basis, residents to vote on how to spend the city’s tax money.

Under Vallejo’s model of “participatory budgeting,” residents ages 16 and up can vote on how to spend about $3 million in tax money.  Residents will have an opportunity to view the ideas created by volunteer budget delegates representing a number of different committees, including education, economic development, youth and other segments of the community. Delegates worked with fellow committee members, City of Vallejo staff, city agencies, and local non-profits to determine which projects are feasible and most needed.

by Councilmember Rochelle Swanson

April 15, 2012 (Washington DC) – We were met today with the shocking and sad news today from our home about the incredible loss of two very important community members. It was hard to focus today and Joe, Lucas and I have been keeping in constant touch with Chief Black and city manager Steve Pinkerton for updates and information.

This terrible community loss was then compounded by the news from Boston.  Security in DC became very tight and they shut the park to the north of the White House.