Budget/Fiscal

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.

By Councilmember Rochelle Swanson

April 14, 2012 (Washington DC) – Today has been a busy day of prep as the Sacramento Metro Chamber Capitol-to-Capitol trip gets into full swing. Most of the 300+ delegates arrived yesterday (Saturday) and represent cities, counties, big and small businesses, agencies, utilities, and community leadership from the 6-county Sacramento region.

The original Davis/Yolo County team has now been split up and joined the Cap-to-Cap teams of Innovation, Flood Protection, Jobs & Business Growth, Agriculture & Food, Health Care, Education, and Transportation, among others. So to start the day, we met in our respective new teams to go over the appointment schedule and determine leads for each appointment and pertinent topics based on our issues papers generated prior to the trip.

In our current society, it is difficult to escape the fact that elections are inherently flawed mechanisms, whereas a relatively low percentage of the public will actually participate in the election by voting, a small percentage will actually be sufficiently knowledgeable about the issues to make an  informed decision – and if the split is relatively close, a very small difference in opinion will decide the election.

None of this is particularly new and we certainly knew going into the Measure I water election that the voter turnout, even in an all-mail ballot, would be quite low.

By Councilmember Rochelle Swanson

April 13, 2012 (Washington DC) – Keyword for Friday was homework! At the end of each meeting we have been asked to identify successes – “good case studies” – when we return back to Davis that demonstrate how we are excelling at cooperation. We’ve also been directed to go through the draft of the Farm Bill with a fine tooth comb and make suggestions on ways the bill can be improved to address items in Davis and Yolo County and help shape our white paper on an Innovation Accelerator Zone concept. This concept has been so well received – the US deputy chief technology officer thinks its “fantastic” and is “enthusiastic” to get more information – it is now officially an acronym! IAZ, a living laboratory to explore and best practices for leveraging investments of both financial and human capital. You heard it here first!

At the legislative briefing at Nossaman, LLP we were apprised of highlights from the President’s budget that had just been released and that could apply to directly to our region, including research investments, TIGER fund restoration, Rail Service Improvement Funds and a National Infrastructure Bank, just to name a few. In addition, they advised us of the heavy preference for Public-Private Partnerships and regional efforts required for funding and then praised us for being ahead of the game on our local practices in both these areas.

It is ironic that the firefighters chose this week, among all weeks, to launch their citizen-based astroturf front group, Friends of Davis Firefighters.  This is the week that the city manager unveiled the daunting city budget, that shows mainly bad news.

Some of the bad news is, of course, of the city’s own doing.  While the city manager projects a $6 million ongoing structural deficit by 2018, half of that, $3 million, is self-inflicted – coming from the rising costs of water due to water rate hikes.  It is of some irony that during the course of the Measure I campaign, no one effectively raised the fact that this project and its accompanying rate hikes would explode the city’s general fund deficit.

This week we saw the full wrath of the budget come back up to bite us once again.  In the city manager’s presentation, we see that the city has opened up another two million structural deficit.

But that is nothing.  Over the next five fiscal years, while revenue is expected to increase from just under 42 million dollars to just over 46 million, expenditures go up far faster, exploding from just under 44 million to 52 million.

By Councilmember Rochelle Swanson

April 12, 2012 (Washington DC) – Another full day of meetings with elected officials and agencies by the Davis/Yolo Team today. It has been a very long day, but let me tell you some highlights and I will expand on them tomorrow when I am fresh.

We started the day with a legislative briefing at Nossaman, LLP, near our hotel.  From there we went to meet with Congressman John Garamendi.  Mr. Garamendi was gracious enough to give us extra time, even though he had other meetings planned very close to ours.

When the group, Friends of Davis Firefighters sent out a press release this week, announcing that a new organization has been launched to defend the Davis firefighters and claiming, “A group of prominent Davis citizens today announced the formation of a new community group, the Friends of Davis Firefighters, to educate the community about the ongoing efforts of the Davis Fire Department to ensure the safety of the City of Davis’ 69,000 residents through its emergency and preventive services,” it was not hard to figure out the origins of the group.

After all the group’s domain name was registered to Bobby Weist, the union present and the PO Box referred to the union’s PO Box.

By Councilmember Rochelle Swanson

April 11, 2013 (Washington DC) – Today the Davis/Yolo Team spent a full day meeting with representatives from elected officials’ offices, to agencies throughout the DC area.

We were delighted to find out during our meetings today that we have arrived in DC at the peak of Cherry Blossoms Season. Several staffers in our meetings gave us the story about the cherry blossom trees in DC, and that they came from Japan during the President Grant Administration.  For an interesting story about this, search “Cherry Blossom President Grant.”

Wednesday was a travel day as the Davis Team arrived in Washington, DC.  Davis CIO Rob White described the trip as “tiring” and reported, “the team spent much of their respective plane rides strategizing and discussing the objectives of the trip.”

He remarked that the team traveled from Sacramento through Denver where the temperature was a brisk 7 degrees and landed in Washington, DC where it was a sweltering 90 degrees.  “An amazing swing in temperatures as we flew across the country.”

Should the City Pursue Participatory Budgeting? – On Tuesday night, Councilmember Lucas Frerichs noted, as the council began to ponder almost overwhelming and insurmountable budget challenges, the utter lack of public participation in the process at this point.

Councilmember Frerichs noted that he was interested in pursuing participatory budgeting.  He said that he is glad that the budget process was being engaged earlier in the cycle than it was last year when the council got the budget in June and had to act quickly to pass it before the end of the month.