The PowerPoint slide said that the city’s street PCI (Pavement Condition Index) was “nearing danger level.” City Manager Pinkerton did not shirk from that description, saying that the pavement index was “reaching crisis level.”
Neither did interim Public Works Director Bob Clarke minimize the situation, calling it “a significant challenge” and saying we need to find a “reasonable balance of pavement maintenance that we have a reasonable chance of funding.”
City to Display Commitment to Economic and High Tech Development – The City of Davis signaled that it was serious in its efforts to develop a high-tech and university research spin-off base, by partnering with techDavis to bring in Rob White as the city’s first Chief Innovation Officer.
Now the city wishes to put these assets to work this week, as representatives from the City of Davis, Davis Chamber of Commerce, techDAVIS, UC Davis, Yolo County, and the Davis business community will be spending time in Washington, DC, starting Wed, April 10 through Wed, April 17. This trip is planned as part of the annual Sacramento Metro Chamber’s Capitol to Capitol trip that occurs each April.
When the Davis City Council delayed the decision to go forward with fire staffing changes recommended by former interim Chief Scott Kenley, several members both publicly and in private suggested that putting the fire issue into the broader budgetary context would be the way to go.
While the newly-presented budget, agendized for tonight at the city council meeting, turns up the heat, assuming the savings from both fire staffing changes as well as concessions during the collective bargaining process, the fear has been that giving the firefighters another three to four months to organize would be a huge risk.
The city faces a monumental task of figuring out how to deal with an impending road pavement crisis, within the current limitations of the budget. In addition to a discussion of the budget this week, the council will receive a presentation, along with an action plan, on pavement management.
The current budget only calls for $2.3 million to put toward street maintenance, and $1 million of that is the money budgeted from last year that was carried over from last year.
A reader made the flippant remark that at least we’re not Stockton, and as Stockton continues to struggle with bankruptcy and getting themselves out of debt and obligations, we are quite fortunate. But for most places this side of Stockton, the news coming out this week is not good.
Somehow, approaching the five-year mark of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the city of Davis is still churning a not-so-insignificant $2 million deficit, which represents about 4.7 percent of the budget.
As the city manager describes in his first budget preview for the 2013-14 fiscal year, “There are both challenges and opportunities ahead as the City prepares its FY 2013/14 budget.”
Upon perusing the budget and the series of challenges, one quickly assesses that the city manager is actually putting a positive spin here. While there are positives in terms of the savings through the labor contracts, those positives are three years from being fully realized.
More than two months after the group originally filed the lawsuit in Yolo Superior Court, the first amended complaint was finally served on the city late on Thursday. Michael Harrington, a former councilmember and the attorney filing the suit, repeated claims of strategic considerations as reasoning for the delay in service.
The lack of serving the lawsuit led critics of Mr. Harrington and his suit to assert that the Vanguard should not cover the suit until it was served on the city. While the Vanguard can understand the sentiment, our belief has been that a lawsuit filed, and amended, against the city is news and it should be covered as such.
The Vanguard learned early on Thursday that the city was finally served with a lawsuit originally filed on January 31, 2013, with an amended complaint filed on March 29, 2013, by the Yolo Ratepayers for Affordable Public Utility Services.
In addition to the previous contention that the Prop. 218 process was unconstitutional under the provision’s proportionality clause, and the continued charge that the city has failed to pay for its own water use, the suit claims that in May of 2008, when the city established wastewater rates based on a “winter water usage” calculation, the rates established were “not rationally related to the amount of wastewater used by a particular property owner.”
On Monday, a federal judge allowed Stockton’s bankruptcy to go forward, but most people agree that the fight is not over and the end game could see the US Supreme Court weigh in on the issue of how bankrupt cities are able to deal with their pension liability.
Assured Guaranty, the city’s bond insurer, has argued that the city of Stockton has failed to renegotiate its pension debt with CalPERS (California Public Employees’ Retirement System), unlike with all other creditors with whom the city has been working to restructure debts, and in some cases, make just partial repayments.
After a period of silence following the setback in the Measure I election on March 5, it appears that the opposition will go forward after all, as Michael Harrington has filed an amended complaint and says he intends to serve the city this week. We will find out if that is the case shortly enough.
Clearly, Mr. Harrington believes he is onto something here. The amended suit alleges that the city of Davis is owed a substantial sum of money by the county because of the successful 2008 Prop 218 challenge by El Macero.
At last week’s Davis City Council meeting, the city proudly introduced its brand new Chief Innovation Officer, Rob White, who has been recruited in large part to help with Davis’ economic development plan to bring in high tech and other research spin-offs.
The position is an innovative private-public partnership, funded in part through the non-profit, techDavis.
In yesterday’s local newspaper, local business owner Alzada Knickerbocker, citing a recent National Federation of Independent Business/California study on the impact of AB 10, which would increase California’s minimum wage to $9.25 per hour in the next three years, argued that the effect of raising minimum wage would be the loss of jobs and economic productivity in the state.
“It doesn’t make sense. Jobs are the need. Why is the state leading with a proposal that will kill jobs?” she writes. “I own an independent bookstore – The Avid Reader, in downtown Davis. I’ve been here 26 years. I have eight employees – four full-time, four part-time. Half are long-term staff and half are recent hires. Because I need staff with knowledge and work experience, my new hires are compensated above the minimum wage.”
Just when it seemed that the Measure I campaign was over and that the lawsuit would expire due to lack of service to the city, Michael Harrington, on behalf of John Munn and the group Yolo Ratepayers For Affordable Public Utility Services (YRAPUS), has filed an amended complaint, bringing forth new allegations.
In addition to the previous contention that the Prop. 218 process was unconstitutional under the provision’s proportionality clause, and the continued charge that the city has failed to pay for its own water use, the suit claims that in May of 2008, when the city established wastewater rates based on a “winter water usage” calculation, the rates established were “not rationally related to the amount of wastewater used by a particular property owner.”
It is very evident, and understandable, that the public would be fatigued on the water issue. After all, not only did we just have an election that ended less than four weeks ago, we had a long run up to that election, with extensive discussion in the fall of 2011 with regard to the referendum and a year-long discussion of the Water Advisory Committee and their findings.
However, I wish the public would engage for a bit longer and ask some tougher questions on wastewater. It may be that, at the end of asking these tough questions, we end up in the same place, but at least the deal will have been scrutinized.
A report from Ed Mendel from last week’s CalPERS (California Public Employees’ Retirement System) board meeting indicates that the board tentatively approved an employer rate hike of about 50 percent over the next six years. This will replace the current policy which kept rates low during the recession, building up unfunded liabilities in hopes that the plan could be fully funded within 30 years.
“Any addition to the schools (rate) is likely to result in layoffs to employees,” said the board president Rob Feckner. Mr. Feckner requested options for a longer time horizon for phasing in the rate increase, which would soften the blow to employers.
From the City of Milpitas comes the story of the Milpitas Fire Department which will now lose jobs after the union rejected the staff-ratio proposal.
“A plan to avert four firefighters’ layoffs by dipping into city reserves to cover overtime costs within Milpitas Fire Department was rejected on Monday by the Milpitas International Association of Firefighters Local 1699,” said a news report from the Milpitas Post re-published in the San Jose Mercury.
On Tuesday, the Vanguard responded to a letter to the editor that argued against former Interim Chief Scott Kenley’s recommendation to reduce the on-duty fire personnel from 12 to 11.
In response to that article, one poster, likely a former firefighter argued, “Read it here on your blog, firefighters give back money over a 3 year period, adding up to $850,000.00 dollars, I see no mention of this in your blog today, all I see is your usual Vendetta talking of the firefighters.”
If Tuesday night is the final tale on the epic surface water project – a project the Vanguard has been covering since our inception back in 2006 – the ending is anticlimactic. The steam was clearly taken out of the opposition during the March 5, 2013, vote that gave Measure I a narrow but decisive victory.
Tuesday night’s Prop. 218 hearing, in which the public, mainly the ratepayers, were allowed to register their opposition to proposed rate hikes, constituted merely a murmur of protest.
by Dan Wolk and Rochelle Swanson
At this Tuesday’s City Council meeting staff is recommending that the council disband the Water Advisory Committee (WAC). They argue that “the work of the Water Advisory Committee has reached a conclusion,” and that the Council should form a broader “Utility Rate Advisory Committee (URAC)” to advise on all utilities – not just water.
As the two Councilmembers who led the community in forming the WAC, we have some concerns about this proposal. We formed the WAC for two main reasons: (1) to provide independent, expert oversight of the city’s effort to obtain surface water, and (2) to provide a public forum for its discussion.
Last week, Davis Enterprise columnist Rich Rifkin took a volatile situation, disagreement over fire staffing and, pardon the pun, threw rhetorical gasoline on the fire.
His column lead with: “Stupidity. Corruption. Fear. Take your pick. One or more of those explains why the Davis City Council, when given the choice between a more expensive option that provides worse service and a less expensive structure that promises better outcomes, chose last week to stick with what we now have – the costlier, inferior model.”
