Budget/Fiscal

COMMENTARY – On Tuesday, the Davis City Council fixed the most glaring and immediate problem facing them – they shifted course, really without much incident, to support a binding resolution similar to one the Vanguard suggested, giving the council the authority to move forward with a yes vote and binding it to not move forward with a no vote.

One problem was therefore solved on Tuesday night.  But the proceedings will, if anything, complicate matters down the road, as it is quite clear that council was forced to move forward despite all indications that they were really not ready.

The council was out of time if they wanted the measure on the March 2013 ballot.  Staff argued, at least persuasively enough, despite the fact that there was no cost-sharing agreement with Woodland and no rate recommendations from the Water Advisory Committee, that another delay in the election would not only likely spell the end of the partnership with Woodland, but delay the project by another year.

The result of that uncertainty pushed the council forward.  It was clear from the start that the council would go to binding language.  Brett Lee asked for language that would simply authorize the council to move forward with the project with few specifics in the actual ballot language.  However, the city would be tied to the agreed-upon rates that would concurrently be approved through the Prop 218 process.

COMMENTARY – On Sunday the Vanguard had the privilege of sitting down with Councilmembers Dan Wolk and Rochelle Swanson.  Both of them were very clear in their belief that a binding vote was the right thing to do, and that they wanted the election in March to be on the merits of the project and not on process.

In a move believed to be unprecedented, Yolo County Superior Court Judge Stephen Mock has ordered the Davis Professional Firefighters Association to pay $23,345 in attorney fees, based on the union’s intervention into the Vanguard‘s successful lawsuit against the city of Davis to compel the city to release more of the still heavily-redacted 2008 Davis Fire Report.

It is quite clear there are still critical details of the water project that need to be decided.  However, if the council wishes to place a measure on next March’s ballot, then it must finalize wording for that measure on Tuesday in order to be able to send it to the county for approval and ballot preparation.

With questions such as rate structure and even ballot measure type (advisory or binding) still up in the air, the real question may be why are we dead set on a March election?

by Matt Williams 

GUEST COMMENTARY – First, the customary disclaimer.  The author is a member of the Water Advisory Committee (WAC), but the opinions herein are his own and not those of the WAC.

As Council, Staff and the WAC have wended their respective ways through the last 10 months of the water system decision process, there have been a couple of situations where the WAC recommendation to Council and the Staff Report recommendation to Council have been at odds with one another.  Until the events of last Tuesday night, in each case Council chose to defuse that WAC/Staff disagreement by returning the issue to the WAC for further consideration, where an updated recommendation was hammered out that both Staff and the WAC could support.  In each case where Council followed that process, a good result happened.

COMMENTARY – Council Commits to Woodland-Davis Project.  The big news on Tuesday night was not that the Davis City Council committed to the Woodland-Davis project, which has long been a done deal despite the efforts of at least one councilmember to preserve the West Sacramento option as long as possible.

That the decision was unanimous might be mildly surprising, but the big news was the decision by the council to capitulate to legal counsel on the critical issue of the advisory versus binding vote.

Commentary and Analysis – If you found yourself believing perhaps that the city of Davis was moving too fast to end the WAC process, you are probably not alone.  But time was running out for the self-imposed deadline to put the measure on the ballot.

So here were are – the WAC has finished their job, for the most part, and will plop this project, the mess, the headaches, in the lap of the Davis City Council, who now has to convince the voters that this is the right way to go.

On Monday, the Vanguard published analysis from water attorney Kelly Salt with the Best, Best and Krieger law firm, who reviewed the proposed rate structure from Frank Loge and Matt Williams which would rely on previous water usage as the fixed cost rather than the meter size.

While Ms. Salt saw some issues that needed to be potentially addressed if the WAC moves forward with this plan, she ultimately thought this could work.

Last month, an article ran on an innovative new rate structure proposed by WAC member Frank Loge and alternate member Matt Williams, who have come up with “a proportional fixed-fee structure based on water consumption history that could balance water bills in Davis” – a system that has never been tried before in California.

Reported the Davis Enterprise: “Like many public agencies in the state, Davis uses a tiered water rate structure where customers pay a fixed rate based on the size of their water meter and then a variable rate based on how much water they use.”

Mayor Krovoza Continues to Downplay the Possibility of a West Sacramento Water Deal – Last week as the Vanguard reported, even in the midst of its article where Mayor Joe Krovoza closed the door to the West Sacramento option, his colleague, Councilmember Brett Lee, thinks it is too soon to close the door completely.

Brett Lee went about proving it up – meeting with West Sacramento on Thursday, along with Mayor Krovoza, and emerging with a new offer as he reported to the WAC on Thursday night.