As Davis continues to keep its options open, even as it was seemingly moving toward the Woodland option last month, the city of Woodland with its JPA leaders Bill Marble and Skip Davies, remain “committed to timely completion of the project.”
As they write in an op-ed over the weekend: “We must replace degrading groundwater supplies with higher-quality, treated surface water. There is simply too much at risk and no viable alternatives!”
If you have read the analysis, most are not happy with the pension reform. We can understand why, but I think the Sacramento Bee editorial nails it: “Given the political realities under California’s Capitol dome, the pension measure awaiting final action in the Legislature today is probably the best reform package that could have been achieved.”
They actually come up a bit short on that, because they forget that the courts have ruled that pensions are a vested right.
Unlike Critics Are Arguing Pension Reform Compromise Hits Most Needed Reform PointsCritics on both sides of the public pension reform debate have and will continue to attack the compromise, but the Vanguard will not be one of them. After careful analysis, the Vanguard concludes that the compromise hits on the key elements needed for pension reform while preserving the defined benefits plan.
Despite strong criticism of PERS (Public Employees’ Retirement System) and the city of Davis’ pension formulas, the Vanguard has always supported continuation of the defined benefits plan – as a system that continues to provide public employees with a secure and predictable retirement.
On August 9 of this year, William Diemer passed away at the age of 88. Among many things, he is noted for is his book about Davis, “Davis from the Inside Out,” which is an interesting almanac of Davis’ key features.
Someone dropped by with a copy of the book, copyrighted in 2000. For some reason I fixated on the youthful photo of then-Davis City Manager John Meyer, who was at the end of his rather lengthy tenure as city manager.
For a moment I have to hearken back to a Davis city council meeting from spring of 2010. The council was about to approve a one-time water rate increase. The increase was modest, but still generated anger and anxiety from a few dozen people.
This would be yet another incremental step of pushing forward the surface water project. The council had the votes to ram it through, but at the time, there were warning signs on the wall about which a responsible council would have taken better note.
If previous councils would have viewed their role as a sledgehammer or a jack hammer, this council at least in the early days looks more like a scalpel – a tool that will attempt to refine, finesse, and shape policy.
Never was that more apparent than on Tuesday night as the Davis City Council sought to smooth out language from the Water Advisory Committee’s delicate compromise recommendation – a recommendation in which even chair Elaine Roberts-Musser acknowledged the language was rough and crafted hastily and on the fly – keeping the key elements in place.
Last week the Vanguard reported on how the city came to make the decision back in 1999 to go to a four-person fire engine as a way to meet the new OSHA regulations requiring two men in and two men out in order to fight a fire.
Back in 1999, the council unanimously approved the hiring of six firefighters at the cost of 368,676 dollars. Which means at that time, total compensation for a firefighter was about 60,000 dollars a year and that figure “included the costs for turnouts, beds and lockers for the new firefighters.”
Saturday was a long and painful exercise in disconnect between the writer and his readers. I have to clearly take full responsibility, but I think people tend to read their own assumptions and beliefs into the material.
The strange part of yesterday’s discussion was that it focused on a portion of the commentary that was only setting the stage for the main point, rather than the main point itself.
Despite all of the work that the WAC had done over the last eight months, critical members of that committee recognized two critical factors on Thursday night. First, that a vote on the merits of the Woodland plan would at best have been 7-3, and some think it would actually have been 5-5 or 4-6. Second, that all of the hard work would have come for naught with a split vote.
Two weeks ago the chair of the WAC reacted to the suggested need for unanimity as a threat, but two weeks later it was the stated operating principle of at least four WAC members, perhaps more.
For much of the night, it appeared that the Water Advisory Committee was headed to a divided vote of 7-3 or 6-4 to go to the Main Woodland Option. It was also clear that a couple of the swing voters in the middle were uncomfortable with such a split.
In the end, it was a compromise move that appeared to be engineered by Bill Kopper and Frank Loge, with support from Alf Brandt, that gave both sides enough of what they could live with to produce an 8-2 vote on the compromise motion, with only Jerry Adler and Helen Thomson, who oppose even looking at a West Sacramento option, dissenting.
Editor’s Note: In advance of tonight’s WAC meeting, members of the WAC submitted questions to staff. As these questions and answers are provided in the material, they provide a good basis for understanding and discussion.
1. Was the debt service line item included in the Net Present Value total?
In today’s column in the Davis Enterprise, Rich Rifkin calls on the city of Davis to end its practice, that began back in 1999, of having four firefighters on an engine.
He writes, “In the late 1990s, unlike most other cities in our region, the Davis City Council, influenced by union cash, increased fire staffing by one-third. Where we had three people assigned to each fire truck before, Davis has since had four.”
The rates have not been codified yet, but it is remarkable how similar the rates, as presented to the WAC on Thursday of last week, look to the rates of the Prop 218 process from last summer – you know, the process that raised the rates too fast and had to be modified to the September 6 rates which purportedly held increases to 14% per year (if you cut back on your water usage by 20%).
For those who forgot, here are the two-month projected rates from last year:
The quote that stands out in the recent meeting of the Water Advisory Commission (WAC) comes from the chair, Elaine Roberts-Musser, who said, “It isn’t that there isn’t going to be pain. It doesn’t matter which project you pick, there’s going to pain. Very big pain.”
The problem is that statement becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Assuming that any option will involve big pain seemingly justifies any rate hike and structure because, after all, pain is unavoidable.
The water project itself is complicated and the analysis of the politics of the water project is an even more difficult nut to crack. On Saturday, I gave some basic analysis, and I believe that a water project that raises rates quickly and painfully over a short burst of time is going to be more difficult for people on modest incomes than a phased project or a delayed financing project that costs more over the long run.While I stand by that analysis from Saturday, I think that Matt Williams and Elaine Roberts Musser made some points that should be considered.
by Matt Williams – Once again let me start by saying that the opinions and perspectives presented here in this article are those of the author and not the opinions and perspectives of the Water Advisory Committee (“WAC”).
Yesterday David Greenwald talked a bit about his perspective on what some Water Advisory Committee numbers mean. I’d like to drill into those numbers a bit.
In the end, if this is indeed the end, the Davis Water Advisory Committee went where city staff clearly was guiding them and where they were most comfortable. I know that evaluation is not going to sit particularly well with some, and my only hope is that those will at least be willing to hear me out.
The WAC, in the end, did an admirable job, but by the end of the meeting on Thursday, it was clear which way they were headed, even as there were a large amount of questions that some simply did not want to pursue, at least at the last meeting.
Committee Postpones Vote Until Next Week – But Handwriting on the WallFor most of the night, city staff seemed to push the Water Advisory Committee toward the inevitable – the Woodland JPA option. Whether it was Attorney Jill Willis warning the WAC that transferring or severing water rights would mean several years of delays, the environmental considerations laid out by Erich Fisher or the rate comparison laid out by Doug Dove of Bartle Wells – it was clear what direction staff was pushing.
The terms risk and certainty were laid out on the table, and the consensus, at least among a majority core of WAC members, seems to be that the Woodland-Davis JPA is the less risky and more certain proposition.
Last week, we reported that Water Advisory Committee member Alf Brandt indicated at the meeting that he would be ready to make a motion at the August 9 meeting.
Itt appears from all indications Alf Brandt will make a motion for one of the Woodland projects and, as we have reported, there is some belief that if that occurs it will pass.
One of the biggest issues facing the city of Davis is the fate of state legislation that would reform the public pensions system, which, along with retiree health care, is crippling the ability of cities like Davis to get out from under an economic downturn.
Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, meeting with reporters on Monday, promised public pension reform “definitely by the end of four weeks.”
