City Council

For the first time really, people watching in the audience – which was fairly well attended – and at home could really separate the contenders from the pretenders.  Without naming names, there are three or four candidates that will likely be relatively easy to peel off.  As I have stated however, those who believe there is a clear front runner will be mistaken.

Tonight we will have the candidates forum for the public to get to know the candidates.  It is the first official function in this appointment process.  Last night the Davis City Council discussed the way in which the process will play out, over the matter of hours and multiple rounds.

But before we go any further, I have to question some things from the outset.  At last night’s meeting only two of the ten candidates stayed for the entire meeting.  That would be Kari Fry and Walter Bunter.  Good for them.  Regardless of where they stand on the issues, that should give them a huge leg up.

As difficult as it may be to believe, by the end of the day a week from Tuesday, the Davis City Council is scheduled to have appointed its replacement to Don Saylor.  A lot has to happen, as well as go right,  for that to actually occur, but that is the schedule.

Before we get to that point however, we have to learn more about the candidates.  The Vanguard ran an early series of questions for the candidates – most recently this one which has backlinks to the previous interviews.  The Davis Enterprise ran a profile piece on all ten of the candidates.

It took a bit longer than expected, but we now have the complete set of all ten candidate interviews.  Steve Williams is the final candidate to submit responses.  Steve Williams describes himself as semi-retired and living in the Wildhorse subdivision since 2000.

He has 37 years of work with city, county, and state government, including working for the City of Vacaville on their Planning Commission, the County of Riverside as a land use planner, and he also spent 32 years with the California Energy Commission.  He is currently working part-time as a Senior Technical Editor for the California Energy Commission; and is responsible for editing research reports going to the Energy Commission’s senior management, the Governor and the Legislature.

The Vanguard has spent this week running interviews of the Council Candidates.  The timeline is moving very quickly on this.  In less than a month, a new councilmember is scheduled to be seated in his or her first regular council meeting.

This week, candidates are arranging times to have their candidate statements recorded for public broadcasting.

This was supposed to be the last of three articles highlighting responses from the applicants for the Davis City Council Vacancy.  However, at this point we still do not have responses from Steve Williams, so that would appear to be a separate article if we get them.

We do have the full responses from Linda Parfitt.  We are still waiting on the last five responses for Kerry Daane Loux.  So the plan at this point is to have a fourth article with the rest of the responses plus links for the other candidates.

This is the second of a three-part interview of the council candidates.  Part One appeared on Monday.

As we mentioned on Monday, one of the challenges is getting ten people on the same page.  We still are waiting on Steve Williams and Linda Parfitt, and we will have their full array of answers when they become available.

The Vanguard will have wall-to-wall coverage of the council appointment process.  Last week we had Former Mayor Ken Wagstaff, Former Councilmember Lamar Heystek, and former Council candidate Jon Li talk about the candidate field and changes in Davis politics.

Today we bring the first of a three-part interview with the council candidates.  One thing we have learned is that with ten candidates, it is a bit like herding cats.  We never did reach Linda Parfitt despite several emails and numerous calls.  We will try to get her this week.

While it is early in the process, we now have our ten candidates for Davis City Council.  In the coming days and weeks, we will have in-depth interviews and analysis of the field.  We start perhaps with a bit of a broader view of Davis politics and where it is going.

One of the key questions is really what does the face of Davis politics look like.  For so long, growth has dominated the landscape, but in the last election, the issue of the budget seems to have taken over.  Is this permanent and does it mark the end of the old polarized Davis political system, or it is fleeting?

There is a little bit of everything for all people in the ten candidates for the Davis City Council.  Actually, there were two things missing, no one who had served on the Council previously applied, and to our knowledge no one who had run for the Council previously applied.

The most recognizable name in the group of ten is Dan Wolk, the son of Senator Lois Wolk.  But for those looking for new blood and unfamiliar faces, this group will not disappoint.  At the end of last week, Mr. Wolk became the fifth candidate.  Those numbers have now doubled to ten, assuaging fears of a small field.

When Dan Wolk submitted his paperwork to apply for the Davis City Council vacancy on Friday afternoon – he became the fifth individual to submit his name and easily the most recognizable of the names on the list, if only because he is the son of Senator Lois Wolk.

Dan Wolk, an Attorney for Solano County, was himself a Deputy City Attorney for the City of Davis as he worked under Harriet Steiner at her former law firm.

One of the byproducts of the discussion last week that ended up with the selection of Joe Krovoza as Mayor and Rochelle Swanson as Mayor Pro Tem, was the assertions made by Former Mayor Jerry Adler about the way in which the current ordinance, which allows the first place finisher in a city council to become Mayor Pro Tem and the first place finisher from two years ago to become Mayor, came about.

Jerry Adler’s clear purpose in speaking was to allow for Stephen Souza’s rotating Mayor proposal to have merit and also allow for Stephen Souza to be appointed as the next Mayor Pro Tem.

It was billed as an information session to lay out the process which an individual would have to follow in order to be appointed to fill the seat vacated by Mayor Don Saylor.

It was a small gathering, at least in the time I was there, which was abbreviated in order to attend other meetings.  However, I am a bit surprised that more people did not show up, even if it was only to do as I did, to see who showed up.

Bob Dunning said it best that Stephen Souza probably should have stayed home on Tuesday night.  At the very least he should have paid much closer attention to the inclinations of his colleagues.

Instead he laid himself out to bare, to all his colleagues and his community, really for no good purpose.  He accomplished very little other than making his colleagues uncomfortable and showing himself to be less than dignified in his approach.

This column should be about the future and the new leadership that is about to take hold in Davis.  We have been waiting for this day and now with the gang of three down to a gang of one it is here. 

What that means policy-wise we may not know for some time, but as anyone who has been even remotely following the Davis City Council for the last seven years knows, what happened Tuesday would not have happened under previous councils.

Not to be too lost in the maneuverings over the mayoral vacancy is the fact that there is now a vacant seat on the council that must be filled.

This is an opportunity, perhaps, for an individual who might normally not want to go through the electoral process to have a chance to serve this community on the City Council.

On Tuesday night, the Davis City Council dealt with the issue of who would succeed Don Saylor as Mayor, while setting forth the process by which they would decide who will succeed him on the council. 

Joe Krovoza was elected as the new Mayor of Davis while Rochelle Swanson was named to fill the position Mr. Krovoza previously held as Mayor Pro Tem.  It was a largely unsurprising result, however, it was marked by a surprising degree of contention as Councilmember Stephen Souza made two separate efforts on his own behalf.

The council will make a crucial choice in the next two months that will determine to a large degree the future of our community.  On Friday, I laid out the stakes that we face in the next two months.  We have already discussed the pension/ retirement crisis in alarming detail.

The Council in December, by a 4-0 vote, determined that they will go forward with an appointment process to fill Don Saylor’s spot.  Given the issues of cost and timing, I believe this is the best approach, though I do understand those who would prefer an election.

This will be my fifth January covering local government in Davis and Yolo County.  One thing I have learned for certain during that time is that you never know what issue will come up.  However, already there are huge issues looming on the horizon in Davis that could help to determine the future.

Depending on how things shake out, January may be one of the biggest non-election months we have had in recent memory.

As soon as next week, Davis may have the answer to the first of two key questions created by Don Saylor’s ascension to the County Supervisor position.  The question of who is to replace him on the council will be a much longer and more drawn-out scenario than the one that determines who replaces him as Mayor or the one who runs the council meetings.

Former Davis City Councilmember Ted Puntillo joined the push for Stephen Souza to become the next Mayor of Davis.  We could be less than a week from finding out who will be the next mayor, but in all likelihood it will not be Mr. Souza.