Paper Praises Shared Management Agreement of Fire, Criticizes Letter by Electeds
Perhaps the Davis Enterprise on Sunday buried their lead – leading with tier praise for the city…
Perhaps the Davis Enterprise on Sunday buried their lead – leading with tier praise for the city…
On November 26, 2013, the factfinder appointed to hear the labor dispute between the City and the…
The Davis City Council addressed some of the concerns from the firefighters and their fellow councilmembers about…
The city of Davis and the Yolo Rate Payers for Affordable Public Utility Services (YRAPUS) meet this…
A year ago, the Davis Human Relations Commission hosted its forum Breaking the Silence of Racism. A…
Sunday Monday Commentary: I want to be able to put my weight behind the parking proposal, but I can only put half of my weight behind it, because I do not believe it solves the entire parking problem.
Some people will say that parking is the biggest problem we have in our downtown, but, as someone who works every day in the downtown, I don’t agree. The biggest problem that we have in the downtown is that the streets are poorly set up to accommodate multi-modal forms of transportation.
On October 15, 2013, the Davis City Council voted 4-1, with Councilmember Lucas Frerichs dissenting, to enter into an agreement with UC Davis for Shared Management of the City of Davis and UC Davis Fire Departments.
Staff has now returned with the language of the agreement that is effective for one year from January 1, 2014 until December 31, 2014. There will be an automatic renew if neither party withdraws from the agreement on or before June 30, 2014.
As my longtime readers know, I have taken Thanksgiving off, really the only days most years I take completely off.
The big news this year is that on January 2, 2014, we will launch the new website – finally. As many know, we created this site as the second Vanguard website in March 2009. We are running it on aging software and there have been functionality problems.
The Davis City Council went behind closed doors for over an hour and a half before Mayor Joe Krovoza poked his head out the door and told the two members of the public – actually reporters – that there was no reportable action. That means that City Manager Steve Pinkerton will most likely retain his job and have his contract renewed, but beyond that we know little and that is not right.
In a city manager form of government, the most powerful figure is the city manager. This is not simply a personnel action, because, while the city council hires the city manager and makes policy decisions, the city manager is in charge of enacting the policy. The city manager is the single most powerful figure in city hall.
While many believe that Davis Mayor Pro Tem Dan Wolk is the frontrunner for the 2014 open Assembly Seat currently held by Mariko Yamada, the Wolk campaign has to thread a rather perilous needle.
On the one hand, they want to avoid the linkage between Dan Wolk and his mother, the current State Senator Lois Wolk. But on the other hand, they need to be able to take advantage of her reputation, experience and network in order to bring in endorsements, money and ultimately votes.
We have learned that there is an active effort underway to terminate the contract of City Manager Steve Pinkerton before the December 1 deadline, after which would enable him to receive nine months of severance for early termination.
The terms of the agreement, signed in 2011, “shall automatically renew and extend” for an additional three year term beginning on September 1, 2014, unless “written notice not to renew and extend is given by City to Employee no later than nine (9) months prior to the renewal date (i.e. not later than December 1, 2013).”
The discussion over Mace 391 has much larger ramifications than simply what the city does on that site. In a very real way, it frames the way the city handles land use policies going forward.
One of the key variables in the Mace 391 deal was the idea that the city would be able to develop a parcel of land, Mace 391, as a business park, while at the same time being able to secure other key areas of land such as the Shriner’s Property as a permanent easement.
The council met last Tuesday behind closed doors on City Manager Steve Pinkerton’s performance evaluation. At that time there was no reportable action, but the council, two days before Thanksgiving, will have another special closed session meeting on the same topic.
At its December 3, 2013 meeting, the Davis City Council will hold a workshop on the Downtown Parking Management Plan. Staff will then return in February or so to seek council direction on formal action.
In October 2012, the council appointed a Downtown Parking Task Force to “identify issues and solutions for addressing downtown parking issues including identifying short-, mid-, and long-term actions to address parking management and supply.”
On Tuesday, the Davis City Council did what they had to do, in fact they did what they were elected to do – make tough decisions with regard to the city budget. The process is broken, it took way too long, it cost way too much money.
But there was no mistake this time – the council dotted their “i’s” and crossed their “t’s.” There will be no 11th hour PERB board ruling to turn this back.
The Davis firefighters’ union may have lost their influence and hold over the city government, but the power and influence that they have outside of the city boundaries was on ready display earlier this week when four current and on past elected officials co-wrote a letter to the Davis City Council filled with concerns about the proposed Fire JPA.
Unfortunately for them, they did not do their homework. There were numerous errors in the structure and content of the letter. The most stunning thing is that not one of those individuals met with either the city of Davis or UC Davis Vice Chancellor John Meyer to express their concerns or learn more about the process.
There is no getting around the fact that the process involved in the original discussion on Mace 391 in June was less than ideal. There is plenty of blame to go around for that debacle, and I think, or at least hope, that those involved learned critical lessons to prevent future such debacles.
The shame here is that we could not have had a discussion on the merits in June, when going forward with an alternative path might have been seen as viable.
The letter argues, “We believe that governance of public safety is and must remain a core function of the elected City Council of Davis. Community oversight and accountability is an important element of municipal services.”
The question is now whether this will go to a vote. The Vanguard immediately reached out to one potential source for such an effort, Mike Hart. Mr. Hart, who is the CEO of Sierra Pacific and who spoke out against the project on Tuesday, indicated that they are currently looking into the costs associated with such an effort and the likelihood of success.
The UC Innovation Series was conceived by several of the leadership of GO-Biz almost a year ago, most notably Louis Stewart, GO-Biz Deputy Director for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. For the Davis Edition, he was assisted by UC Davis representatives, most notably Dean Steven Currall from the UC Davis Graduate School of Management and Marjorie Dickinson, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Government and Community Relations, as well as Meg Arnold, SARTA CEO. AS with all of these types of collaborations, there were many other from GO-Biz, UC Davis and SARTA that helped to make the event possible and demonstrates the partnership that exists in this region.