City of Davis

In particular, the Vanguard learned that while the two positions appear to be similarly funded, the Firefighter II position is not the equivalent of the Police Sergeant position.  When Councilmember Heystek asked Bill Emlen what the comparable front line supervisory positions were for police and fire, City Manager Bill Emlen responded:

The bottom line was the failure of the Davis City Council to adequately address the looming structural issues of employee compensation at this meeting.  The short-term budget remains to be balanced through cutbacks to programs rather than changes to way the city funds employee compensation.

Last night, the first of those commissions, the Business and Economic Development Commission (BEDC) would take the matter into consideration.  From the onset, the commission was clearly not comfortable with the vague directive.  For the most part they seemed inclined not to grant an exemption, but they were not ready to definitively reach that verdict instead they voted by a 7 to 1 vote to recommend no exemption at this point in time.  The one dissenting vote actually wanted an qualifier removed.

Following Councilmember Heystek’s lead has been Councilmember Stephen Souza who proposed his own alternative budget.  One of the key provisions for that budget however is his projection that the city due in part to Target will actually see an increase in revenue from sales and property taxes.  Our analysis on Sunday leads us to conclude that his projected 1% growth in revenues is highly unlikely given the current economy and the city of Davis’ reliance on state and university jobs that figure to impacted by the ongoing crisis at the state level.  Instead, it may be more likely that the city experiences another drop in revenue close to the 14% it has suffered during the past fiscal year.

For the past year and a half, Vanguard Radio has operated on KDRT 95.7 run by the Davis Media Access.  In addition, Davis Media Access also operates DCTV.  While many do not take advantage of the community based television, we view it as another means by which to inform the community of Davis in a very intimate way via television.  Davis is in many ways a victim of being trapped in the Sacramento media market, there are no Davis-based television stations.  That pales to many other college towns and communities of this size that find themselves less a part of a larger city’s media market.  Growing up in San Luis Obispo, we not only had our own TV station and multiple radio stations, but there were nearby stations from Santa Maria and Santa Barbara that would also cover local news.  That does not occur in Davis very often unless there is a major burning issue.

That gives a tremendous advantage to council majorities who can gain from city staff the formulation and justification of their policies.  That makes what happened on Tuesday night all the more remarkable.  Councilmember Lamar Heystek took the highly unusual stance of sitting down at the staff table and presenting his own alternative budget.

There are two key planks to the alternative budget as laid forth by Mr. Heystek.  First, the belief that the current 850,000 dollar reduction in salary compensation which represents perhaps a little over 3% of their total budget is insufficient.  Councilmember Heystek instead proposed a 5% reduction in total compensation for employees.

As we look more closely at the budget, one is likely to become skeptical about the plan.