City of Davis

Is the City Budget Short-Selling the Public?

citycatThe city of Davis will ostensibly be passing a budget on June 23, 2009.  Included in that budget will be about 15.5 FTE positions cuts and another 1.5 million dollars in the tiered program reductions.   Total savings to the city will be 3.4 million dollars and the budget will on paper be balanced.

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

City Staff Recommends Renewal of Measure J Basically Intact

citycatFive Year Sunset Clause Problematic However

The issue of the renewal of Measure J was at one point expected to be rather controversial.  However at least looking at the staff report, that may not be the case.

In 2000, Measure J was passed by the voters of Davis by a 53.6% yes vote giving the citizens the right to vote and determine whether land can be re-designated from Agriculture or Open Space to any urban usage.  The measure however, sunsets at the end of 2010 and must be reconsidered by the voters.

Westlake Property Remains Out of Compliance With City Codes

westlake.jpgBack on April 1, the Vanguard visited the Westlake site and took photos of possible code violations.  The Vanguard has now learned that following those photos, the city of Davis issued a notice of Violation to the property owners on April 9, 2009.

In particular, two items were cited, the loading dock “filled with earth” and a cracked window that had been boarded over.

VANGUARD REPORT: Covell Village Campaign Failed to Disclose Hundreds of Thousands in Campaign Expenditures

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On November 3, 2005, literally four days before the 2005 election that would see Measure X, the Measure J vote that Davis voters would overwhelming vote down by a 60-40 margin, an article ran in the Davis Enterprise, whereby the No on Measure X campaign complained among other things that the Covell Village Company and their “Smart Planning – Yes on X” Campaign had failed to disclose the true cost of more than a dozen glossy campaign mailers sent to thousands of Davis voters as well as other campaign expenses such as campaign worker salaries.

The Vanguard has now learned over three and a half years later that there was significant merit to that complaint. On April 3, 2008 three amended statements  using the Fair Political Practice Commission (FPPC) California Form 460 were filed with the Davis City Clerk, two and a half years after the termination of campaign papers were filed on January 31, 2006 claiming a zero balance and a final expenditure of $385,274.75 for the campaign that lasted from July 28, 2005 until December 31, 2005.

Public Finally Gets Hearing on Eleven Million Dollar Water Tank

Last week the Vanguard reported that the Davis City Council had quietly slipped approval of a nearly eleven million dollar water tank project past the residents of the city of Davis.

On July 15, 2008, on the consent calendar, the Davis City Council adopted a resolution authorizing the City Manager to executive a consultant agreement with West Yost Associates for East Davis Water Tank.  The fiscal impact for those consultant fees was expected not to exceed 600,000 dollars.

Developer Trying To Drive Discussion On Covell Development

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Last year the Vanguard foiled a plan by the Covell Village developers to rig a community meeting by the Housing Element Steering Committee (HESC) that sought input from the community about its proposed sites for development by 2013.  At that time, the group that brought us Covell Village and the 60% defeat of Measure X in 2005, sent out talking points with explicit instructions on how to fill out the community feedback forms to move Covell Village from a site not being considered for development by 2013 to a priority.

However, the Vanguard with the help of concerned community members intercepted the email and the plot was largely foiled.

Are City Budget Assumptions Too Optimistic?

citycatThis week begins the long process of looking at the city budget where the City Council along with City Staff must deal with the short-term budget deficit and hopefully deal with the longer term structural issues dealing with employee compensation.

This article will simply look at the overview presented this week and wonder whether the numbers presented here are simply too optimistic.  Part of these figures are based on projected outcomes from negotiations with the bargaining units.  That process is ongoing and does not figure to be resolved prior to the budget’s passage on June 23, 2009.

Will New Target Be in Violation of Development Agreement?

TargetindavisWhen the new Target was set to be placed on the ballot, the city went to great pains to assure existing neighborhood grocery stores that Target would not be a new competitor.  Indeed Target specifically was forbidden from containing more than 20% food services in a specific effort to avoid competition either with the South Davis Nugget Market or the nearby East Manor Shopping Center which is now bare.

However, in the Sacramento Bee yesterday, the article suggests a new emphasis on food sections at the Davis Target.

Why Do Firefighters Make Substantially More Than Police Officers in Davis?

davis_firedepartment.jpgLast night at the Davis City Council meeting, the city unveiled the budget.  Because the budget itself did not get to council until late in the afternoon, the city generally spoke in generalities rather than specifics.  In the coming days and weeks, we will look at the budget itself more closely.  For now, we want to focus on one particular issue that arose during the course of council discussion.

Finance Director Paul Navazio suggested that part of the more than three million dollar budget deficit will be closed through contract negotiations.  Mr. Navazio is proposing somewhere around 860,000 dollars or so of the budget will be closed through contract negotiations.  The question then comes to where should that come from and how should the city proceed with negotiations.

How Council Quietly Approved a 10 Million Dollar Water Project

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The Davis City Council recently approved a ten million dollar water project that was on the consent agenda with no discussion of the costs of the project, its design, size, impact or alternatives.  When Councilmember Sue Greenwald pulled the item from the consent agenda, the discussion was delayed until the end of the meeting, by that point the council was so tired they refused to discuss it and simply approved it.

The genesis of this approval began on July 15, 2008 with another consent item.  The council at that time approved a consultant agreement with West Yost Associates to prepare plans, specifications and estimates for the subject project.  The consultant agreement was not to exceed $600,724.

DANG and City Council Keeping the Pressure on Westlake

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The month of May marks the third year in which the space at Westlake Plaza that used to be occupied by Rays and then Food Fair lay vacant.  In this space we have criticized the city of Davis for dragging its feet in terms of putting pressure on the owners to comply with current zoing and general plan requirements that the space be occupied by a grocery store.

That has slowly changed with the efforts of DANG (Davis Advocates for Neighborhood Groceries) and articles that have been run by the Vanguard to put pressure on the city of Davis and ownership to finally bring a store there.

City Unveils Guiding Principles for Employee Negotiations

citycatLast Tuesday, the Davis City Council passed and read these principles into the record.  One thing that has become clear is that the Davis City Council is now under a tremendous amount of pressure to appropriately deal with the ongoing labor negotiations.

For the first time, the Davis City Council really acknowledges some of the problems that it faces in long-term, not just short-term fiscal stability and addresses key issues that are facing it as it attempts to go into good-faith labor negotiations.  The first step is always to define the problem.  However, the key will be to not just acknowledge the problem, but to actually hold employee groups and city staff posing as negotiators to the fire with regards to compensation packages.

 

Townhall Meeting Responses On Public Participation

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On Wednesday evening at the Veteran’s Memorial Center, the Davis Neighborhood Coalitions and the People’s Vanguard of Davis hosted a townhall meeting on the budget.  The panel consisted of City Finance Director Paul Navazio, Budget and Finance Commission Chair Johannes Troost, and past chair of that commission and Sac State Professor Mark Siegler.

In addition to asking the panel eight preset questions, and taking questions from the audience, we also asked the audience a key question and had them submit the answers to be posted on the Vanguard today.

The De-Greening of Davis

environmental_sustainability.jpgDavis Should Implement a Ban on All Non-Recyclable Takeout Containers and Impose a Fee on Plastic Bags used at Retail Stores

By Pam Nieberg –

Introduction

We are polluting the world’s oceans with petroleum based materials that take hundreds to thousands of years to decompose.  Sixty to eighty percent of marine debris overall and up to ninety percent of floating debris is plastic.  In at least one area in the Pacific, plastic debris outweighs plankton by a factor of six. This debris is carried across the globe by ocean currents, and, as it is broken down by the sun, it joins the huge masses of plastic particles in our oceans that threaten marine wildlife.  According to the California Coastal Commission, more than 1 million sea birds, 100,000 marine mammals, including filter feeding whales, and countless fish are killed annually in the north Pacific alone from ingesting or becoming entangled in marine debris.  Furthermore, due to their chemical composition, plastic particles can accumulate toxins on their surface which then poison the animals exposed to them.

Word To The Wise: Food For Thought

citycat.pngBy E.A. Roberts –

Item 1.  In the Sunday, May 17 Davis Enterprise appears an editorial entitled “Those at the top are easy targets”, defending recent pay raises to the wealthiest public employees.  What is interesting to note is another article “They’ll drink to that” announcing UCD’s plan for its new cutting-edge winery, along with a front page headline screaming “Budget is in hands of angry electorate”.  Apparently no one at the Davis Enterprise put two and two together.  Perhaps the electorate is angry because they see fat cats at the top levels of state government still pigging out at the public trough as per usual, while the state budget takes a nose dive into deep, dark oblivion.
In the past several weeks, the Enterprise has reported on the following:

 

Davis Shown A Way Forward on Water, but Will They Take It?

waterThe Davis City Council on Tuesday night heard a presentation from Dr. Ed Schroeder and Dr. George Tchobanoglous that has the potential to change the way we proceed on the water project, but only if the council majority will let it.  That became more clear after their presentation was over and the council proceeded to approve by a 3-2 vote a resolution authorizing the City Manager to Execute Consultant Agreement with West Yost Associates for Wastewater Reclamation Alternative Analysis as a SOLE SOURCE AGREEMENT.

This means they are essentially allowing West Yost to have non-competitive bids for conducting Wastewater Reclamation Alternative Analysis.  What is left up in the air now is how much this changes what seemed to be a very promising development earlier in the evening when Drs. Schroeder and Tchobanoglous made their presentation following the April 14 release of their consultant study.

Council Stalls on 5th Street Redesign

by Steve Tracy –

This is a follow-up to the May 5th City Council hearing on 5th Street.

Once again an opportunity has been missed to move forward with the redesign that is in the adopted General Plan.  Replacing the 4 lane street we now have with the two lane plus left turn lane and bike lane configuration will finally provide some safety for the numerous bicyclists and pedestrians using the corridor, and has no negative impacts on vehicle flow.  The two most recent traffic models, one funded by the City and one from the UC Davis School of Engineering show that the redesigned street will actually improve traffic flow and travel times.