Say what you want about the last council, but they knew they had their three-vote majority bloc on each vote – and if it was going to be a 3-2 vote, they did not fret it. And so by a series of 3-2 votes, they passed their agenda whether it was the 3-2 vote not to read the Aaronson report, the 3-2 votes to pass the budgets that kicked the can down the road, or the 3-2 vote to kick the water can down the road, as well.
Early on, it seemed like the new council got it. It was Joe Krovoza, Rochelle Swanson and Dan Wolk who voted 3-2 in June 2011, in a room that was over 90 degrees and packed with 150 city employees, to cut $2.5 million from employee compensation. That is the type of vote where legends are made, where councils get the reputation for being tough.
It did not matter that Sue Greenwald and Stephen Souza went sideways as they stared down the city employees a year out from their own election, because that threesome did not blink.
But somewhere along the way, the council has gone soft. Ever since Brett Lee and Lucas Frerichs got elected to council last year, the council has believed that a 3-2 vote is a four-letter word and they avoid it like the plague. They almost bungled the water rates trying to avoid a 3-2 vote in December, and now they have bungled fire reform for the same reason.
Mayor Joe Krovoza was the only one who stood firm. He stood firm in the face of responding to former Interim Chief Bill Weisgerber’s bait on making the public unsafe, he stood firm in responding to the attacks from Joe Tenney and Bobby Weist, and he stood firm, even as his colleagues were going soft, in trying to get the council to commit to the staffing reduction.
As a number of people have told me, the council looked weak on Tuesday night. They looked weak and indecisive. And the problem is that they forget just whom they are dealing with.
Bobby Weist in many ways ran this city for the past decade. He and his crew were able to get 7 or 9 of their councilmembers elected. They were able to get the council to support four on an engine, 3% at 50 and two massive pay hikes, and of course they were able to get the council to kill off the Aaronson report.
It has only been in the last two campaign cycles that the people of Davis have been represented by councilmembers who were not controlled by the firefighters union.
Everyone wants to say their niceties and talk about the great public service that the firefighters perform, but at the end of the day, Bobby Weist is basically a bully. On Tuesday night he showed his colors, basically calling former interim Chief Scott Kenley a liar at the Davis City Council’s table. He openly disrespected the mayor.
And no one had the courage to back up the mayor or tell Mr. Weist he was out of line.
Instead, they were falling over themselves to accommodate the firefighters, in apparent fear of the public who had come out to support them, even though the public did not have their facts straight.
The council has decided to take a gamble. They believe that the fiscal situation is so bad that once this issue is placed within the budget context, once the firefighters are fighting with the public – who want to save their schools and parks as the council struggles to find eight million to keep the roads from completely collapsing and burying the city in debt – that this will be easier.
Maybe they are right. But let us back up a second and review how we got here. It was one capitulation after another.
These recommendations first came before the council in December. They could have passed them back then, but the firefighters came up and complained – falsely, it turned out – that they had been shut out of the process. So they set up the idea of a roundtable. All of the stakeholders would gather around and they would work out the best idea.
That came off on January 29, 2013. The council passed the first three items easily, but suddenly staffing comes up and it’s 10:30 and now it is too late for the council to decide. Yeah, we might have been up until 1 am, but at least the decision would have been decided.
Instead, several councilmembers complained it was too late and it was pushed off until this week.
That was a huge blunder, for several reasons. The first is that it gave the firefighters five weeks to organize. They delivered fliers, they got 32 emails in support of their position (amazingly, with no organization there were 16 in support of Kenley’s proposal), and they got a large audience to come to City Hall.
By timing it to coincide with the water issue, a large number of people who might have supported the city’s position were preoccupied, and there was no counter effort to get the public out.
Then on Tuesday night, the crucial point was when Brett Lee got up there and rambled on for about ten minutes. The crux of his point was that, while we may be all right with 11 personnel, 12 is better and we would not be having this discussion outside of the budget, therefore we need to have the discussion within the budget standpoint.
Now, if you read between the lines, he made it very clear he will support the staffing reduction, but he believes that will be easier in the broader discussion. His dissembling caused Rochelle Swanson to go sideways, and allowed her to support Dan Wolk’s substitute motion that will push this off until the end of June.
There is no doubt that those two, along with Joe Krovoza, support the staffing reduction. But they were not ready to pull the trigger, even on the mayor’s watered-down motion, which would have committed them to 11 but allowed for the broader consideration.
Brett Lee and Rochelle Swanson may believe that putting this in the budget context – and let’s face it, the budget is going to be far uglier than we have ever seen it before – makes this easier, but I disagree.
First, you give Bobby Weist three more months to organize. Some within the city argued with me that this was as good as he could do – I don’t believe that for a second. He was scrambling to get organized. Now he can plan and use their numbers and, if necessary, their money to really organize.
Second, it is going to get extremely ugly. The roads are a crisis. Two years ago, Mr. Weist mocked the fact that council was putting a million into roads, and someone on Tuesday said, big deal if there are a few potholes – they don’t get it. It is not just a few potholes, it is the structure of the roads which will continue to decay over time if the city does not fix them.
And repairs get exponentially more expensive the worse the roads are allowed to crumble. We don’t have the $8 to $20 million to invest right now. Council is limited about what revenue they can raise and there are competing interests, as people will be calling for more police, calling for keeping pools and rec programs open, and everyone will be fighting over the crumbs.
Is that what we want? Pitting citizen against citizen? That is the specter of June that hangs over us.
But the worst part is this. Read the Aaronson report and, even through the redactions, it becomes clear that Mr. Weist is a mean-spirited bully who retaliates against those who do not do his bidding.
There are probably at least 15 firefighters who are currently on the receiving end of things. That is going to continue and perhaps worsen, as the firefighters and Mr. Weist are only emboldened by the weakness and indecisiveness of council.
If anything, the council owed it to them to act on Tuesday and send the message that times have changed and the old way of doing business here is not acceptable.
More than anything on Tuesday night, my heart ached for those men for whom we did not act.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
” Council is limited about revenue they can raise and there are competing interests…..”
“
…and the price of the surface water project now will add severely to the drain on the limited resources of the Davis community.. “Backbone” was always a critical issue in the last Council campaign. The refrain,”Sue Greenwald, where are you now when we need you?” is an appropriate response to this article as Davis is now reaping the results of those who chose to remove her voice from our Council because of their own egoism and personal animosity.
sue greenwald was excellent at being the one or the two in 4-1 or 3-2, but name one tough vote where she was in the three on pushing a policy forward. we need someone to push forward a tough vote. she’s not the one to do that.
Let the [b]Sue Greenwald for Council[/b] Campaign begin.
[B]Sue 4 You in two oh one 4[/b]
Davisite2
“those who chose to remove her voice from our Council because of their own egoism and animosity”
With sincere respect to Sue for her service, values, ideas, and dedication to our community and as someone who voted for her, I truly believe that it was her own choices that removed her voice from the council. Her unwillingness to listen respectfully, her frequently bellicose and hectoring tone, and lack of ability to work with others collaboratively and incrementally were what led to her defeat. Our current council, whether or not they will prove “tough enough” have certainly demonstrated the ability to consider differing points of view and to work together respectfully
and collaboratively. This is a highly desirable culture change for our CC and I would again support Sue if she were to adopt this mode of interaction.
The time has come to do what needs to be done in regards to firefighters and the budget, the party should be over. The CC has the vote in the end, it is time to put that vote forward whether they organize for their own special interest or not. Letters in their support that do not reflect fact should have no influence.
As for the roads, it’s conflated and inflated. Almost every time I have seen a repaving project in town in the past I wonder what the need was. A few times it was in places where it was needed, but even so, we do not need perfect roads, it’s overkill for 25-35mph traveling speeds.
As for Sue, she loves what she does and she does it with conviction and basis. Some of the people she served with put her between a rock and a hard place and then pointed fingers when she did not just hide under the rock, all the while keeping their manipulative monotone.
“As for the roads, it’s conflated and inflated. Almost every time I have seen a repaving project in town in the past I wonder what the need was. A few times it was in places where it was needed, but even so, we do not need perfect roads, it’s overkill for 25-35mph traveling speeds.”
I will attempt to pull language from the report from the consultant, it was very disconcerting how much and how quickly the costs escalate. If you don’t deal with the issue soon, the costs absolutely sore. That’s why you see repaving projects when you wonder what the need is – it’s because it is far cheaper to treat at that point than later.
I found it from Page 10 of the Nichols report:
[quote]History has shown that it costs much less to maintain streets in good condition than to repair streets that have failed. By allowing pavements to deteriorate, streets that once cost $4/sy to slurry seal may soon cost $14-$27/sy to overlay and $61-$81/sy to reconstruct. In other words, delays in repairs can result in costs increasing as much as 20-fold.[/quote]
Get ready for the road maintenance parcel tax campaign.
Graphical image:
[img]images/stories/pavement-condition.png[/img]
As you can see the price not only goes up, it goes up precipitously as the condition of the road worsens.
soar.
I think it’s more likely a sales tax than a parcel tax.
As I noted on a previous thread, there should be funds going into the general fund that were previously earmarked for the RDA. I don’t know what percentage of that property tax increment remains with the city now, nor what the total millions of dollars is. Rich Rifkin has the information to calculate that. But before any further revenue increases are proposed, that accounting should be done. For this reason, among others, I think it is reasonable to make significant changes that affect the budget in the context of that broader budget discussion — which is what, I believe, the council was deciding with respect to the firefighters, and is also a reasonable consideration with respect to the road maintenance backlog.
I think the council gets a mid-year budget update from staff in May or June. It will be important to know how the city’s finances are trending and whether the tax revenues are increasing in Davis similarly to the state’s revenues as the economy recovers. It is very premature to talk about any tax increase.
” sue greenwald was excellent at being the one or the two in 4-1 or 3-2, but name one tough vote where she was in the three on pushing a policy forward. we need someone to push forward a tough vote. she’s not the one to do that.”
Sue Greenwald’s Council tenure was a minority opinion during the Saylor/Asmundson Council era and she vigorously gave public voice to alternative political narratives. Her public voice on 4-1 and 3-2 losing Council votes,raising questions that challenged the Council/staff “party line”, IMO, was a very important contribution to the populist electoral victories during the time that she sat on the Council.
Don: They will get considerably less money than the redevelopment agency typically got. Regardless, we will see the budget in April, but I have had considerable discussion with the city manager on this and it’s going to be ugly.
DP: “name one tough vote where she was in the three on pushing a policy forward. “
Davisite2: “Sue Greenwald’s Council tenure was a minority opinion…”
in other words, you can’t. so how would she have helped us on tuesday if her strength was saying not, rather than forging council consensus?
dlemongello, I encourage you to read the roads & bike paths consultant report carefully. Pavement maintenance is not at all as you describe. I can assure you that as someone who manages large areas of asphalt, absent regular maintenance, asphalt deteriorates relatively quickly beyond a point where it no longer can be maintained. Beyond such a point, asphalt must be replaced. That being the case, what is the point of the community spending a tremendous amount of resources over previous decades on creating a valuable roads and paths system only to lose it because we can’t get our fiscal shit together? Doesn’t it disturb you that our generation through carelessness, skewed priorities, lack of focus and willpower, is about to undo what previous generations have built?
-Michael Bisch
For the moment, I trust the council on their approach. Being tough doesn’t mean just being blustery and direct for everything. Politics demands a strategy.
Obvioulsy, there is a large body of evidence that voters are idiots when it comes to sustainable budgets, bloated government and grossly-over compensated public-sector employees. We see it at all levels of government. Push the average voter from the top of a skyscraper and he will keep saying “I feel fine, I feel fine…” as he plummets to his end. The key to getting this voter to visualize his end is to allow him to experience some of the related pain. It is this approach that the Obama administration is using to fight the GOP over increased taxes verses spending cuts. The GOP has the problem of helping the voters visualize a future state of catastrophe. The Democrats only has to cause immediate pain and depend on their friends in the media to amplify it.
Now, looking at this local issue, the firefighters have the problem of getting the voters to visualize a future where there is more risk of damage from fewer firefighters. The city council has the advantage because we have reached a point where the pain to the average voter from over-paying our city employees is already here, and more voters have woken up from their idiot’s trance that we can keep over-spending. The council just needs to make sure there is enough of it apparent to prevent the firefighter’s union from scaring enough voters envisioning a fake, but frightening future state of a burning city caused by a fewer firefighters.
Don… not positive, but most of the RDA increment went to the State… that’s why they killed RDA.
Sue is an enigma wrapped in a puzzlement covered with a conundrum for me. In 2008 I actively campaigned for her reelection and got lots of confused stares from my El Macero neighbors when I put up one of her lawn signs in front of my house. I walked the new Willowbank neighborhoods soliciting votes for her. All of that was because on the vast majority of policy choices, I agree with Sue.
However, in 2009 I learned that with Sue you are only as good as your first mistake when she took exception to my independent analysis of the cash flows associated with the Wildhorse Ranch proposal. She and Mark Siegler objected to my including dollars for a cost avoidance for the City vis-a-vis the handling of the affordable housing component. Their argument was that if you compared the proposal cash flows to the cash flows that the City would have if the citizens “just say NO” then there was no savings to the City. In fact they were right. No project did indeed also produce the same savings. The problem was that Sue and Mark didn’t consider “the rest of the story” which was a comparison of the proposed affordable component cash flows to the cash flows of other recent projects. There one saw a considerable difference.
What I learned from that experience was that all her intelligence and hard work and research ultimately gets packaged into a “my way or the highway” bottom-line. In addition, having been on the receiving end of Sue’s personal Route 66 approach, I began to see it happen over and over again and again from the Council dias.
Donna Lemongello is spot on when she says [i]”As for Sue, she loves what she does and she does it with conviction and basis. Some of the people she served with put her between a rock and a hard place and then pointed fingers when she did not just hide under the rock, all the while keeping their manipulative monotone.”[/i] Sue does what she does with love conviction and basis, [u]and[/u] the people she served with definitely did manipulate her into a very difficult place with monotonous regularity. However, Sue does need to have a heart to heart talk with the person who stares back at her from the bathroom mirror, and in the process recognize that not all situations fall into the “my way or the highway” realm.
The Council may not have been as decisive as some may have wanted on Tuesday night, and the dissenting voices may not have been heard long and loud, but I still think that they will get this one right, and the fact that they can work together with collegiality will rest at the center of whatever they decide.
“in other words, you can’t. so how would she have helped us on tuesday if her strength was saying not, rather than forging council consensus?”
IMO, there was never an opportunity to form a consensus. A NO vote on I victory was a first step to put the Woodland-Davis project on hold. The Council would never act without a NO on I victory and I question if even this would have been enough since the ballot measure never stated(deliberately, IMO) what would happen if No on I won. Sue Greenwald’s public questioning of the project narrative from the dais could well have brought the NO on I vote to victory.
If we, as a society, made the convalescent facilities and senior care facilities responsible for dealing with medical emergencies, either by providing it in-house or contracting with private ambulance/EMT services, or reimbursing the City for the cost of assistance (true cost, including “overhead” like pension, medical, retiree medical payments) perhaps we could have this thing licked. There is a huge public subsidy for the convalescence/senior facilities, that probably should end.
[i] but most of the RDA increment went to the State.
[/i]
I don’t believe that most of it did, or that most of the funds went to the state. Property tax funds, which is what the RDA funds are, go mostly to local government — county, school districts, special districts, etc. If I recall, the only thing that the state got out of it was they saved the cost of managing the RDA revenues. But it probably reduced that amount that the state was backfilling the school districts that had been siphoned off by the RDA. Again: somebody would need to do an overview. I should go back and find Rich Rifkin’s great analysis from last year.
Don, now that you mention it, I think you’re right, but the gist of my comment stands… if you follow the money, I suspect that the Cities/County got token amounts more, and the school districts “got” it, but only by backfilling the State’s contributions to schools, etc., so basically a zero-sum game for the schools and the locals, freeing up money at the state level.
I think you’re right that Rich’s info would be illuminating.
davisite2 said . . .
[i]”IMO, [b]there was never an opportunity to form a consensus[/b]. A NO vote on I victory was a first step to put the Woodland-Davis project on hold. The Council would never act without a NO on I victory and I question if even this would have been enough since the ballot measure never stated(deliberately, IMO) what would happen if No on I won. Sue Greenwald’s public questioning of the project narrative from the dais could well have brought the NO on I vote to victory.”[/i]
d2, your bolded words support the point that I made above. There truly never was any opportunity to form a consensus as long as Sue’s approach was “it’s my way or the highway.” Forming consensus requires compromises on the part of all the parties. No one gets 100% of what they want. Sue is unwilling to compromise, therefore lots of her historical supporters like myself find themselves in the “you’re only as good as your first mistake” category.
With regard to your final No On I sentence, you are drinking the green cool aid again. Sue’s voice from the dias would not have changed the outcome. Having a bully pulpit from the dias only happens once every two weeks. Bob Dunning ascended the bully pulpit on a daily basis and even that recurring drum beat did not win the day for the No On I campaign.
davisite2: i was referring to the fire vote, not no on i. you might have noticed that that is the topic of this column
Fewer than one-in-four registered voters voted for Measure I.
Hundreds, probably thousands, of fliers were delivered door to door with email addresses for each councilperson, along with a plea to send emails.
If there were only 32 emails received by the CC, the public’s response
was NOT in support of the firefighters.
[i]Fewer than one-in-four registered voters voted for Measure I.
[/i]
And even fewer voted against it. And that’s how democracy works. [u]Not voting is a form of voting[/u]. Measure I passed, the surface project will be built, it will be rate-payer financed — and in the latter regard has nothing to do with the city’s budget problems.
I think Brett got this right. The decision should be made within the context of the budget – at that point, you can make the appropriate level of cuts. We’ll see how tough the city council is when they vote with the budget in hand.
I, for one, this CC is making much more progress toward appropriate goals than previous councils. IMO, to date, there hasn’t been any situation so far in which Sue Greenwald would have improved the outcome of a vote or meeting.
We don’t need a general sales tax or a parcel tax to fix the roads. We need a carbon tax. For the bike paths we might try an inner-tube tax.
Adam Smith said . . .
[i]”I think Brett got this right. The decision should be made within the context of the budget – at that point, you can make the appropriate level of cuts. We’ll see how tough the city council is when they vote with the budget in hand.
I, for one, think this CC is making much more progress toward appropriate goals than previous councils. IMO, to date, there hasn’t been any situation so far in which Sue Greenwald would have improved the outcome of a vote or meeting.”[/i]
I too think that the Council got it right on Tuesday night. By making the firefighter decisions in the context of the entire budget, the “us versus them” atmosphere that Bobby Wiest appears to be trying to cultivate is largely defused. Wiest and the firefighters will find it much harder to cry “foul” if all the other City programs and employee groups are stepping to the table and tightening their belts.
I too think they will get it right, they just wanted to wait and if it’s so they can use numbers, which are a convincing way of making a case, fine. They like mostly being a 5-0 council. That’s nice and all, except in cases where dissent might be needed. We may see some differences over the wastewater plant when it comes back up.
Matt, I think you know Sue about as well as I do. Ah, we are all flawed (OK, I’ll speak for myself).