Author: davisite2

A few Monday’s ago I attended the debate between folks running for city council and was very impressed with Adam Morrill. We spoke at intermission. He is intelligent, open, and eager to take on the problems at hand. He engages well with people and is a good communicator. I like his position on the issues and see that as a long-term resident of East Davis, he understands the problems facing District 1 and citywide. He opposed Measure H which Davis voters rejected.

I believe we need new City leadership and vision for a better future for Davis. We need a council member like Adam who will connect with the community and discuss issues that concern them. I am in strong support of Adam Morrill and encourage Davis voters to elect him.

Ann Privateer

By Scott Steward

All the Davis City Council candidates, and incumbents, face a civil servant and first responder debt load, A housing crises, that is shared with the state, but is controlled by checked out residential and business space rent collectors (a windfall owners tax to pay for redevelopment would be welcome).  And not a whisper from the City objecting to the NO-HOUSING option for Brixmor University Mall re-development.  From 2,000 units to 700 units to zero Brixmor housing units – what kind of tragedy are we taking part? 

What can City Council Members accomplish?  Seemingly not a lot if they want to be re-elected and begin to enter the paternity of electeds.  For that reason, because of their youth, strength of character and willingness to dislodge the status quo, I would like to have either Bapu Vaitla or Kelsey Fortune as my City Council Member for District 4.  What?  Can't happen.  Vaitla and Fortune are the two best candidates running out of the five.

Fortune is a economics PhD <http://www.fortunefordavis.com/> candidate who dives deep into sustainability and community resilience and Bapu Vaitla's work <https://www.bapu4davis.org/about> at UCD is complementary to Fortune's as a professor of Economics.  He also works with women and girls health policy and is a member of the Davis Social Services Commission (one of 16 Davis volunteer citizen Commissions.)

Both are running against each other in District 1 where, unfortunately, Dan Carson is also running (Dan's record of damaging City governance is well documented <https://newdavisite.wordpress.com/2022/09/25/davis-deserves-better-than-carson/>.) I hope District 1 voters nod politely when he asks and then vote for Bapu or Kelsey.

Gloria Partida and Adam Morrill are well meaning, and will serve District 4 to the best of their ability, but I can't say one would be markedly better than the other.   Partida has not attempted to tell the unions and first responders no more raises. She did not use her authority as Mayor to separate the council from measure H or increase City decision making transparency and she followed the lead of Dan Carson much to readily.  That said I am hopeful that Gloria will find more of her voice without Caron's presence.    Gloria has been part of most every social justice event that I have attended and has addressed the youth climate movement, though we hope she becomes more comfortable pressing for more rigorous progress on both these fronts.

With Morrill, he is new and suggests he will reform the City's habit of hiring expensive consultants (to tell us all about what we won't ultimately do – again.)  I am troubled by what feels like Morrill's antagonistic stance to Davis' build-it-green legacy.  Davis is still the town that brought us the earliest implementation of title 24 (building energy efficiency ordinances) and Morrill said some pretty silly (being kind) things about the wrong-headedness of energy rebates (rebates that built the trillion dollar solar industry and Tesla).

Morrill, Partida, Fortune and Vaitla, two of these will need to combine with Frerichs, Arnold and Chapman and together they would need to be fierce in their unity if they are to go against the might of first responder and city professional unions to reshape fair agreements.  I think it might take more than just this council's fierce agreement, it might take a coalition of city councils to reset the bargaining that delivers $500K to a five department fire chief <https://newdavisite.wordpress.com/2022/10/09/effects-of-excessive-increases-in-city-of-davis-employee-compensation-from-2011-to-2021-on-the-citys-1/>.  I'm glad there are unions and good pay, but it takes away from any momentum, to create fiscal sustainability, and it takes away from public engagement when the leaders just shrug and say "that's the way it is." 

Cost control is one half of managing budgets, but we know our city needs more businesses.  Retail and services are great but we could use private agriculture, IT, and manufacturing as well. Tim Keller's article  What Economic Development Looks Like in Davis (and What It Doesn’t <https://www.davisvanguard.org/2022/10/guest-commentary-what-economic-development-looks-like-in-davis-and-what-it-doesnt/>) provides good ideas of where we need to go.  So who among our City Council candidates are  equipped to make the 5th street corridor an in-fill innovation park and stop shopping old notions of business development?  That and who has the skill and desire to see that developer agreements stick?  Finally, we don't want Woodland and Davis to merge into some kind of dystopian freestanding single family home suburb of the Bay Area – so housing needs to be built up – attractively, affordably and in a way that preserves farmland.  

I believe we have more to hear from both Gloria and Adam before District 4 can decide.

(From press release) We are in the last few weeks of campaigning. Indivisible Yolo and Sister District Yolo need our casual members to step up and join our phone bank, texting and canvassing teams. You have your choice of where to contribute, but don’t get caught looking over your shoulder on November 8th wishing you had done more. Do more now. Join me and Peggy in Reno this weekend. Here are the dates to help Nevada and California representatives who support women’s reproductive rights

Phone Bank for NV, CA, and AZ
Training sessions/meetups:
Thurs, Oct 13, 6:30-8:30 pm
Sun, Oct 16, 2-4 pm
Mon, Oct 17, 3-5 pm
https://www.mobilize.us/indivisibleyolo/event/484921/

Texting Meetup
Thurs, Oct 13, 12-1 pm
https://www.mobilize.us/indivisibleyolo/event/486276/

Canvassing in Reno, NV
Sat, Oct 15 and/or Sun, Oct 16
https://www.mobilize.us/indivisibleyolo/event/487197/

Canvassing in Tulare, CA
Sat, Oct 29
https://www.mobilize.us/indivisibleyolo/event/487197/

Canvassing in Stockton, CA
Sun, Oct 30
https://www.mobilize.us/indivisibleyolo/event/487197/

 

Note from Annie: I am devoting my blog posts this week to honoring two of the tens of thousands of Americans who have been doing the hard work for us all prior to these crucial midterm elections.

Scott Steward and Peggy Bernardy are active in the progressive organization Indivisible Yolo in Yolo County, California. (Indivisible is a nationwide organization that has blossomed since its beginnings in reaction to Trump’s election in 2016.)

In the political campaign world, it’s widely believed that contact with individual voters is the most productive way to persuade them to vote. And of all the methods of communication in this tech-heavy era, face-to-face contact tops the list.

In his Today’s Edition newsletter, Robert Hubbell referred to those “who are doing the incredibly difficult work of ‘retail democracy’ in hostile territory. When I hear their stories,” Hubbell said, “I renew my resolve.”

And so do I.

Here, in Part 1, Steward, a self-described six-year veteran of such personal contact, writes about his experience in Reno, Nevada–a critical state in this election. And he introduces Peggy Bernardy, who’s making her sixth trip to Nevada just this season.

In Part 2, Peggy answers my questions.

Scott’s Report:

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By spending an out-of-town developer’s dollars to mount a middle of the night stealth campaign against six of our Davis citizens Carson should not even dare to run. Cromwell said it better (see below).

Carson’s spending against his own citizens is the most harmful action by an elected Davis council member that I have ever witnessed.  Carson blithely used unethical and possibly illegal methods to launch an ugly attack on what should be an unsullied civic process.

I am dismayed that this bullying developer’s stooge wishes to exercise any further vote. Months after his improprieties he has not apologized to those he harmed by his now admitted “mistake”.

It would also be a mistake to re-elect him knowing now how he abuses power.

With his blatant record, how can any citizen be assured that Carson will ever again exercise fair and impartial judgment on behalf of our city? His further decisions on development as a council member will now always be questionable. In a somewhat similar case, the Santa Clara Grand Jury this week found that Santa Clara council members "may have violated city and state ethics laws.”

I ask the citizens of District 1 to vote for Bapu Vaitla or Kelsey Fortune, Anyone But Carson, to prevent any further stain on the proceedings of this next Council.

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Part 2 – The Rich Get Richer!

Compensation to the Top 10% Highest Paid City of Davis Employees has Increased at a Far Faster Rate then Increases to the Lowest Paid City Employees and, for Upper Management and Fire Department Personnel, it is Much Higher than Comparable Compensation Levels in Woodland

by Alan Pryor

INTRODUCTION

On October 1, the author published Part 1 of a 2-part series showing how City of Davis’ employee total compensation levels rose far in excess of inflation over the past decade. It further showed the extremely adverse long-term impacts this has had on our City’s budget and the shortfalls that have occurred as a result.

This Part 2 in this series of articles looks at how these excessive compensation increases have favored top City management and Fire Department personnel while salary increases given to lower paid employees have more modestly kept pace with inflation. Further comparisons are made between total compensation levels in Davis vs Woodland showing how upper management in the City of Davis receives far greater compensation than their counterparts in Woodland while functionally performing the exact same duties.

FORWARD

Part 1 of this series of articles on employee compensation in the City of Davis looked at increases in annual compensation given to City of Davis employees from 2011 through 2021. These annual increases were then compared to annual increases that would have been given if the increases were instead limited to a standard government-calculated inflation rate index; the Bay Area Urban Wage Earners & Clerical Workers Consumer Price Index (the “Bay Area CPI”). The differences between compensation that would have otherwise been paid were then used to determine the impacts these raises had on the City budget over the ten-year period (see https://newdavisite.wordpress.com/2022/10/01/effects-of-excessive-increases-in-city-of-davis-employee-compensation-from-2011-to-2021-on-the-citys/).

Average annual increases in compensation, including both pay and benefits, were far in excess of the inflation rate during this period of time resulting in an average total compensation (Pay and Benefits) paid to full-time, year-round City employees of $176,949 in 2021. Had total compensation paid to the City employees been held to the annual rate of inflation each year during the 2012-2021 time period, the average total compensation paid to City employees would have instead been $129,262.

These excessive raises in excess of the inflation rate have resulted in cumulative increased costs to the City totaling $69,933,505 from 2012 to 2021. These monies could have otherwise been beneficially used to provide the infrastructure maintenance the City Council claims they are unable to afford.

Further highlights from that analysis in Part 1 are presented in Appendix B to this article.

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