Category: Money

By Elaine Roberts Musser & Dan Carson

On June 17, 2025 the City Council will “finalize” the 2025-2027 city budget, although it is not written in stone and subject to change. The grim reality is the lion’s share of Measure Q funding (recently approved sales tax increase) has already been spent on employee compensation, and there is absolutely no Measure Q funding left. 

Thus there is zero money to front load more funding for roads and bike paths as recommended by both City Council and City Staff.  $14 million is needed, but only $8.6 million has been set aside, the same inadequate pavement management funding as before. So the pavement will further deteriorate from its current abysmal state, and be exponentially more expensive to fix, adding tens of millions of dollars to the already huge backlog of pavement projects. And it will present particularly unsafe conditions for bicyclists, especially children going to school.

It should be noted the Yes on Q ballot statement, signed by all five sitting City Council members at the time, declared Measure Q was: “To support essential city services, such as…pothole repair… and bike path maintenance”.  Instead, the City Council devoted Measure Q funds to increased employee compensation, while the draft budget plan released May 20 would spend nothing more on roads and bike paths.

This is a bait and switch, an abject betrayal of the voters who approved Measure Q.

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By Elaine Roberts Musser

During the 6/3/25 City Council budget discussion, I stated: “There will be no Measure Q revenue left to frontload funding for roads and bike paths as promised in the Measure Q ballot language. This would be a bait and switch scam, an abject betrayal of voters who approved Measure Q.” Mayor Vaitla responded: “This accusation of bait and switch is inappropriate.…” I beg to differ.

Bait and switch consists of a misleading statement intended to deceive voters, that is likely to influence voters, and will probably result in harm.

Let’s take a look at what happened with Measure Q funding. The ballot statement, signed by all five sitting City Council members, declared Measure Q is: “To support essential city services, such as…pothole repair… and bike path maintenance”. Notice it did not mention employee raises. The City Council knew the specific ballot language about roads/bike paths was apt to convince voters to approve Measure Q. Yet the City Council spent Measure Q funds on employee raises, but nothing on roads/bike paths. That deception will result in the city’s abysmal roads/bike paths deteriorating further at exponentially greater cost.

As the budget is finalized on 6/17/25, the only way the City Council can nullify the Measure Q bait and switch is to cut costs in other areas of the budget – and redirect that funding towards roads/bike paths. Then, and only then, can Mayor Vaitla with justification, claim there was no bait and switch.

By Dan Carson and Elaine Roberts Musser

A newly published long-range financial forecast for the city brings dire warnings of shortfalls and outright deficits over the next few years. Below, we outline tough but fiscally responsible actions the Davis City Council should immediately take to rein in this serious fiscal mess, substantially of the City Council’s own making.

The May 27, 2025 analysis prepared by the Baker Tilly Advisory Group in collaboration with city staff found the city faces budget shortfalls of roughly $3 million each of the next two fiscal years. They estimate this would leave the city with a bare-bones General Fund reserve, in a period when the risks of recession and inflation are dramatically rising nationally because of severe funding withdrawals in Washington DC and Sacramento.

Second, absent some painful but unavoidable decisions, the analysis found that the city will likely be completely financially underwater within five years, with annual spending exceeding annual revenues.  In other words, we are rapidly moving from having inadequate reserves to having no reserves at all, as well as serious deficits projected to grow to $5 million annually. Even these numbers may be a bit optimistic. The forecast assumes 2.5 percent annual growth in city pay even though newly signed contracts allow up to 4 percent pay growth for many workers supported from the General Fund.

Few Davis residents likely know about this serious financial predicament. The forecast report was released to little fanfare and sparse news coverage in a Council workshop held in the late afternoon at the Senior Center, instead of the City Council’s usual meeting in the evening in Council Chambers. As this is written, no city press release has been issued to highlight these grim developments.

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By Elaine Roberts Musser and Dan Carson

During the last few years the city has consistently failed to make the hard decisions needed to manage its finances. The proposed new city budget released on Friday is more of the same. What follows are just a few examples of how the latest city budget proposal for 2025-2027 digs the city ever deeper into an embarrassing financial morass. 

Having 10.3% and 10.2% reserves for the city’s General Fund for the next two budget years — as the new city budget plan proposes — might suffice in better times. Property and sales taxes are historically stable revenue sources for Davis and other California cities that can enable them to survive troubled times. But a 10% reserve is inadequate for the next two fiscal years given the treacherous economic circumstances the city is in. And coming are the all but certain massive state and federal funding cuts for local government programs. 

In earlier budget discussions, City Council’s direction to staff was to get the city’s General Fund reserve back to 15% over the next 2-3 years.  That plan is now dead. No specific proposal to get there is being offered — just a vague statement that new revenues or budget reductions will have to be found somewhere. This dire circumstance should trigger immediate action to put the General Fund reserve back on track to 15% in 2-3 years. 

Don’t count on that happening, though. Even as these budgetary dangers loom, another item on the Council’s consent agenda for Tuesday would make things worse: the ratification of a very rich and unwise employee contract with the Davis City Employees Association (DCEA). One that will probably set the stage for another wave of contracts for other city employee groups.

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By Elaine Roberts Musser and Dan Carson

At the April 15, 2025 City Council meeting, four of the five Davis City Council members declared their support for immediately committing significant additional amounts of upfront funding to fix city roads and bike paths. The funding would come from the recently approved Measure Q sales tax increase and be incorporated into the two-year 2025-27 city budget that will be adopted this June.

A spending plan labeled as “Scenario 2” was presented at the meeting to Council and recommended for approval by city staff. It would have held pavement spending flat for at least five years and then, in theory, begun accelerating city spending for that purpose in 2030-31 through 2034-35.

Vice Mayor Donna Neville and Councilmembers Chapman, Partida and Deos made it very clear they found the idea of backloading pavement funding, and putting off any significant increases until five years from now, unacceptable.  Mayor Bapu Vaitla  proposed a much different approach to adding money for roads that we discuss below, that would involve asking Davis voters to approve another new tax measure.

We are grateful four Councilmembers took to heart our warning against approving Scenario 2. The report staff provided to Council documenting this scenario would escalate the roughly $100 million backlog of city road pavement projects that now exists to almost $150 million, an increase of approximately $50 million over the next decade (see  the chart below, on page 07-50 of city staff report).                             

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