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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