Current Mayor Of Davis City California

Davis council OKs budget -- then orders $2.5 million more in cuts

Cities typically find ways to cut expenses, then pass budgets. This week, the offbeat college town of Davis did the opposite.

On Tuesday night, a majority of Davis City Council members said they weren't content to pass the balanced budget that staff had brought them.

They ordered an additional $2.5 million cut from the city's proposed $37 million general fund for the coming fiscal year, which starts July 1. More than 80 percent of the general fund pays for personnel.

But council members didn't decide, exactly, what to cut. Instead they chose to wait until late September to vote on specific reductions. In the meantime, they asked staff to come up with proposals.

What was behind the unusual move?

Mayor Joe Krovoza said the city could no longer afford to pass budgets, even balanced ones, that ignore its obligation to pay tens of millions of dollars toward employee pensions and retirement benefits.

The rate that the California Public Employees' Retirement System charges cities for pensions is going up, and Krovoza said the city is far from meeting its long-term obligations.

"To build a stronger Davis, we need to start making tough decisions," Krovoza said. "We have to start by passing a realistic budget that addresses big structural problems." Council members unanimously agreed with the sentiment. But they were sharply divided over how to proceed.

Councilwoman Sue Greenwald said the council was making a mistake to order the $2.5 million in cuts without knowing where they'd be made.

With no alternative plan in place, at least 20 to 33 employees would have to be laid off from an an already "skeletal" workforce, she said.

"If we pass this budget tonight, it means layoffs," Greenwald told a chamber packed with city employees. Many of them had spoken to the council earlier, protesting the proposed $2.5 million cut.

Greenwald and Councilman Stephen Souza said they wanted to take the next year to work with employees on ways to reduce costs.

Greenwald said most of the city's labor groups had contracts that extend through next year. Now was not the time to seek concessions from them, she said.

Interim City Manager Paul Navazio told the council that the labor groups could voluntarily reopen and renegotiate their labor contracts in the coming months.

Among provisions that could be renegotiated is a "cafeteria cashout" plan that allows employees to take the cash value of health insurance if they're covered under another plan. Capping the cashout for all employees at $500 a month could save $1.7 million from the general fund, a staff report said. Some employees now can receive up to $1,400.

2012 USA/IRL Prelude: Bus/Busycle Fall Extension of 9th Annual Nat ...

As we continue to research what will be needed to to help Ireland rebuild its economy with a working model of a coast to coast Greenway here on the Emerald Isle, before we return with Irish cyclists for the 2012 season, the 2011 Mayors' Ride will be done in two stages. We completed the first with last April's tour of the San Francisco Bay Area.  Come Sept 16, we will make America and the international community aware of the next year's USA/IRL/EAGLE/Bus/Busycle Mayors' Ride with the two week 2011 Bus/Busycle Mayors' Ride noted 3 - After Tom Ayers, PhD, and architect Ron Bishop, get us from Berkeley City Hall to Emeryville City Hall, the next day, on Sunday, 9/17, we leave Davis, CA, America's first bike city, for our our Sixth Annual ride up the American River Parkway. On what we feel is the best example of how a Greenway can transform America, region by region, before we end in Folsom, we will also have met the Mayors of Sacramento and Rancho Cordova. Listen to the American River Parkway story here ( people over in England where 25,000 miles of United Kingdom roads have been numbered and catalogued for the cyclist. While the roads in Northern Ireland fall into this, what they call the National Bicycle Network (NBN), because they are a part of the UK, the Republic of Ireland, on the other hand, does not have such mapping. Since Great Britain has seen an explosion in cycling because of the NBN, we hope that that we can help get such a system set up here in the non UK part that  makes up most of the Emerald Isle.  14 - Once Ireland catalogues its roads, on those with certain traffic count thresholds we look forward to seeing if we can't invoke an Adopt a Shoulder program similar to what we do in American to keep the shoulders of certain freeways free of debris. Here in Ireland, we foresee businesses paying to get their name associated with the needed and readily built asphalt road side extensions that would encourage users to make more of their travel trips under human power.

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