|
|
|
Your City Council Report For May 28, 2013
By Marc Garman 6/3/13 With editorial comments in italics
Last week's meeting of the Vallejo City Council was busy. Chambers were filled to near overflowing. Citizen advocates and participants in Vallejo's successful Participatory Budgeting(PB) effort were present in large numbers. Chambers were extra full as parents were also present decrying the recent shooting incidents at or near Little League games.
The meeting was punctuated, most notably, with a visceral act of carnage on the dais. The emasculation of Mayor Osby Davis by Councilmember Marti Brown, and Vice Mayor Stephanie Gomes.
Davis began his introduction of council comments on Participatory Budgeting (PB) by thanking those present for their civil demeanor then turning the floor to Councilmember Brown who brought the PB process to Vallejo. Brown thanked all those who participated.
Various comments from the public on the PB process were mostly positive with Pelton Stewart, Chair of Vallejo's Sister City program describing the international interest generated. One of those opposing PB, Sam Kurshan indicated that because some councilmembers did not support the Measure B sales tax measure, they should not be allowed to vote on how the money should be spent. Vice Mayor Gomes later commented , “One of the speakers said that some of these councilmembers up here didn't support Measure B, so therefore we shouldn't be allowed to vote on how it's spent?” and “Well, if that's the case, then the councilmembers up here that didn't support PB shouldn't be voting tonight?” making a sour face, Gomes continued, “No. Right? That's not how we work. That's not democratic.” Gomes noted that she did not support the Measure B sales tax because it was a general tax, and she had doubts as to the ability of the then council majority to spend the money wisely.
Then Mayor Davis spoke.
He began by saying that he wouldn't apologize for voting against PB, even though it was nice to see people so excited about government and empowered, as Councilmember Brown had noted, but continued to outline his position that we don’t need PB to do that and can empower people to get involved in our whole budget process and the CDBG process.
Empowerment? Draft budget released by staff and presented at council meeting. Each resident gets 5 minutes to speak on the budget. Council discusses budget and suggested changes. Staff comes back two weeks later with a final budget and presents it to the council. The public has 5 minutes to speak on the final budget. The Council makes changes to the staff’s recommendations and passes the budget. That's not empowerment. It's usually not even entertainment.
Davis continues saying that public safety is his number one priority. And infrastructrure. And economic development. But hiring police officers is his main concern.
Haven’t we heard him say that before? Like when he passed the union band-aid to “avoid” bankruptcy…for three months? Or when he considered Hannigan’s suggestion to completely get rid of Public Works to avoid bankruptcy? Or when he voted to delete the Economic development department? Or in 2009 when he voted to give police raises while the city was in bankruptcy? Let's not even mention the Calvin Grigsby dalliance . It is hard to frame Davis' position and statements in any way other than hypocrisy and incompetence tinged with revisionism.
Councilmember Brown noted that the city had hired 5 officers with Measure B (sales tax increase) money, even though the council had agreed to a guiding principle to treat Measure B money as one time monies for one time expenditures. If the mayor wants to change that and use Measure B to hire police officers, then the council should change that principle.
Brown noted that though the PB process, we saw that people want to sprinkle around some of the Measure B money…in a city that has had nothing year after year, small quality of life projects are a big thing to people.
Gomes noted that some projects would save the city money. She cited as an example the spay/neuter project, which could save the city up to $300k/year, which could fund a police officer. “And that wouldn’t be Measure B money. That would be General Fund money. By investing in Economic Development, business grants, that’s how Measure B should be spent. Investing in Vallejo so that we can have our General Fund grow itself so we can afford to hire police officers from a steady fund so that it won’t be gone in 10 years and we won’t have to lay people off.”
And then it got ugly.
Addressing the Mayor, Gomes began annoyed, “I do have to mention this, Mayor what you said, as if we don’t want to hire police officers, as if all you want is to hire police officers…well gosh darn it, in BK, you voted on a police contract that gave raises two years in a row and zero percent contribution towards health care. I believe that was about $6.5 million dollars. If it was really about hiring more police officers, as I said then, if we’d made the cuts then, we’d be hiring them now. And that is the one reason cited across the country why our BK failed is because we failed to make those cuts, while in bankruptcy, when we could, and that’s why we have this deficit right now. So don’t say we don’t want to hire police officers. I voted against that contract for that very reason…because I knew we’d have to cut.”
Davis then accused Gomes of making it personal, “Why is it that when somebody brings up something that the mayor did in his official capacity, he accuses them of being “personal?”
He noted that we shouldn’t “take his words out of context” here (we’ve heard that one before, too, in the New York Times, I think it was).
Davis said, “That’s history. Right now we have to move forward. Right now we have a crime problem going awry. Irrespective of what happened yesterday, we need to deal with public safety now. Public safety is number one, Economic Development number two. There is nothing in PB for hiring officers…five police officers added to 88 is a dismal addition in our community. We have seven officers on at any given time of the day. I recognize that everyone here is concerned about public safety. I am saying for me, my own persona l opinion, I have responsibility, I was elected to deal with financial issues facing this city and I’m going to do that.”
Davis then engaged in his version of a civics lesson admonishing the council that we have a representative form of government, and said that the PB process is an “abdication of his responsibility.” Davis: “I’m willing to bet you…if you ask the financial director if this is a wise way to spend money when we’re in dire financial straights, they would say no.” (Um…kinda like when the City's past Finance Director (Rob Stout) told you not to approve the police contract in 2009 because it would force you to lay off police officers? But we shouldn’t worry our little ol’ heads about that history stuff. Nope.)
Sunga began his usual quasi intelligible babble, and then interestingly enough noted about ten times that he campaigned for Measure B and promised people that the money would be used for public safety, economic development and streets. He said that PB was making him pull a “bait and switch” on his constituents. (I wonder how he could have promised his constituents that the money would be spent that way when it was a general tax, not a special tax outlining those three items, that he was campaigning for?)
Now we move on to tag team wrestling in which Gomes and Brown body slam The Mayor and Hermie gets his oats.
Marti Brown took the tag first and entered the ring: “I’ve only brought up on dais once, and I don’t like doing this. I don’t’ like bringing up the VPOA contract of 2009. I spoke that night at the podium. You said that night, if we have to cut police, we’ll cut police. That’s what we had to do. We laid off or eliminated 17 officer positions…I also didn’t vote to put Measure B on ballot. I didn’t make any promises about how the money would be spent. The Majority council made promises they couldn’t keep. It’s a general sales tax…You spoke Mayor Davis about if we spoke to director of finance we’d get different recommendations on how about what we’re doing with our monies right now. The director of finance did speak in 2009 and did recommend against voting for the VPOA contract in 2009. As did the Chief of police. And they rarely agreed. We couldn’t afford it. Both of them said so and we ignored them. And here we are.” “Over and over again, I’ve heard you talk about what we promised the voters, what we need to do for the voters…where was that voice in 2009 when you passed that contract? I’d like to know, because you always leave out the past, that history. As a council member, I feel that your crisis is my emergency; I’m backed into a corner with half the story. The half about where we are now, but we’re forgetting the history of how we got here. That seems to be irrelevant. We passed contracts we couldn’t afford. We eliminated/laid off police officers. When we desperately needed them…I wonder what you were thinking in 2009. Did you think this day would never come? Did you honestly think that laying off police officers and getting below 100 police officers wasn’t going to have an impact? And here we are. And here we are fighting over it. We shouldn’t be in this position. I don’t like feeling like I’m backed into a corner by a prior council’s lousy, poor budgetary decisions.”
Honey Badger Brown don't care. She was just plain pissed.
At this point Davis was seething. Sputters a bit and says he is going to take the high road and not “get into the personal thing with you.” (There’s just no good comeback to those questions, are there?)
Jess Malgapo, to his credit, tried to play the peacekeeper and said that he respected the decisions of the people who have been up here, especially those who have been up here the longest, like Gomes and Sunga. (um…you couldn’t get more opposite decisions from two people) He spoke of the dire budget situation facing the city, and that the previous council had agreed to a guiding principle that no Measure B money would be used to balance the budget. It would be used to supplement city services. Seems like Malgapo was paying attention.
Malgapo noted that Measure B was going to be used to supplement services and needs of the city in terms of services. “That’s why you don’t hear about Measure B being applied to the deficit. We could apply it to the $5.5 million deficit and will have money remaining to meet needs of the city. (probably because that would just solve the problem for today, but leave the structural deficit in place for the council to battle over next year).
The final vote was 6-1 with an angry Mayor Davis dissenting.
The Community Garden contract came up and was extremely anticlimactic after such drama. It passed unanimously.
The final item of the night was interesting in what wasn’t being said in as much as what was said. Vice Mayor Gomes had asked to have a City Council subcommittee created to look at the animal control services contract, which is horribly out of date. The Municipal Code allows the Mayor to make appointments to Council subcommittees, with the Council’s consent. The mayor had asked to appoint Gomes and Councilmember Malgapo.
Two members of the public got up to speak in favor the committee. Kristen Eddy said she was a volunteer at the Humane Society for the past 5 years and is a former board member of the Humane Society. She noted the while the Humane Soceity is a private organization, it depends on city funds and resides on city property. She said there was poor management of donations and funding, and the current contract provides direct and indirect support of HSUS. So the City should provide oversight.
Diana Lang noted she was concerned that the former director of Animal Control was dismissed six months ago with no explanation. She said there was no transparent process or budget and would like to see better oversight.
Gomes noted that the contract, besides being out of date, lacked transparency and she was hearing from a lot of volunteers things happening at the Humane Society that weren’t so good.
Gomes offered the motion to create the subcommittee, but with an amendment to add Councilmember Sampayan to the Subcommittee to make it a three-member committee.
What’s strange is that Mayor Davis made a point of order saying that, the appointment is made by the mayor and the council only consents. He asked how Gomes could change it and add to it without his consent. (Aaaahhhh…I hear the subtext here. The mayor isn’t feeling “strong” because a council member dared to change his appointment choice. But it is important to remember that in our form of government, the mayor has as much power as the council ultimately grants him. Vallejo is not a strong mayor type city...as much as Davis might wish it to be.)
The City Attorney explained that the motion is for the mayor to make the appointment as he had decided. If he had a problem with the amendment, he needed to speak up.
The mayor hemmed and hawed for a moment and then said he would support the motion. (But it was obvious he’d been backed into a corner and not consenting to the amendment would make him look vindictive. Political maneuvering at it’s most transparent.)
Word on the street is that Mayor Davis is again quietly pursuing his agenda to change Vallejo to a strong mayor type of city, (He could get one year out of it with a term extended an extra year due to even year election considerations.) rather than a city council and strong city manager form. This sort of arrangement has been disastrous in larger cities like Oakland (Ron Dellums anyone) where the pool of talent is much larger than Vallejo. Municipal management is a very specific skill set considering the challenges of maneuvering the maze of legal strictures controlling cities. Usually it results in both a highly paid mayor and city manager type position and an extra layer of staff and bureaucracy with marginal benefit. Simply put: If you elect a strong mayor who is a world class genius it can be very good. Unfortunately, Osby Davis is no genius, but clearly has a world class ego.
The vitriol was nicely (sarcasm dammit) rounded out in the second Community Forum with VIB and Gomes obsessed Sam Kurshan announcing that Vice Mayor Gomes' husband and retired Vallejo PD Captain (and former council member) Tony Pearsall stole money from the police buy fund (years ago) to buy a motorcycle for himself.
Hope Kurshan has proof. Because a public accusation of criminal activity without proof comprises libel. Kurshan's claim of, "A source told me" just might look like a snack to hungry lawyers.
Whew. In under the wire.
Powered by !JoomlaComment 3.23
3.23 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved." |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
There's not much being said about Ronald Johnson Jr.. From what I've heard he's doing a Grassroot...
The People of the State of California: Recall Dianne Feinstein as a US Senator -- During her term...
Gary retired or moved on to another agency. I liked Gary, he was a friendly guy and helpful too.
what happened to the city's Chief Building Official, Gary West? I noticed on the web site that th...
re: "I thought the false prophet of biblical fame was Pope Benedict" Educate yourself: ht...