Guest Commentary: Analysis of Vaitla’s Statements in Davis Enterprise Article on Merging Commissions

By Elaine Roberts Musser

If you parse through Councilmember Vaitla’s statements appearing in the Davis Enterprise, it shows: a lamentable lack of understanding about how commissions work; a complete disregard for the opinion of commissioners who are the ones affected by merging commissions; and an extremely questionable and ill-informed rationale for what he is proposing. Furthermore, because of his refusal to appoint applicants to commission vacancies, the FBC is no longer providing citizen oversight of the city budget. That, together with his proposal the city pay to create new city public health services that are the responsibility of the county, will sink the chances of any tax increase proposed for the November ballot.

1.    Vaitla: “…either City Council is not proactive in asking the commissions what to do; or the membership of the commissions is such that people have interests of their own and they are kind of deviating from what Council is asking, outside of the authorizing resolutions of the commissions…”

• If the City Council is not proactive in asking commissions what to do, whose fault is that? The commissions cannot read the City Council’s collective mind. The City Council needs to be more communicative as to what information it wants. Why should commissioners be punished by being forced to merge with another commission because of the fault of the City Council?
• If commissions are deviating from their authorizing resolutions, city staff will rein them in if so.

2.    Vaitla: “…the topic areas of the commissions have not been considered in a comprehensive sense. This led to the pair’s realization that a major restructuring was necessary, especially with the city’s upcoming update to the General Plan.”

• How does merging commissions “consider topic areas in a comprehensive sense”? All it does is double the workload for commissioners, ensuring either longer meetings or less discussion on issues, or both.
• There is absolutely no rational reason given for why restructuring the commissions is somehow necessary to update the General Plan.
• Virtually all the commissions (except for Human Relations and Police Accountability, neither of which are subject to a merger) already weigh in on development projects, so merging commissions is completely unnecessary to update the General Plan.

3.    Vaitla: “Vaitla says the subcommittee and staff did consider going back to the commissions with specific ideas for a consultative process, but decided against this due to restructuring being vital going forward for the city and time. He estimates it would have taken at least another three to six months to do this, which would have made it more difficult to align with the General Plan update…”; “…there is an assumption that Mayor Chapman and I acted in bad faith or that we didn’t consult with staff and commissioners, which we certainly did.”

• Vaitla admits he and Chapman did not consult with commissions, then later insists he did. Vaitla can’t have it both ways. According to commissioners, they were never told about the merger idea.
• City staff made it a point to make clear the merger was not their idea.
• Chapman and Vaitla took an entire year to finalize the merger concept, yet somehow didn’t have the time to consult commissions. As early as June 20, 2023, Chapman and Vaitla on their own, without City Council approval, decided to stop appointing applicants to commission vacancies, pending recommendations. So it appears they knew perfectly well what they had in mind well in advance and didn’t want to listen to opposition, which they knew would be forthcoming if they consulted commissioners.

4.    Vaitla: “Since the authorizing resolutions for each commission will have to be approved by the Council during an upcoming meeting, Vaitla says he and Chapman also see this as an opportunity for commissioners to provide their feedback.”

• Commissioners will have had no opportunity to give any input on what goes into the authorizing resolutions.
• Vaitla and Chapman have shown themselves to be averse to feedback from commissioners, thus why would the two give any particular attention to feedback they receive once they go to the commissions with authorizing resolutions, making it appear that the merger proposal is, in effect, a done deal?

5.    Vaitla: “Vaitla says the Social Services Commission is so overwhelmed with work on affordable housing and homelessness that they are not fulfilling their entire scope of work as laid out in their authorizing resolution. He says that this is completely understandable and that the SSC is a fantastic commission but that their authorizing resolution does need to be revisited.”

• Other commissions are also “overwhelmed” by their work, e.g., Utilities Commission, Finance & Budget Commission, Tree Commission, Natural Resources Commission. Merging will only double the workload, making matters worse.
• If the Social Services Commission is so overwhelmed, then why not make another separate Affordable Housing Commission?

6.    Vaitla: “Vatila indicates that the Tree Commission is another commission that is outside of its scope of work. He personally believes that neither Council nor a commission should be handling tree removal requests, only an urban forestry professional.”

• The Tree Commission’s mission statement, approved by the City Council many years ago, clearly states: “Reviews and approves or denies tree removal. Hears appeals from decisions of the Parks and Grounds Superintendent regarding public nuisances. Hears appeals regarding denials of tree modification permit applications.” To say that the Tree Commission is outside its scope when handling tree removal requests is completely false.

• If Vaitla thought the Tree Commission should no longer handle tree removal requests, why didn’t he take the matter to the City Council for discussion?

7.    Vaitla: “The Planning Commission, Vaitla says, has a lot of insight on how historical resources can best be preserved given that they have a global view on trends. ‘Given that planning deals in their own work with historical resources that relate to other buildings, other developments, other zoning issues, for us it made a lot of sense,’ he said.”

• Historical Resource Management Commissioners have to take a specialized training course. Planning Commissioners have not necessarily taken that training course. Forcing them to take it will be yet one more burden on Planning Commissioners.
• What does preserving historic resources have to do with “global trends” in housing development?
• Vaitla misses an important consideration. In order to obtain CLG grant funding and streamline the CEQA process for development projects, there must be a stand-alone Historic Resources Management Commission.

8.    Vaitla on the Utilities Commission: “On average, not more than once a year do they actually perform their role in reviewing the rate payer studies,” remarked Vaitla. “They’ve done some other things that have been great but it’s been outside of their authorizing resolution.”

• Vaitla is clearly ignorant of how the Utilities Commission works. Rate studies are done once every 5 years for three of the four utilities, with a yearly review of every utility that takes more than one In fact Vaitla was told at the Feb. 21, 2024, Utilities Commission meeting that in order to complete each rate study, it takes anywhere from 8 to 16 meetings (1-2 yrs) for each of the 4 utilities.
• The UC does more than just rate studies. For instance, it studies each utility’s reserve fund, to ensure it is sufficient to cover the cost for capital projects, and analyzes the capital projects themselves. As a result, all four utilities are now on a firm financial footing.
• The Utilities Commission has a very broad enabling resolution approved by the City Council. City staff has and will advise the Utilities Commission if it is going beyond its assigned mission.
• Vaitla himself, as the Utilities Commission liaison, has brought issues to the Utilities Commission outside its scope, e.g., utilities user tax, sustainable energy plan for the city. If he doesn’t want the UC to go outside its scope, he shouldn’t be asking it to.

9.    Vaitla on merging Utilities Commission with the Finance & Budget Commission: “So for us, we thought why not create a body that has a global view on all city revenue and expenditures, both the enterprise fund side that deals with utilities as well as the general fund and other special fund side?” “This new Fiscal Commission, according to Vaitla, would give a very valuable bird’s eye view on the overall revenue picture for the city.”

• Vaitla does not understand the difference between the city budget and utilities. The city budget is funded through city tax revenues (sales tax, parcel taxes, etc.) Utilities are funded through customer rates. And those rates cannot be any higher than the cost of services, which makes rate setting a complicated procedure. The health of the utility reserves says absolutely nothing about the health of the city budget and vice versa.
• Vaitla allowed the Finance and Budget Commission to shut down by halting the recruitment of (commissioners). As a result, there has been no public oversight of the city’s budget for months. This is a formula for sinking a city tax increase proposed for the November ballot. Promises by Vaitla of careful oversight of new taxpayer funding will ring hollow after what happened to the FBC.
• Both commissions, when properly functioning, have extremely hefty work schedules. A utility rate study takes between 1-2 years to complete, and the UC does far more than just rate studies.

10.  Vaitla: “All four commissions that will not be merged will be getting updated authorizing resolutions and recruitment will start back up.”

• In other words, if the mergers are approved, there will be no recruitment to fill the existing vacancies of the former commissions that were merged. In the case of the Utilities Commission merged with the Finance & Budget Commission, in the newly formed “Fiscal Commission” there will be 5 UC commissioners and 2 FBC commissioners, for a total of 7 commissioners, not 14. So public participation has been decreased by 7 commissioners for that particular merger. The same will be true of the other commissions, until each merged commission is whittled down to 7 through attrition. That is 28 less commissioners in total, decreasing public participation in oversight of what the city does.

11.  Vaitla: “For the merging commissions, the subcommittee plans on taking a more direct hand in the draft authorizing resolutions alongside staff. Over the next couple of months, the plan is to go before the affected commissions with ideas of what an authorizing resolution for merged commissions would look like.”

• Note that the commissions themselves will be afforded no opportunity in drafting these authorizing resolutions before being brought to commissions as essentially a fait

12.  Vaitla: “The goal is to have the commissions that are directly involved with the General Plan update process fully ready to go first, by spring. The rest, Vaitla hopes to have set up by the mid-budget cycle, some time in May or June. Ideally, by this summer, the subcommittee would like to have all the work done to set up the new commissions with new authorizing resolutions, fully recruited.”

• Apparently Vaitla is assuming this merger proposal is a done

13. Vaitla’s proposed new Community Health Commission

• Vaitla is continuing to push for a new Community Health Commission, which will be stacked with advocates for new city public health programs. Public health is the responsibility of Yolo County, not the City of Davis. Residents are already paying federal, state and local taxes used by the county to support public health programs. City taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay city taxes as well for the same services.

14. Vaitla: “Vaitla says he has seen the petition and respects the opinion of those who do not want the mergers to go forward…Everyone’s got a right to their voice, to their opinion.” On Feb. 21 he denounced “the quote-unquote leading citizens of Davis (who) are monopolizing the policy conversation as happens again and again and again.” He said public participation “doesn’t mean having 14 committees of people who are privileged and already have power and voice.”

• While Vaitla says “I respect” opponents of his commission merger plan, he has used remarkably insulting language in his council speeches about members of the city’s 14 commissions. Such language is hardly respectful (and speaks to hostility towards commissioners) to describe expert citizen volunteers who are giving freely of their time. These commissioners are carrying out their duties at the behest of the City Council, who specifically chose them to support City Council approved commission missions.
• Commissioners have a right to their opinion, but apparently Vaitla doesn’t want to hear it until after the authorizing resolutions are presented as if the merger is assumed approved.

We are still collecting signatures on the petition asking the City Council to reverse course on this terrible merger proposal. The petition currently has 106 signatures of Davis residents and/or activists, including two former City Council members, and 19 commissioners/former commissioners. Use this link to sign the petition: https://chng.it/Q4Q42tmYLv