City Council

The Vanguard will have wall-to-wall coverage of the council appointment process.  Last week we had Former Mayor Ken Wagstaff, Former Councilmember Lamar Heystek, and former Council candidate Jon Li talk about the candidate field and changes in Davis politics.

Today we bring the first of a three-part interview with the council candidates.  One thing we have learned is that with ten candidates, it is a bit like herding cats.  We never did reach Linda Parfitt despite several emails and numerous calls.  We will try to get her this week.

While it is early in the process, we now have our ten candidates for Davis City Council.  In the coming days and weeks, we will have in-depth interviews and analysis of the field.  We start perhaps with a bit of a broader view of Davis politics and where it is going.

One of the key questions is really what does the face of Davis politics look like.  For so long, growth has dominated the landscape, but in the last election, the issue of the budget seems to have taken over.  Is this permanent and does it mark the end of the old polarized Davis political system, or it is fleeting?

There is a little bit of everything for all people in the ten candidates for the Davis City Council.  Actually, there were two things missing, no one who had served on the Council previously applied, and to our knowledge no one who had run for the Council previously applied.

The most recognizable name in the group of ten is Dan Wolk, the son of Senator Lois Wolk.  But for those looking for new blood and unfamiliar faces, this group will not disappoint.  At the end of last week, Mr. Wolk became the fifth candidate.  Those numbers have now doubled to ten, assuaging fears of a small field.

When Dan Wolk submitted his paperwork to apply for the Davis City Council vacancy on Friday afternoon – he became the fifth individual to submit his name and easily the most recognizable of the names on the list, if only because he is the son of Senator Lois Wolk.

Dan Wolk, an Attorney for Solano County, was himself a Deputy City Attorney for the City of Davis as he worked under Harriet Steiner at her former law firm.

One of the byproducts of the discussion last week that ended up with the selection of Joe Krovoza as Mayor and Rochelle Swanson as Mayor Pro Tem, was the assertions made by Former Mayor Jerry Adler about the way in which the current ordinance, which allows the first place finisher in a city council to become Mayor Pro Tem and the first place finisher from two years ago to become Mayor, came about.

Jerry Adler’s clear purpose in speaking was to allow for Stephen Souza’s rotating Mayor proposal to have merit and also allow for Stephen Souza to be appointed as the next Mayor Pro Tem.

It was billed as an information session to lay out the process which an individual would have to follow in order to be appointed to fill the seat vacated by Mayor Don Saylor.

It was a small gathering, at least in the time I was there, which was abbreviated in order to attend other meetings.  However, I am a bit surprised that more people did not show up, even if it was only to do as I did, to see who showed up.

Bob Dunning said it best that Stephen Souza probably should have stayed home on Tuesday night.  At the very least he should have paid much closer attention to the inclinations of his colleagues.

Instead he laid himself out to bare, to all his colleagues and his community, really for no good purpose.  He accomplished very little other than making his colleagues uncomfortable and showing himself to be less than dignified in his approach.

This column should be about the future and the new leadership that is about to take hold in Davis.  We have been waiting for this day and now with the gang of three down to a gang of one it is here. 

What that means policy-wise we may not know for some time, but as anyone who has been even remotely following the Davis City Council for the last seven years knows, what happened Tuesday would not have happened under previous councils.

Not to be too lost in the maneuverings over the mayoral vacancy is the fact that there is now a vacant seat on the council that must be filled.

This is an opportunity, perhaps, for an individual who might normally not want to go through the electoral process to have a chance to serve this community on the City Council.

On Tuesday night, the Davis City Council dealt with the issue of who would succeed Don Saylor as Mayor, while setting forth the process by which they would decide who will succeed him on the council. 

Joe Krovoza was elected as the new Mayor of Davis while Rochelle Swanson was named to fill the position Mr. Krovoza previously held as Mayor Pro Tem.  It was a largely unsurprising result, however, it was marked by a surprising degree of contention as Councilmember Stephen Souza made two separate efforts on his own behalf.

The council will make a crucial choice in the next two months that will determine to a large degree the future of our community.  On Friday, I laid out the stakes that we face in the next two months.  We have already discussed the pension/ retirement crisis in alarming detail.

The Council in December, by a 4-0 vote, determined that they will go forward with an appointment process to fill Don Saylor’s spot.  Given the issues of cost and timing, I believe this is the best approach, though I do understand those who would prefer an election.

This will be my fifth January covering local government in Davis and Yolo County.  One thing I have learned for certain during that time is that you never know what issue will come up.  However, already there are huge issues looming on the horizon in Davis that could help to determine the future.

Depending on how things shake out, January may be one of the biggest non-election months we have had in recent memory.

As soon as next week, Davis may have the answer to the first of two key questions created by Don Saylor’s ascension to the County Supervisor position.  The question of who is to replace him on the council will be a much longer and more drawn-out scenario than the one that determines who replaces him as Mayor or the one who runs the council meetings.

Former Davis City Councilmember Ted Puntillo joined the push for Stephen Souza to become the next Mayor of Davis.  We could be less than a week from finding out who will be the next mayor, but in all likelihood it will not be Mr. Souza.

On Thursday the Davis School Board moved a step closer to calling a special election for sometime around May.  They appear to be heading in the direction of a new parcel tax that would renew the existing amount of 320 dollars per single-family dwelling plus an additional 175 dollars.

The board will have more discussion when they return on January 6, and then a special meeting around January 13 where they would have to vote on whether to move forward.

Bob Dunning this week came out strongly against the plan by the Council to appoint Don Saylor’s replacement when he leaves on January 3.

He writes, “I don’t know about you, but given some of the decisions our esteemed City Council members have made in the past few months, I’m not exactly in a trusting mood when it comes to having them select a replacement for the departing Don Saylor next month.”

In perhaps a preview of things to come, Mayor Pro Tem Joe Krovoza led a civil and respectful discussion about how the Council will go about seeking to replace Mayor Don Saylor who on January 3, 2011 will take his seat on the Yolo County Board of Supervisors.

On Tuesday night, the method of replacement was chosen, but not the process itself.  The Council agreed to come back on January 4, 2011, the day after Mr. Saylor becomes Supervisor Don Saylor, and discuss both the replacement of the Mayor and the process by which Mr. Saylor’s vacant seat would be filled.

We have already discussed what is likely to be the most contentious process in the next month, the process by which the council chooses to replace current Mayor Don Saylor, both on the council and as Mayor.

However, in a city manager governance system, the most important spot may be who the next city manager will be.  That process is also moving forward.

Officially we are counting down the days now and it is less than a month until Don Saylor is no longer Mayor or on the Council.  We will have more post-mortems on his tenure, but mostly I see it as a lost opportunity to accomplish something in six months of time.

The Council will now undertake a lengthy and perhaps contentious process to figure out how we will replace the council seat, who will be the next Mayor, and perhaps who will be the next councilmember.

On January 3, 2011, Don Saylor will be sworn in as a Yolo County Supervisor representing the 2nd Supervisorial District.  In so doing, he will both create a vacancy on the council and also require the council to find a new mayor, either from the current membership or from a newly-elected or appointed member.

For months there has been debate and speculation as to how this process would work.  At this time, it would appear that the window for an election has closed, as Mr. Saylor opted against withdrawing from his position prior to the General Election and a specialty election would cost the cash-strapped city several hundred thousand dollars.

It is two months before Mayor Don Saylor leaves office, and we already have a letter to the editor of the Davis Enterprise lobbying for Councilmember Stephen Souza to become the Mayor when Mr. Saylor leaves.

The letter was written by longtime resident Richard Yamagata.  With all due respect to both Mr. Yamagata and Mr. Souza, I hope Mr. Yamagata was acting on his own and was not part of a concerted public effort whereby Mr. Souza would lobby for the position.