 Good evening. This is what's going on. I'm John Lee. Our guest this evening is Brett Lee a member of the Davis City Council Brett's about halfway through his term and he's got a lot of things to talk about Brett I want to thank you for being on our show. Thanks for having me John. For sure So let's start with a big controversial question. You replace Sue Greenwald on the city council. What's that like? I don't know if I replace Sue Greenwald on the city council There were two open seats and Lucas, Frerichs and myself and Dan were elected to the two open seats and Dan is returning Well returning to a seat so I don't know that I would say I would replace her. I guess to your point about Sue I think that Sue added a valuable perspective on the city council I think some people take issue with maybe some of the personal dynamics that existed But when you get deep down to it, she had some very important points to make Fiscal sustainability, you know, she was a big believer in making sure that the employment contracts were sustainable and She and Lamar spoke out against some of the contracts that were in the process of being passed by the council majority and with hindsight we really see that Sue and Lamar really Had a pretty good grasp about, you know, what the dangers were about passing those employee employee contracts as far as other things I think She like many council people had a lot to add so I hear this comment about our current city council in that we're a bit too Chummy we're a bit too oriented to trying to agree with each other I don't think that really captures what's going on I think what we try to do is try to stay collegial, but we definitely have differences of opinion and I think, you know, you asked about Sue I Think what she brought and Lamar brought and actually the other members of the council was that it's okay to have some Disagreements because policy is not a clear black or white, you know, right way wrong way I mean their nuances and I think if the council's a little too like-minded you can run into some problems So I I do hear from people that they think we're a little bit too eager to agree I don't think we are too eager to agree. We've had a lot of split votes But what you notice on the surface is that we're polite and collegial with each other But but I think it is important that we do have different viewpoints and we are willing to disagree I think what has changed over the past three or four years Is that we're just a bit more collegial I First off, I think that it's imperative that the five members of the city council be different so To me what part of what Sue was reflecting is that there was In my opinion too much closeness among the other members of the council and that led to covelle village being given the priority for almost ten years and And I objected to that a lot so Whether there's agreement or not within the council and how you deal with it is one factor The other factor though is the ways who played out with other city councils and with other elected officials And with other bureaucrats was something that the city did not have a good reputation for so that's part of what? the city of Davis is living with now the degree to which You as a council get along Is the beginning of having a city council I mean the whole point is to be able to talk about your differences and actually work through them And I think when Sue was on the council there was very little of that done even when there was a majority vote that pushed things through So I think it's imperative that you have We're in the middle of shooting something. Please leave. Thank you. I'm sorry the lights on I know That's why it's a good thing we have it on Live would have been much more fun though Well, I've done that the last time that happened it was live so back to reality so They can keep that in the tape. That's fine. Well, we can look like it's spliced where you know It won't be spliced. You'd be amazed what Alex is gonna do with this so Actually shows us Yeah, yeah Is it regardless of Sue I mean I'm not gonna take the bait to serve our night. I think Sue brought a level of knowledge a little level of dedication That really is commendable and I think on a lot of the issues, you know with hindsight and even at the time I mean people recognize that what she had to say was very important I don't disagree that the council was a bit more contentious and Interpersonal relationships were a bit more frayed There's definitely some advantages in the current setup. Absolutely But you know in terms of what you want With your city council person you want somebody who's going to advocate on behalf of your interests and ideally the community's interest at large so That I think that would be you know, at least the top two, you know within the top three items of what's important to you the collegiality Perhaps More polished interpersonal skills with outside entities and amongst the colleagues. Sure. That's a nice to have but people want to feel like they don't have to come down to city council chambers every single meeting to advocate on behalf of being a responsible Having a council member who wants to make responsible decisions Having said that I think there is a Definite plus in terms of the relationships with staff the relationships with other communities the relationships amongst ourselves in terms of How we're able to Disagree but then on the next issue maybe agree and you mentioned something about the council majority right now There isn't a council majority We you know, Rochelle Swanson and I both Voted to keep the the MRAP Pending further study And military vehicle. Yes And it's a bit controversial and there were three people who were opposed to that and that was the majority Just recently Rob Davis and I were the council minority Voting against the community facilities district for the cannery and that was a pretty contentious 3-2 vote But the following meeting we you know, we're voting again on different things And so there isn't really a majority versus kind of the the people on the outside. It's really Depending on the issue the the three the four the five sometimes reform. So it is a it is an interesting dynamic in 1984 When Bill Copper was the mayor and I admired Bill a lot as the mayor and Evans Tom Tomasi and Bill Copper Probably broke the Brown Public Meeting Act Every week talking on the phone deciding what they were going to announce his decisions Dave Rosenberg replaced Copper on the city council and Dave Rosenberg and Evans Tom Tomasi and then Anne Evans Tom Tomasi and Dave Rosenberg and then Corbett was the fourth one So from 1984 to 1990 every week the Brown Public Meeting Act was violated and then they announced the meetings at the city council So in terms of what the Brown Meeting Act is intended to be that was a majority that was solid Okay, they caucused every week and then they came in and they they implemented their decisions So by comparison in 1990 we had the kind of council that we have now and that is Dave Rosenberg Lois Suzy Emanuel and Jerry Adler and They walked into the room and they'd had to just have a discussion in front of everybody and then they'd make a decision That's the way it's supposed to be and that's the way you are now From 2004 to 2010 we had a majority that made their decisions and then came in and announced the meeting I think the way it is now is much better It's the way it's supposed to be according to state law. Yeah So the idea behind the Brown Act is a good one. Yeah, it's basically Discussions about policy should be out in the public So public the public gets to be a part of it and really sort of better understand the motivations for it So I'm a big supporter of it it does create some difficulties in terms of the length of the city council meetings and also in terms of what information staff needs to provide Because you might go and you go to a meeting and you think you know Okay, this is what I think and I kind of hoping my colleagues think the same way and then They'll come at it from a different angle because you haven't sort of pre-coquest with them and Then you realize you need another piece of info and staff has only provided You know the set amount of information and may not have that other piece of info So it does tend to draw things out and may mean that some items are extended to a future date, but in the overall scheme of things The the Brown Act is a very helpful piece of legislation And for the the public I guess basically it means that council members can meet but We're limited to discussing it with one other council member in terms of what Possible council items are and how we plan to vote or what we're leaning towards We can't have a council majority meet off-site away from the public to Pre-agree on a deal or something like that. Let me just say that Brad just read my mind and said what I was going to say So thank you sure so that leads me to the big question, which is now we have a city manager Yes, we when John Meyer left in 2000. We've gone through rotating city managers ever since then Either interim or not really for here and then they moved on so we have a new city manager Explain the new describe the new city manager and tell us about our city manager is Dirk Brazil longtime Davis resident who had been working at the county Yolo County, and we were very fortunate that he accepted our job offer we did a fairly extensive search to find a city manager and his Resume a application rose to the top and he was one of the finalists We had a very good crop of people to choose from I Guess for whatever reason people, you know want to be a city manager and Davis, so we're very fortunate there we had some good interviews with a variety of folks and We decided that Dirk was the best fit and the exciting thing about Dirk is Hopefully he's the type of city manager that stays for a long time in Davis And that it's not a year or two or three or four type of thing and then gone Hopefully it's more like the John Meyer type of thing where they're here for a big block of time, and they really Help move the city forward. We have a lot of challenges I think Dirk is definitely up to the challenge and what's amazing is he started in the end of November and really hit the Ground running and within a few days was you know, you could tell the city manager was here and I think the The three-month progress report is very very positive if I were to assign Dirk a letter grade I would give him an A and I Look forward to him sort of maintaining and improving so perhaps a year from now. It'll be a plus or something I think there are challenges and I think some of those challenges are beyond the control of the city manager So well, you know someone might hear me saying oh, you know an A for the city manager What about this this and this, you know these problems a lot of those problems aren't the type of problems that the city manager can Just sort of magically wave a wand in fix so we have some structure. I don't know of any structural issues in terms of Pensions and things like that. We really need to address those are problems that will be addressed over multi years It doesn't mean that we defer them. It just means that we have to nibble away at the problems Over a couple of years and really sort of put into place a long-term plan Similar to the issues of our road repairs. We've neglected our roads for Let's call it Five to 15 years. I was going to say 10 to 20 years that might be a bit of an overstatement But at least five to ten years To get back on track is not a one-year turnaround. It'll be Three to eight-year sort of process to get back on track. I'm optimistic about that But it is definitely noticeable that we do have a permanent city manager, I appreciated Steve Pinkerton Steve Pinkerton brought a lot of skills and talent and energy I feel it was unfortunate that he left, but I feel that we're very very fortunate to have replaced him with jerk Brazil so The question I want to get to is the weak Mayor strong city manager form of government I'm not sure how I get to that question, but talk about what the city manager does Compared to the city council. Yeah, so people can get a sense of the division of labor and and so the city manager has the responsibility the authority the power So the city council has policy-making responsibility and the city council Actually is only responsible for two city employees the city attorney and the city manager I've put those in the opposite order myself and The city manager is the one who actually runs the city they run the city on behalf of the city council The mayor is more of a ceremonial position And so the mayor has no more authority than the other city council members Other than the ability to help set the agenda in terms of things we discuss and then also the position of chairing the city council meetings So people are a little bit surprised when they say well, I spoke to the mayor and the mayor said this so obviously this is going to happen and Well, really the mayor just has one vote one one of five votes So the mayor just like you know any other individual in the city council needs to find two or more colleagues to join in and Once you get to three votes, and then you know it becomes policy essentially Three out of five so that's the definition of majority. Yes So there are five city council people one of them happens to be mayor and that's based upon the person who received the most votes in the last city council election and People are surprised about that because you know the mayor has a certain connotation I know that before I became before I paid too much attention Davis politics you would hear Oh, the mayor this you naturally sort of assume a strong mayor form of government Where the mayor would be a full-time position who actually runs the city we see that in a lot of different locations But for Davis, it's the city manager who runs the city based upon the policy direction set by the city council It the mayor does perform a very important role though They're the person who is kind of the face of the city council. They're the ones who? attend lots of different events and You know they're sort of the ambassador on behalf of the city council. So their workload is substantially higher than Well, they're it's higher than other council people Council people have the ability to attend a variety of events But typically when some entity is having some ribbon company in San Ramon, they first of all They want to make sure the mayor shows up so the mayor gets a lot of invites to things like that When jury other was mayor for six months He said that the being mayor many got twice as much mail as he got not being from just being a member of the city council So and he said that a lot of it was meaningless But he still had to go through it because that was part of the job. Yes, so for every 10-minute controversy you have as a council member sitting up there at the dais You have hours and hours of just sitting and listening to people give reports The overwhelming that that's what you do with your time is listen to people talk or read emails and If there's one thing that I'm not very good about and I probably needed to have a new year's resolution and that's being More responsive in terms of replying to emails So we recently had an issue about green waste collection about we have the claw the current system and there's a desire by Some portion Let's call it city staff for city staff and some portion of the community and some portion of the council to go to Taterization of our green waste so to eliminate the claw we've Come up with a compromise plan where the claw will collect during the first week of the month and The containerized program will be for all four weeks, but supplemented by the claw for one week a month The initial staff plan was for just full containerization and the claw would go away other than special Special request Anyway, that generated a lot of responses lots of emails Letters actually and phone calls. I Probably let's call it 30 or 40 emails regarding that and it's not a one or two liner I mean many people take what must be 30 or 40 minutes to write out a well thought out email and Yeah, my weakness is just sort of juggling family life work Sometimes when ten of those arrive in one day it takes me a while to respond sometimes. I'm a week or two There's about a week or two delay before actually respond and I'm not always able to respond to the depth that I would really like to So in answer to your question. Yes, it's not always directly listening I think the internet age has just made an email a fairly convenient way for people to reach out to us so one of the Questions I had was how does being on the city council affect you? How's your personal life? What's it like to be on the city council? It's a challenge But it's really fun It's really nice to learn so much more about your community It really, you know, so I talked about the emails I get invitations to variety events from a variety of different groups and there also be citizens who have addition to different issues I recall an email about somebody who Had collected stuff in their yard and the neighbors were complaining and this person wanted to show that hey He and his child weren't bad people. They just had some junk in the yard But it wasn't it didn't rise to the level of having a code compliance come and you know Require them to move all their stuff. So, you know, I went and met and you know, you like I said You just sort of meet all sorts of different people in your community That would be an example in terms of policy Davis is a Is a is a tough crowd that they don't Really want you to sort of just rubber stamp with the staff report says they want you to know what you're talking about So a lot of people will come up and they'll ask me about green waste containerization They want to know well, what happens to the green waste? Where does it go? Why is that better than the claw? Well, you know specifics like that They want to know about the road paving program, you know You know, if we do spend this much money on a paving program Ultimately, what does that do for our roads in 20 years? They want to know about the details of things like that. So you kind of need to be a policy expert on a good number of things and I feel like we're very fortunate to have a very strong city staff. I know that sometimes Community members get frustrated and council members get frustrated with the staff my experience has been the the vast vast majority of staff people have been very helpful and Have a very high level of knowledge So that helps so you but you do need to do your homework So in answer to your question how it affects, you know, my life or my colleagues life, you know We're also on the city council It requires that you perhaps instead of watching the football game on TV that you read your Staff packet and the staff packets can be like this thick. They used to print them out and now We have them on PDFs That are put in our Dropbox file we can read them on a computer or iPad So several nights a week I spend reading the staff report and then from that It's important to be a fairly knowledgeable person outside of council life because The staff report sometimes is not complete and so you need to know what questions to ask so you read something and go Hmm. I feel like we need a little more depth here Let me ask a few more probing questions. So then you'll ask and staffs pretty good about, you know, providing the answers to you So there is that time commitment. There is this idea that you kind of need to know stuff As opposed to a citizen comes up and ask you a question about something and you know, well, I don't know staff recommended this so I voted yes and That's probably not good enough for most big issues. We have Some proposals coming up on some innovation parks So this is going to be somewhat controversial We're talking about proposal on the east side of the community east of mace boulevard to Have a several hundred acre innovation park and then there's another proposal. That's moving forward These aren't on the ballot, you know, City Council is not approved putting them on the ballot yet But there's a proposal east of mace and there's one near Sutter Hospital. What we're calling the Northwest proposal It's not enough to just go. Well Staff said it looked good. So we gave the thumbs up. I mean, we really need to know those proposals inside and out Understand what the negatives are what the positive are positives are and really come up with a coherent sense of is this good for our community or bad for our community because On most issues, it's not a clear. Oh, this is good Or this is bad. It's not this sort of binary thing. It's really their shades of gray in between And sometimes depending on, you know, what side of the bed you wake up on in the morning sometimes you you sort of shift a little like hmm, I'm leaning more towards yes or I'm leaning more towards no and That kind of brings up the fact that at public comment Sometimes we have a lot of people who will come and make comment and they sort of say the same thing over and over again For me where public comment is of value is when people give me a Different perspective or a different idea. I mean Sometimes you'll see it on the council will the meeting will be talking about the budget and the one before There'll be something about some trees and the whole neighborhood comes out And there'll be 25 people talking about trees and how we need to save the trees or cut down the trees within a few week period there was a controversy about trees and North of Davis that the neighbors deemed a fire hazard and they were, you know, asking us to cut them down in West Davis they were had come out in force to say, please don't cut these down because there was a proposal to Cut them down to improve the ability of the city to smooth out a sidewalk So within a couple weeks you kind of have this can One group saying, you know absolutely cut down the trees. It's a hazard to our homes and the other save the trees We love the trees So you'll have that big group. What's interesting to me is when You know, we started talking about this we sort of lament Oh, there's not that many people who are talking about the budget But we had 25 people to talk about some single tree, but nobody's talking about the budget I think the budget's pretty straightforward That's a known issue that I know about the community knows about when you're running for office They elect you to deal with the budget in a responsible manner They shouldn't have to come down and tell you hey be responsible with the budget if they have to come down Then they've picked the wrong person to represent them. I Will say public comment can be really useful when somebody gives you a different perspective or a different idea So people have come and they've you know, they've kind of said oh, did you ever think about X and then you think No, I never thought about that and you're the one person that's going to admit that Yeah, I mean you're that's one of the great integrity things about you is your ego is not coming good I want to interrupt and just add I mean I loved what you were saying It was great stream of consciousness and it was it was all stuff that people should understand I just want to add two things and see if I can remember both of them Okay, the anyway the main one is that When it goes before the planning Commission staff has done all this work Yeah, but the public hasn't really analyzed that are understood even when you go through the Davis banking machine Where they go through ten different commissions That means a lot of people that are in the 1% that pay attention to everything know about it But even the 5% they'll read the letters of the editor every week and know what they're talking about, right? It's a new issue to them That's number one, but number two nobody knows who's on the plan and Commission accept their friends Most people that go to farmers market that live in Davis At this point probably recognize you as a city council member. I would not say most okay Okay, but the point is they don't recognize I agree I mean you're you're We do know some people that were on the city council that that's true about but that says more about you than it does about them You're you haven't you're a very subtle personality in a in a megaphone reality and you're trying to promote your ideas within the Context of the structure my point is that when it gets to be a Saturday morning And it's on the council agenda for the next Tuesday and it was in Friday's paper Three people are going to walk up to you and lobby you about the issue And if they don't say anything to you that you haven't heard about before then it's not a surprise But the point is that's when people are going to start coming out of the woodwork They're not going to come out of the woodwork until it gets to the city council, right? But once it gets to the city council All these people will start realizing that you're about to change something that they care about And in Davis what I like to say is one percent of the people care And that makes it dangerous to be on the street at five minutes to seven if the meetings at seven o'clock. Yeah, so I forgot what the other thing I wanted to say was that's okay. Go ahead about council dynamics Council manager dynamics. Oh, well, it's great having a city manager. It's great working with my colleagues on the city council As I said before We've had some pretty serious disagreements But we're able to kind of dust ourselves off and be willing to work on the next issue with hopefully not having any chips on our shoulders or holding any grudges and I think that says a lot about us. I think we've sort of moved beyond sort of Not being able to work together But it but it is interesting and we have had some contentious issues and we will continue to have some contentious issues. I think We're dependent on you know Most people don't watch city council meetings. I don't blame them I think there's probably a lot more if they were over at nine o'clock a lot more people had watched Yeah, maybe And a lot of people do not attend or have never attended and I think if people went and saw in person You know the dynamics they would see that they have some advocates on their behalf and there's difference of opinions I think what gets summarized in the newspaper is Is helpful, but I don't think it conveys the richness of what goes on I'm not advocating that that's necessarily interesting reading But just in terms of you're kind of asking about the dynamics. I think the average person probably doesn't get a sense of that Having said that That's not necessarily something amazing I mean you would you would guess that a body of five people would have some disagreements and you would expect that they would be mature enough to interact professionally and and Work for the the benefit of the community Anyway, so John Myers come back. He yes, he retired as the UCD vice chancellor for management planning and budget And He's done some pro bono work for the city of Davis Why don't you talk about that and what it's status is and what you expect? So that actually reminds me about something this city of Davis is really fortunate to have a lot of volunteers We have a volunteer program that's administered through the police department and the volunteers Do you like all sorts of things like you know adopting a park? Cleaning up parks. We have volunteers who serve as sort of downtown ambassadors who kind of show people around and There's a whole bunch of different things. We have people who actually volunteer At the police station and who help process things and that's really wonderful. We also have a city commission program. We have I Feel bad Number let's call it 12 to 15 different city commissions and the commissioners are volunteers They typically meet, you know once a month You know just throughout a couple examples and you know bicycle transportation street safety social services commission finance and budget commission Human relations commission historical resource management commission recreation and parks Natural resources I might have said that open space and habitat commission There's a few others all the people volunteer and they're extremely well qualified if the city had to pay them as consultants Would it be a huge expense, but we have professionals in the field. We have people who are you know passionate about the subject matter We have a lot of university faculty who are subject matter experts who come over and help That's a really wonderful thing It helps give us policy guidance They are a way to you know staff comes up with recommendations and they're tempered with input from the commissions and As a council we look to the commissions to kind of give us a a reality check on some of the staff's recommendations So John Meyer Similar to many of the volunteers on the commission volunteered his time You know, he really cares about his community and Thought he would try to help out With his special skill set having been a city manager here at Davis for a long time and a very well-liked city manager very well respected He came in and he spent some time just going through the organizational structure of the city and just sort of Coming up with his recommendations for how to improve the city the the report. I don't believe is I don't believe it's been publicly released yet, so I can't really comment on the specifics but I can say in general I found the report to be very helpful and very thoughtful and Really, I think along with our new city manager will allow us just to move forward at that much more quickly so Anyways, I imagine it'll be publicly released in a week or two that would be my guess on the time frame So John Meyer became city manager in 1990 years manager until a little after 2000 The first thing he did after he got here as city manager He had been he had previously been the assistant to the city manager for almost three years So the first thing he got here was he did a reorganization plan He basically did what he's recommended to Dirk and that is to reassess what it is that the city needs Now and in the future as opposed to what we've needed in the past So I'll be meeting with John next week and get a copy of the report. I'm real interested to read it Actually you touched on the fact that he was Assistant city manager. We have a deputy city manager Kelly Stackowitz who kind of has been the glue that's held the Us together while you know Steve Pinkerton left and then we added interim and she's really been wonderful and really helpful And so, you know, we've kind of saying the praises of Dirk Brazil I think it's important to mention her as well. She's a well-liked well respected member of staff and Has a lot of institutional knowledge And that is really helpful, especially when you have these Transitional periods she came here in 2005 and I can't say enough good things about her everything you've said It's true. She's done an outstanding job And sometimes it was very difficult. Yes, I can imagine No, sometimes even when it was good. She had to hold up the other half of the of everything because nobody else was so She's done an outstanding job So What's your laundry list? What are you working on? So for me the the big things are Road maintenance not that sexy or you know exciting, but our streets are literally falling apart. Yeah, I Walk around my neighborhood and you know wander around other places ride my bike and other neighborhoods and everywhere you go You see the signs of neglect in terms of our roads and also bike paths. So I would say that's number one We are we're working on that We have more funding this year than we have had in the past because the citizens were Kind enough to pass measure O which is the sales tax measure that slightly bumped up our sales tax So that'll give us a few years of extra funding which will be used to tackle that So I would say that that's number one on my list number two is sort of kind of this mixed blessing We're very fortunate that we have a dynamic Attractive downtown the flip side is we have a dynamic attractive downtown and as a result there's a parking We don't have enough parking parked in conflict And when I say we don't have enough parking that doesn't necessarily mean that we don't have enough in terms of actual number of spaces We have a parking management plan a problem So we have a couple multi-storey garages which oftentimes at least the garage at 4th and G has open spaces but people don't know about that and We also have a situation where we don't have a way of incentivizing people to go and park in that garage if they're going to be for downtown for longer periods It seems out of the way. It seems like it's not part of the down. I mean just visualizing me right now Yeah, we have kind of an interesting you talk about visualizing somebody described the downtown is essentially the size of art in Fair Mall and so We in terms of the actual sure inside not the the parking lot For us, you know, I've been shopping at Artem Fair Mall for 40 years or Built it. I remember as a kid We would go to there used to be a food court where the bookstore is now like that all these little International food things not where the current food court is but you know but that was a special treat as a kid from Davis to go to Sacramento and You know go to the mall Anyway, the idea that the parking lot at 4th and G is far away I kind of share that initial kind of reaction like oh, I want to go downtown. Oh, I don't want to park out of the way but then when you think about the distance involved if you were to go to Arden Mall and you were not advocating people's, you know Spending money at retail establishments or anything But if you were at Macy's and you said oh, I want to go to Nordstrom or I want to go to You know Sears you wouldn't then think oh, I have to go in my car and drive to be close to that section of the mall It's really just a fairly convenient walk Our downtown is quite pleasant to walk in we have a lot of art projects. We have a you know art walk We have you know, we're very fortunate to have good weather the lion share of the year So walking two or three blocks is not a big deal. I think we just have this sort of mindset So in terms of addressing the parking issue the parking management issue I think ultimately there will be a shortage of actual supply As opposed to right now we have a shortage of supply in specific zones I think the issue right now is finding a way to Create an incentive for people Like employees who are going to be downtown for eight hours to maybe go park in the garage and For people are just going to be there for quick little trips Hopefully they're able to park near to where they want to you know jump in and jump out of So that's kind of a big thing that I'm focused on I would say those two things are are pretty important and Yeah, there's other things that I'm you know working on but those are the ones that to me or I would say Kind of the highest priority other than kind of this ongoing Let's make sure that our employee contracts are responsible and sustainable. We got into trouble a Few years back. Let's call it five or six years back during the the bubble, you know, everything was going great The stock market was going great CalPERS the entity that is That the city pays into to help pay employee pensions was telling municipalities Hey, this you know that we're doing so great with our investment returns You can give people better pensions and you won't have to pay any extra in hey, it's the good times. No problem and You know, we kind of saw what happened with the downturn And so now CalPERS is saying well, you need to contribute more next year a little more and then every year more Whereas what they were saying before was hey, you may not even have to contribute anything So at the time, you know councils all over the city or sorry state You know, we're kind of giving people better and better pension promises We're kind of left to pick up the pieces. So we do have a challenge. So we do need to be responsible about responsible employee compensation packages We also need to value our employees and also recognize that if we're not competitive in what we pay We could lose our strong city employees other than municipalities. So it's a sort of a It's a tricky balancing act. It needs to be sustainable and it needs to be respectful and we need to find ways In non-monetary ways to make people want to stay and work and help us in the community. So I would say those are the big three It It should be worth it a worth a lot to somebody to work for the city of Davis It should be a valuable asset. It should be something that they're proud of Yeah, there have been times when that hasn't been true Many people like Kelly Stackwoods have lived through those times I Want to explore your education because I find it interesting I'll just say that when I came to Davis 49 years ago It was to become a chemical engineer and then get a masters in business administration and I didn't so I Went straight to get a degree in the economy size. So I sort of you know, skip the engineering part. You didn't right So you went to Berkeley and got a degree in industrial engineering industrial engineering and operations research OR yeah, so operation research is a let's call it applied math Sometimes in the business school. It's called management science, but it's Numerical way of Looking for efficiencies or optimization We're gonna have to talk about this off-camera because I didn't know you're into OR Yeah, so Berkeley the degree is industrial engineering and operations research. Yeah, I'll just say that Stafford beer my favorite author was the president of the operations research society So I know a little about what operates operations research was sure not about what they taught you What I know about was what it was like 40 years ago in England. Well You went to England to get your masters at the London School of Economics. So that's what I'm interested in you're talking about Yeah, so I went there to study industrial relations I So industrial engineering is a pretty interesting field I'll probably get some emails about this but At its To simplify it a bit It makes this assumption. Well, it doesn't make this it doesn't overtly state this But in terms of how you model things how you will look at productivity and efficiency and things like that It it tends to want to assume that people are like machines. Oh You know a person can make 10 widgets per hour. We need a hundred widgets per hour. How many people do we need? Oh 10? Well, when you get on to the real world You discover assembly lines and assembly line is Machine-paced so you would think that a assembly line is assembly line What you find is during different days of the week the assembly line moves at different speeds in terms of The productivity and you think well, well, how can that occur? Well, it can occur because typically the assembly line can be slowed down Or there can be different levels of defects or things like that So if you imagine that you know the machine model of a human human is a machine, you know Just you know does 10 widgets per hour works for eight hours this sort of thing You would expect the steady flow and you would expect the error rate to be sort of Consistent it's consistent. It's sort of a typically normal distribution depends but you don't find that in real life And I found out When I was a senior at Berkeley, I took industrial sociology Which is a very interesting class because it talked about different types of things and talked about people purposely sabotaging machines and you know Braverman and all these sorts of different topics, but You get on to the real world real world Not academic setting and you discover there's the union and there's management and the workers are angry because they You know, they lost the grievance and so they're working slow or they're working fast or you know The various other things going on and you realize You're just not equipped to deal with the complexities of the real life shop floor In terms of what you were taught in the academic sense as an industrial engineer So I talked to one of my professors. I actually took industrial relations as well my senior year UC Berkeley and Believe this is professor Garberino. But anyway, I asked him. Hey, you know, this is what I'm interested in I'm you know, I'm feeling like I need to know more. I feel like I know this much of the pie But there's this whole other area of the pie that just you know, this these dynamics are going on and they're really about Worker management worker-to-worker interactions and The probably the best school for industrial relations in the US at the time was MIT But that was more of a labor economics type of thing and Cornell had a very strong program as well and he my professor mentioned London School of Economics because that really developed talked about at the individual level So that intrigued me had never been Overseas actually well, I'd been to Mexico. I've been to Baja, California as a kid Not like at some tourist resort, but literally kind of driving along a dirt road down to Baja Before highway one was fully paved But I'd never been overseas never been to England never been to London the little I knew about England was from what I had watched on TV from the Avengers Emma Peel and John Steed and then also EastEnders two completely different sort of Lenses on the life of people in England. I Applied got in ended up going and it was a really great experience it was I happened to be ready for that experience in that Most schools that I had been to up until that point Using the assembly line analogy. You're kind of as a student. You're on assembly line Oh week one read chapter one and two will have a quiz at the end of week Sorry week one read chapter one and two week two read chapter three and four and then we'll have a quiz and then week three read chapter five and six and you know, it's sort of You know sort of marched along and you take a quiz And then at the end we will have a halfway while the midterm and then at the end will have a final And here's the percent on this midterm. Here's the percent on the final Here's a percent for the quizzes and you sort of march along It's hard to stray because you're sort of whoa. Wait a minute, you know, here's this quiz get back on track The teaching system there was interesting in that you go and you have a seminar tile style of education for most class for many classes and so you go you're given this reading list and there's 20 different topics 20 different books for the week You can't read all those there's the three that are required and then the rest are suggested And you think oh well I'm use the system where you sort of do the minimum and you kind of you know, well Maybe not the minimum, but you do the required and anything not required is not required and then but there's this whole other list The professors make this assumption which actually holds true For the lion share of people there at least in the graduate school that you're interested in the subject so they say read these three and You will have some additional questions and then you can look and see which of these additional reading You know books or articles seem to sort of address those or you know things that you're curious about And so you would go and you would have a discussion with your tutor The professor and your colleagues, and you know I might read we'll read the top three and I might have read the fifth one and the eighth one and the twelfth one And you might have read the ninth eleventh and also the twelfth one and we'll have this really sort of interesting discussion And if you hadn't read that you're sort of a little bit left out But you get to kind of listen and you know add in but you readily you know you fairly quickly realize Hey, this is really interesting next week I really want to read to because I want to be involved in this discussion I want to bring up other points and It was a great system. I must admit It was a little stressful because you'll go the whole year and your grade depends 100% on the final exam And so you're kind of cruising along you're taking part of these discussions There's no homework weekly homework that you're turning in there's not really this essay You know midterm or whatever So you have three terms and at the end You have this big exam and you think I Gosh You don't really know how the English students are compared to you are because you haven't had that direct head-to-head comparison So it was a little nerve-wracking. I am happy to report that I did pass but it was it was interesting Kind of just sweating it out before you go because there's this this break About a month. That's exam revision time or it's interesting because up until that point you see all your English Student colleagues are out. They're having a beer at the student pub and Everyone's kind of social and you know they're sort of going along and then suddenly everyone's gone And you know there's a LSE has a bunch of American students I would say I don't know 20% of the students were American at that time I could be off but a fair number and you kind of look at your you know a fellow American like Where'd all the English students go and Then you discover they're on the library and all the library, you know like we would do here though cramming for cramming You know here would be the week before finals. Everyone hits the library there. It's a month straight You know, maybe it's like this in law school. I don't know but they're there every day They're revising for exams and you know, they're very serious and you're sort of going and you think like well I think I know my material Yeah, it was a good experience. So So I want to break what you just described into two parts one is the testing and the other part is the student dynamic I think that the Experience you described is the way it's supposed to be in grad school If you go to a good undergraduate upper division seminar, that's exactly what they're going to do The very best class I sat in on was from my roommate and it was where a guy used a Socratic method And I'm blocking his name right now, but he walked in everybody had read them everybody in the class had read the material, right? 30 people in the class he asked a question 20 people raised their hand one person He called on that person answered the question based on whether the answer was right or not He asked another question if the answer was wrong He conveyed that in the question But the notes that you took were what the students said the students gave the whole lecture Yeah, and that's the dynamic that you're talking about now whether or not you get graded once a week or once a month Or the end of the year is is a different system. Yeah, and that's a that's a whole different question I mean you can have a I mean you can have behavior modification where you give people an apple or a carrot or a stick if they don't get the answer Right, but whether or not you do that every week or whether or not you do that at the end of the year is a sign of maturity So only having a test at the end of the year puts all the responsibility on the student Yes, so the other thing I have to say is I spent two weeks in the England And when I left Al Gore was going to win the election and when I came back two weeks later Bush was about to win the election because the media gave the election to Bush and we won't talk about that tonight, but that's my analysis Anyway, the point is that the week I the two weeks I was in in Liverpool hull and Lincoln, which is in the Midlands Yeah About where Manchester is it's at that mid-level half way to Scotland The main issue in the London Times about education policy was two people who were going to Harvard who were accepted at Cambridge and Who the hell would want to go to a school where you couldn't get drunk until you were 21 and That was the national issue now. There are two reasons to go to college in England One is to learn to drink the other is to learn how to match up with Matt match up with the opposite sex and It doesn't matter where you study when you go to college You say where you went to school and then you get patted on the back because that was a great school And then they offer you the job and then you perform or you don't perform in your fired Sure, it's it's it's a very cut-and-dry system When when I was this I'll end with this when I was a sophomore at UC Davis My TA had gone to Yale and and he laughed at us Thank you. He laughed at us and he said you don't know how hard it is at the Ivy League schools at the Ivy League schools A third of the students didn't qualify They let them in because they were special and some of those people turn out to be the very best students Even though they didn't do that well in high school or prep school by comparison in the UC system If you got in you must be good enough And so they just you know It's hard to tell what you learn in college But obviously you learned a lot in grad school and it was a great experience. It was yeah So we have time for one more question. Okay, your terms about half over. Yep What's the criteria you're evaluating on whether or not you're gonna run for reelection pros and cons? I Think it's really about whether I feel like I'll I'd be effective Right now I would say that I I feel like I am doing an effective job on the city council I think I think I try to represent sort of the average person in Davis whatever that might mean but just sort of I Don't come at it from a strong ideological angle. I just really focused on what's practical I think that probably comes from my many years of work as an industrial engineer so For some that might be a weakness, you know sort of this Maybe ideologically neutral, but wouldn't know what's practical and I think I've surprised some people I think some people are surprised that I voted for the water project But my assessment was is in the long run. We would be better off as a community Having the water project and having access to the Sacramento River You know on some things, you know, I recently voted against the community's Community facilities district The Canary folks were advocating very strongly on behalf of that. I voted against that. I've also voted against some other development proposals But that's just something I'm anti-development it's just my reading of what's in the best interest of the you know average person in the community and I kind of consider myself just an average person in the community. I probably kind of fit that, you know, just a homeowner with a You know professional-ish sort of job and you know trying to make ends meet and you know I want to ultimately retire here And I hope that the school system is nice stays nice and strong so that my son has a good place to go to school I want Davis to be safe and you know friendly and So, you know at this point my assessment is that I'm doing an effective job and that would really be my criteria because It is a sacrifice. It is a fairly large time commitment And so I don't really do it to I'm not trying to get to a higher level of office that I have no Aspirations like that. It's really just about sort of a kind of civic duty and that sounds a little corny and you know People watching who don't know me might think oh well, you know, of course he's going to say something like that but People who know me and you know if you meet me at the farmers market or wherever I mean, I think they get a sense that that is a genuine interest that it's really not kind of about me It's really about you know, I really like Davis my family has been here since the 40s and I wanted to stay a nice place to live. We definitely have some challenges you know affordability is a real issue and I'd like to see Davis be more affordable for people so that People can move in and you know enjoy the nice lifestyle that we have here So I want to thank you for being on our show. Sure. Yeah, this is what's going on. Thanks for watching. Good evening