 Welcome everybody to the Davis State of the City address my name is David Greenwald I am the executive director of the Davis vanguard We are sponsoring this event tonight So that the citizens of Davis can hear from their mayor About the state of our city What is happening? What has happened in the last year and what we are facing in the next year? So without any further ado, I'd like to introduce mayor Joe crevosa Thank You David, and thank you very much to the Davis vanguard for Sponsoring this and in getting it going. Thank you to the city staff for their work to to make the room available This evening. Thank you as well to the Davis Chamber of Commerce The chambers had this state of the city address for a number of years at their January Luncheon and it was pointed out this year that would be good to open it up in the evening and And invite everybody in to do this and so also very very pleased that we have Davis media access here Taping it as well. So this is maybe a little bit of a cliff notes of the city of Davis for the for the coming year I will note that I tried to encourage my wife Janet to come a she came to the chambers version of this And she feels like she knows enough So we didn't get Janet here, but otherwise that that's it So I'm going to begin by going through a number of things that that happened in 2013 in the city and foreshadowing some of what that means for us as we go forward as a as a city and as you might Suspect I'm going to start by talking a little bit about our water supply Project, this is the water that we all use in our homes and outside of our homes and as we all know In March measure I was approved and by a vote of 54 to 46 The residents of Davis decided to go forward with a major new water supply project to receive water from the Sacramento River We finished the the bids came in in June then for the project The project is coordinated by the woodland Davis clean water agency. It's a joint project with the city of woodland the bids came in and In the fall we we announced the winner of the of the bids I want to talk a little bit about what we've done in Well, this is a this is a slide to show a little bit about where we where we get our water Where we have been getting our water and where we're going to be getting our water and so This shows here this line here is just about mid 2016 when the new project will come online and You see down the bottom here. We have the this is the deep aquifer Underneath Davis and this is the intermediate aquifer. We've been a hundred percent dependent upon groundwater Up until we get to mid 2016 and after 2016 When the project comes online, we're going to have surface water You know occupying this level of service We're still going to use our deep wells a little bit in the summer And they'll be a little bit of a backup But because water rates are going up and because we value conservation This is our supply trajectory and we project a 20 even a 25 percent Reduction in water use in the community through water conservation One of the other things that we're going to do which I'll talk a little bit about later is we're going to convert some of our intermediate aquifer wells To non potable irrigation use and that's just a smart use of water so that we're not paying a high price For the water that we use on our on our parks So that's the project supply But I want to talk a little bit about savings because after the residents of the city of Davis voted to approve the project We really redoubled our efforts in city of Davis and with woodland through the woodland Davis clean water agency To bring water cost down. So the project cost in June of 2009 was 350 million dollars and by June of 2013 we brought the cost down to 228 million dollars. So that's the savings of about 35 percent Over that that four-year span of time now Huge thank you here is due to the water advisory committee or the or the whack that we assembled in In the city of Davis the whack Helped play a role. In fact, they recommended that we didn't need as much as we were planning for it So we brought our use for the total project down to 40 million Or down to 30 million gallons per day from 40 and the Davis share of that is 12 Mgd that work of the whack is really responsible for no less than 34 35 million dollars worth of savings and then as we put the project out to bid from the clean water agency In in May of 2012. We said we're not going to accept Any bids that aren't 10% below less than what the engineering estimates were and that was another 17.4 taken off the project and then in June of 2013 we did the same and said we wanted another 14.6 off of the project and then the final bid from CH2M Hill actually came in Not at the 151 that we were willing to take but at 141 So this shows kind of how we brought the cost down a couple other things on cost the joint intake facility that we're building with the Conaway Ranch Anticipated 32 million dollars in federal and state matching funds and we're on target to receive all of those matching funds So that's not a savings over what we anticipated But it's good news that we are getting what we anticipated there the total Davis portion of the joint project is a hundred and seven Million dollars now. They'll also be the Davis side facilities once the water comes from that project is distributed into the city But the big thing to watch in 2014, and I'm very excited about this Is the state of California has something called their revolving loan front or their SRF? Funding and it's very possible that at the end of February the state water resources control board will approve our SRF grant funding or our request for low interest financing for our project and Right now our assumption is that the funding for the project will be in the 5% range our rates are based on that 5% range and if we're successful in getting SRF funding And we're very hopeful there the financing will be down in the high 1% range That's a savings over the 30-year payment of that loan Somewhere in the 60 to 70 million dollar category and so if we're successful there and we've been successful with the bids We're going to be very successful bringing the overall project cost down even even further. That's exciting news now We all know that we have the the new rate structure in place and the rate structure that we've adopted here in Davis is one of the most Conservation oriented rate structures in the state of California It's going to make sure that we limit our summer use and we want to limit our summer use because our summer use is what? Causes us to have to build more capacity Into the project and so I think that with this work rate structure We're going to make sure that we never have to build new water Infrastructure again for the city of Davis and that's fantastic what everybody should know Looking forward to 2014 this year is that on May 1st until the end of October of this year That'll be the first period in which your six months of summer water use will be measured and that will determine your bill Part of your baseline bill for 2015 so everybody now should be thinking right now really about how they might want to do anything To limit their May 1 to October 31st water use this year because that's going to affect your rates in 2015 at the beginning of 2015 and then in 2015 your six months of summer use will affect the baseline that you pay in 2016 that's how the rate structure is going to work Moving from the water supply project to wastewater. We have a new wastewater project coming online in the in the city of Davis and I'm going to back up here just a little bit I wanted to make sure that I stressed that While we've done lots of work to build our new water supply project The council made a commitment while we were doing that to make sure that we also had strong demand reduction in place And so part of the demand reduction is the new water rate structure But we brought on a firm to do a very careful study what we called our integrated water management plan and we looked at, you know, the unit cost of Saving certain acre feet of water and the present worth And we we found you know ways to conserve water in the city that are the smartest ways to conserve water and The well conversion and what's called ASR are the best things that we can do ASR is aquifer storage and recovery So over time what we're going to be looking at in the city of Davis is taking some of our river water in the summer Or in the winter rather when it's plentiful and putting it into the ground in some of our deep wells So that we can pull it back out in times of shortage That's the greater concept of conjunctive use where you're conjunctively using both surface water and ground water So what that means to and I'd like to mention it because we're in our great drought now that we're seeing for 14 13-14 is that because the city of Davis is going to have a diversified Supply that's ground water and surface water going forward that puts us in a great position to manage You know reductions in water that come from drought So the city is not anticipating this year to do any mandatory reductions and water conservation or water Water you know delivery to residents and we and that's a we certainly encourage Conservation, but we're not going to have to do it because we've got this diversified portfolio Okay, I'd like to move now to just making some reference to the the wastewater project And this is the treatment of our wastewater that goes down our drains as opposed to the sewer water that That goes out into the sewers and the streets, but the wastewater project is moving forward It's going to be coming to council as you can see in the in the spring And one of the good things about the wastewater project is that the city of Davis saved For a number of years to build up what's sometimes referred to as a sinking fund So that we'd have the money for the project when we got there so we've slightly adjusted our wastewater rates and we have the money now to proceed with tertiary Treated water, which we really have to do for heightened discharge requirements that have come from the state of California So lots happening on the waterfront What I now turn to a little bit of a discussion about partnerships and Volunteers and as I think about the state of the city and in my three-year tenure here as mayor I just want to observe that the city where it really works in incredible partnership with so many different groups and so we have Connecting our community and leveraging resources One of the things we do is this next door calm now and if any of you are not on next door calm sign up It's an incredible way to connect within your neighborhood. It's kind of a micro Facebook But people are sharing information Whether it has to do with security or borrowing tools or tips on gardening Wondering when the park is going to reopen or the pool is going to reopen things like that We have a new volunteer coordinator position at Davis police department to make sure we're leveraging the resources of our community Our arts and entertainment district has tremendous volunteerism coming into it both from the university and Downtown interests and I do want to give special mention to John Natsulis at the Natsulis gallery as he coordinates so many of The creative artists in town and the downtown businesses to really make the downtown more and more vital We've got the Davis farmers market. We have the US bicycling Hall of Fame We have the Hattie, Mead, Weber Museum for our history We have international house helping us host so many people from around the world that visit us through UC Davis We have the Explore at Science Center enriching us in community education. We have downtown Davis association Promoting our downtown and I love it when I run into people who say Davis, California has the best downtown in all of northern California. And of course, I accept that immediately And and say thank you very much But without downtown Davis We wouldn't have you know as much attention on the streets and really a wonderful downtown How that we've got we have the Chamber of Commerce doing lots of activity now in Economic development in town and they helped with the the Gateway project with UC Davis to connect us more and more to the campus And that does bring us to UC Davis, which is unquestionably our cornerstone partnership And I'm very proud that this council over the last several years I believe has built up relations with campus to a point that maybe have never been achieved before between town and gown in Davis, California and a couple of things the campus is working in great coordination with the Yolo County Visitors Bureau To make sure that we're hosting visitors in a real seamless way people come to campus stay downtown Fall in love with Davis and that is only good for the campus Parents who come to check out UC Davis are spending more time in Davis To see you know where their students are going to be hopefully that helps the campus recruit Exactly who they want. We're working very closely with UC Davis on their vision 2020 plan, which is to add 5,000 more students and 300 more faculty to Davis and we want to make sure that that's done in a truly integrated way And finally on the planning front. I'm very very pleased We'll see next month at council the preliminary joint planning between the city and the university For the Nishi parcel that's immediately to the south of campus That's a potential for great economic development in the city and then just in general We've we've gotten some funding now to finish the third street corridor between a and B street to really open up that Artery and make sure that students are flooding into downtown and when people are in downtown they know how to find their way onto campus and we've opened up all Davis Road now to connect From its exit at I-80 to downtown all of these things I think are making the city of Davis and the campus more seamless in their connections Now I'd like to turn a little bit to talk about Sustainability and Transportation and I link these two because as all of you know Davis is the first city in the state of California To have a goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 Those who critique that say we should be seeking carbon neutrality sooner and that 2050 is is too long But over 50% of the carbon in the city of Davis is generated from our transportation sector So I really see Transportation and sustainability is very very much linked. So a couple things that I'd like to mention first is About two two and a half years of work of our Transportation advisory group has now revised the transportation element for the city of Davis and really pointing the way for how we can use Unitrans and paratransit and a better road network and a better bike network to make sure we're reducing carbon and Providing mobility for everybody in the city. So special. Thank you to the technical advisory group who's amended our Transportation element of our general plan And on that score to next month We'll be receiving a report on the bicycle advisory commission's development of what we call our beyond platinum Bike plan and it's called beyond platinum because in 2005 the city of Davis was the first city in the country to be named a Platinum level bicycle friendly city by the League of American bicyclists And Boulder and Portland and Fort Collins have followed Davis to join that distinction But now the League of American bicyclists have decided that platinum is not good enough and they've created a new diamond category And so if we're going to achieve diamond status, we're going to have to go beyond platinum So we've got a new plan that the bicycle advisory committee commission has put forward for that You know in support of that too a year ago The staff and I and council made a firm commitment to that. We wanted to really go after regional grants in the bike area and just Last month in early December the Sacramento area council of governments approved 5.4 million dollars of bike transportation grants for the city of Davis spread over five different Proposals very very exciting in addition to that the city of Davis was part of a three city Saacog proposal to bring bike sharing to the city of Davis And so we're going to have bike share stations around the city of Davis within about a year and a half It's going to be part of a regional network that's going to be coordinated And that was a three point nine million dollar grant that we were part of as well there So we're really stepping up at the staff and the council level the plan for the future and get money for that Now I want to give a special recognition to cool Davis to implement our goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 the city of Davis Helped to create and now works in close partnership with cool Davis Cool Davis is our nonprofit group to reach out to the community and make sure that we can be Sustainable and you're going to see a lot from cool Davis in this coming year Part of our goal is to have 75% of all households Figure out what they can do to reduce their carbon. That's a very very aggressive goal But unless we have behavior change and unless we retrofit a lot of the houses unless we get people into more green cars We're not going to achieve that goal of carbon neutrality One of the other great things that's happened in sustainability is we now have county-wide all the cities worked with Yolo County county-wide pace program and pace allows people to Borrow money and then repay it through their property tax for energy upgrades at their homes And that's available for both commercial and residential Folks in in Yolo County, and so I hope all of you will look that up. It's through a company called why green It's on the city's website. It's on the county's website, and that's real progress there The city put together an EV readiness grant this past fall. We knew That more and more residents are driving electric vehicles. We're seeing the Honda fit EVs the Nissan Leafs We're seeing some Teslas around town. We've always had EV infrastructure in this town but now it's time to step it up and Last week we received news that we received $240,000 grant from the California Energy Commission for electric vehicle readiness So that's exciting as as well now also in the area of sustainability and energy The council's received two Significant reports now on the possibility of creating a POU or a publicly owned utility in the city of Davis And there may be two big reasons that we do that one is it would increase our ability to be part of our Sustainability future by designing programs that help residents lower their energy use and also potentially there's great savings to the rate payers Within Davis of going to a POU and the study did indicate that we could reasonably save 20% Compared to the current PG&E rates and this would be in the range of a hundred and three million to hundred and thirty Four million dollars discounted at five percent over thirty years So that's something that the council is taking very seriously. We need to go into that You know really looking at all the numbers the cost involved But there is progress being made toward a very serious consideration of a publicly owned utility for Davis Now I also want to mention on sustainability Solid waste and this past year there the Natural Resources Commission of the city spent a tremendous amount of time looking into our goal of Zero waste for the city of Davis Concurrently we're kind of coming to the end or some opportunities to renew the contract with Davis waste removal And so we've kind of brought all of that together renewing the contract with Davis waste removal with the state of California requiring a 75% diversion rate of all of our stuff through the waste stream and so you're seeing a lot that's going to be happening in waste and Just this past week green waste Containerization which is part of that came up as well So we may be asking people to change their habits with regard to green waste to help get us toward that 75% diversion rate the green waste Consideration kind of paves the way for being able to compost through the city And so our food scraps and other compost material could all go Into our green beans and be handled by the by the city in a coordinated way Finally in sustainability I'm going to mention that we brought on an energy services company to be our partner to look for Kind of cost-effective ways to reduce energy use in the city And the first example of this is going to be a swapping out of 2600 street lights in the city of Davis so the so-called Cobra lights that are now Some technology, but they're all going to change to LED lights and By switching those out within five years that will pay for itself So here we have an example of where energy efficiency can save us dollars in the long term And we're very excited about that There's still probably about 1300 lights I think that are dispersed around in our parks and our green belts and we're going to be looking at how we replace those as well But the Cobra ones are the first to to be swapped out. We're going to save money I also want to in the transportation area just give a little bit of a special Thank you to our parking advisory committee and we know that parking downtown is a challenge we also know that it's complicated and We also know that it could be very expensive to add new parking the estimated cost of adding a new parking space Downtown if we were to build it is $50,000 per space So the council's view was before we head in the direction of adding a new parking structure at that kind of cost The first thing we should look at is making sure that we're managing our existing Spaces well and so the parking advisory committee was challenged with this each council member appointed two people and then we had One or two at large and they rolled up their sleeves and this slide just shows the downtown area About half of the parking is on street about half of it is is off street And a number of creative methods or have been come have been developed to make sure that we best use those spaces One thing to know is that the parking structure at 4th and G now always has Hundreds of vacant spaces in it hundreds of vacant spaces now. It's 4th and G So if you park there, you've got one or two blocks But the more people that we can move into the 4th and G lot We can use those hundreds of spaces that have already been paid for in essence by the city of Davis So we need to use the existing resource something else you see downtown is there's lots of merchants that have private spaces That if we can open up those private spaces when they don't need them for their businesses We can avoid having to buy new spaces as well and part of this does mean going to paid parking downtown so the council and the Park Advisory Commission are recommended that and It's been recommended and it's been adopted It's probably going to be controversial. It is already controversial But we're going to make sure that we've got the best technology and that it's as simple as possible But that's probably what we have to do to make sure that employees downtown and those who can park a little bit further out Use the existing spaces that are available once we go through this We'll be able to look at whether or not we really do need to spend a lot of money to build new parking Down downtown Alright with that I'm going to move from transportation and sustainability to Economic development. This has been a huge priority of the council and the community to make sure that we're leveraging off of the incredible talent we have at UC Davis to do economic development in the in the city of Davis and one of the Items I want to call out here is a wonderful group called Tech Davis that came together and offered to pay Half of the salary for the city of Davis to bring on a new chief innovation officer And so last spring we brought on Rob white to be our new chief innovation officer So that there's really somebody who wakes up every morning thinking about how we can encourage economic development In the city of Davis we also partnered the city did Really was led by the Chamber of Commerce and taking us to the regional Cap-to-cap trip to Washington, DC Where we promoted Davis and we see here kind of the the cover of the brochure Kind of the the leave behind that Davis created the Chamber really led and created for our trip to to Washington, DC I want to say we're partnering lots with With UC Davis I think many of you know about the Davis roots Collaboration where Davis roots is a nonprofit organization in the community that looks for young startups from UC Davis and we partnered by Providing the hunt boy or mansion downtown so that there's a physical space The idea is that if we help those companies when they're young for a year or 18 months or two years And we help them get established. They'll plant themselves. They'll stay in Davis If you look at why companies locate where they locate Almost always the top reason is where the founder wanted to live And so we can make sure that when the company is young The founder puts their Child or children in our schools and they find a place to live and their spouse finds a job Then we've got a great chance of keeping them in Davis And so they'll go from three to ten to thirty and maybe more employees here in Davis if we can help them when they're young So I think that's a great program that we've had here in Davis I also want to acknowledge tech Davis again Because in some of the funding they've been able to receive they've provided $250,000 to Davis roots $250,000 to a wet lab incubator startup so that we can support wet lab companies in Davis and $100,000 to our hacker lab and I might have those numbers just a little bit off But am I close on those I think so Got it capital corridor ventures is providing the funding but this shows you know good partnerships coming together and helping economic development in the city So thank you very much I want to also recognize our innovation Park Task Force and so In the fall of 2010 the city said the number one thing we can do for business development is to figure out where the lands are In and around the city of Davis that could be developed for business parks And the innovation Park Task Force identified about 450 acres over four areas of the city One was the Nishi property just south of UC Davis We also have the idea of an East Innovation Park just outside the 200 acres just outside the mace curve We also have the idea of a West Innovation Park Which would be near the Sutter hospital and then we also want to recognize that the downtown is itself What we'd call a downtown innovation district and we want to do everything we can downtown For the downtown to be able to host companies of small and moderate size The task force is now going to kind of restart itself with great vigor, and I want to announce that on January 27th Next Monday night at 530 in these community chambers The innovation Park Task Force will be meeting again, and they'll continue to meet on the fourth Monday of every month And those meetings will be videoed and broadcast And so if you want to follow how the city is proceeding with opening up lands For business. This is where the where the decisions are going to be made With that I'd like to move now to some things in the land use and planning area of the city I mentioned earlier that old Davis Road now connects in that's a good thing with the University But of course the biggest item in 2013 was the was the cannery Development and the council has approved 550 New dwelling units approximately in the city of Davis. There'll be just north of covelle and just east of the of the railroad tracks There's a tremendous sustainability elements within this proposal It's it's higher density. It's mixed use There will be 1.5 Kilowatts of solar on every residential roof and the multifamily units will have solar on them as well also, what's innovative is that 25% I think of the first hundred homes are going to have to be Zero net electricity and then that'll kind of get the ball rolling for people moving in if they would like that option to be able to opt for that option above the 1.5 kilowatts of solar now a big piece of the sustainability though is making sure that cannery Is a is a bikeable community and as I mentioned with 50 percent over 50 percent of our carbon coming from transportation We want to make sure that anybody moves into cannery has great bike access to the rest of the city But of course the boundary on the south the only entry and exit from cannery is covelle boulevard And so the council concurrent with the development of the cannery Project put together a covelle corridor and cannery connectivity plan. And so this shows We'll have Have cannery kind of right in here But we're we're making sure that bikes and cars and the traffic lights that are in here are all going to work well and in particular the council Saw and really received cooperation and funding from the developer to make sure that we have grade separated bike crossings at the Southwest and the southeast of the cannery project and that was You can have a great piece of collaboration Between all parties to get as much money as we could for that and we'll be working carefully to make sure that those Grade separated crossings are as effective as as possible and make sure we have as many people on bikes in the community As we can as we can get I also want to recognize in land use planning That using our measure o funds the city is Preserving 391 and I think the number is actually changing as we do the surveys, but approximately 400 acres Outside the mace curve that'll be just outside The east innovation park that we have planned and so that's a major use of our measure o funds To preserve open space right on our right on our border. I also want to recognize in land use planning UC Davis is West Village It's not within the city of Davis, but just west of 113 in south of Russell. We have now over 2,000 new residents living in multifamily housing with 350 single-family homes planned and I mentioned this because The city wants to be a great host to UC Davis, but if housing comes in the city of Davis There's only a percentage of the people that will move in that will actually be UC Davis staff or faculty or students but if new housing happens on UC Davis land and UC Davis still has a land lease then they can set the rules for who moves in and When houses first come up they can be occupied by UC Davis faculty and staff and when they turn over The preference can be for UC Davis faculty and staff and I think that that's one of the best ways That we can make sure that a high percentage of those who work at the university are able to live in our community It will certainly continue to have many university employees that move into new areas developed in town But over time the university numbers might might go down So I'm very very pleased that with West Village We're gonna have more people commuting less and living closer to where they work I mean that's good on so many different levels for for our community West Village is also the nation's largest planned zero net energy Community and that's very exciting to have that in Davis as well the first year audit now the first full year audit for West Village is in and West Village achieved 87% of the energy used at West Village Was generated on site at West Village? So now they're gonna redouble some of their efforts at energy efficiency and they're gonna increase production from just solar To also having a biodigester out there. So that's another big piece in land use planning and sustainability for our for our community I Want to talk now a little bit about? Downtown density and one of the big issues before the council has been how do we kind of carefully? Respecting our great culture of the downtown, but also move it toward higher density and these are two Projects that the council is approved in last year or two. One is the park view place Development, this is right at fourth and D streets and that is up now And it gives us an opportunity to see what three stories downtown looks like this has four residential living spaces in it and then it's Support garage space for those and mixed use on the bottom floor and the council has also approved the mission Residences on B Street just a little bit above Second Street on the west-hand side of the street and these units as well are gonna go up It's gonna give us a chance to see how we do with those and how they fit with the community Central Park West is another Set of seven units right across from Central Park so watch these know that the council is interested and I think these are gonna kind of give us data points on how we go about increasing the density downtown Now I'd like to move to Fiscal sustainability and this is probably been the most consuming issue for me in our council over the past three four years or so and I want to make some observations here about 80% of the city's budget is Labor costs and so when we think about how we're gonna make sure we have room in our budget for a lot of the Amenities that we enjoy in the city of Davis maintaining our parks keeping our roads in good shape We have to be focused on labor. We're also going through and coming out of now You know what's referred to as the Great Recession We've seen cities from Vallejo to Stockton going into bankruptcy And the city is at work very very hard to make sure that we weren't in that category of of city And we of course enjoy a high degree of services So if we're going to keep doing that we have to be very very cost-conscious and There's different components to how we you know make sure we're doing okay on the cost side But I want to point out to everybody that since the 0708 year when the city had 464 employees Through attrition and in a very limited instance some layoffs we've reduced from 464 employees at the city to 361 so over a hundred employees have been reduced from the city's payroll. That's a reduction of 22 percent and it's been very hard But I think we've done that in a way that's gotten close to or has maintained services within the within the city probably the most publicized of staffing cuts have revolved around our fire department Where we used to have 12 firefighters on duty 24 7 and now through council action We've reconfigured how we deploy our fire staffing and we've gone from 12 to 11 But I will make the point that that is still Much less of a staffing cut than the city as a whole has has has had We've also made sure that within fire. We've maintained our levels of service By doing a boundary drop with UC Davis, which means that we're operating those two Fire departments really as as one and we've consolidated the upper levels of management With with UC Davis. This was something proposed actually by Senator Lois Wolk and the campus back in 1994 and we've now achieved that with this council The consolidation of upper level fire management will result over time in up to two hundred thousand dollars of savings and reducing the Staffing from 12 to 11 brings us somewhere around $450,000 a year in savings and as we'll see when we go a little bit further. Those are really quite significant for us So we also proved just in last Last December of 2012 right at the end of the year prior We proved Labor MOUs with five out of our seven labor groups and with two of our labor groups We weren't able to come to agreement but we've now We've kind of imposed last best and final on DCEA and the fire department and so we go forward there So we have in place now contracts with all seven of our labor negotiating groups now there's There's a couple things to say about the budget But if we hadn't gone through all the cost cutting that we've gone through over the last 18 months or so We would be facing probably about five million more in annual costs on our approximately 40 to 42 million dollar general fund So really very very significant savings that we've that we've achieved now I want to say that we're we're kind of getting as real as we can in all of the accounting of the city We don't want to have a budget that's built on any kind of gimmicks. And so I want to show a couple of things here one of the biggest parts of our Labor costs are our our purrs costs the public employee retirement system that we participate in with the state of California And if you ask the Cal State of California, how much? purrs Contributions are required from the city They'll kind of tell you up to this point and then it's kind of implied that it's going to stay flat But our city Davis has kind of looked as as accurately we can into the crystal ball And we really see that for general employees in the city. We see pension costs going up We just don't see any way that if the state keeps its promise of defined benefit to The employees of the state that we participate in the system we first participate in That the there's gonna be anything near a flat cost and so our budgets for Davis anticipate this We're we're saving for this we're budgeting for this to make sure our budget is as real as possible We don't have surprises for public safety employees We see an even steeper rise because we have earlier retirements and higher percentages there And so we're trying to be as real as possible as we can on these on these pension costs Another thing that we're doing at the city is trying to make sure that we don't we're not deferring a long-term cost that we really should be spending dollars on today and the biggest area for this is roads and We're probably under invent. We've probably got about a 30 million dollar Deficit in the amount of roads funding that we should have and I put this chart up here to show That if you When when pavement is in good condition It's it may be 40% of of its life You can maybe spend four dollars to seven dollars and fifty cents per square yard To slurry seal it or cap seal it and it doesn't cost that much to keep it in good shape But if you wait until pavement is at 75 percent or 90 percent of its of its life Then the costs just become tremendous 26 27 Dollars per square yard 61 to 81 dollars per square yard when you get up into the 90 percent level and so The city council has worked very hard to try to figure out where we're going to find money so that we can repair our roads as soon as possible So that these costs don't multiply and if we're to really get on top of this It would probably be something around five million dollars per year that we should be spending on our roads But on a budget of forty forty two million dollar general fund budget. That is a lot of money. That's well over ten percent as you know So we're putting Somewhere around two to three million away now in our budgets to start to quite frankly slow The deterioration of our roads, but it's not really going to be as far as we want to go But it's the best we can we can do now, but I want I want everybody to know that the council is paying close attention to this So as we look to the the budget ahead for the city our next budget will be our 13 14 general fund budget and We really are now at about a Four and a half to five million dollar structural deficit in the city and so the black line shows the predicted structural deficit for the city of Davis and the red shows the Kind of accumulation of the the fund balance and if we were to do nothing You'd be you know out in the 18 19 budget with a 28 million dollar deficit So even with all of the belt tightening that we've done at the city We're still looking at a situation Like this and that really does mean that we need to think about some sort of a revenue measure For the city of Davis That'll come to the council actually next Tuesday night, and we've had Mayor pro tem walk and council member Lee kind of looking at the ways that we can do this The lead idea is probably a half cent sales tax increase that we could put on our June 3rd Election could be a parcel tax. We'll consider that as well But if it were a half cent sales tax that the council were to adopt in a week That might bring somewhere between 3.5 and 3.7 million dollars a year into our general fund That is quite frankly still, you know, not enough to meet this Meet this structural deficit. So even with a revenue measure We probably have to have further belt tightening at the at the city With that the other one cost item I wanted to mention is water The city pays for its water just like the residents pay for their water And so we're looking at conservation measures Throughout the city to make sure we bring our water costs down and the first move here is probably our well 11 That's in community park and we're going to be shifting that well on to watering just the park and some of the school district fields to to save Save money and that was part of one of the conservation measures that I mentioned a little bit a little bit earlier So just concluding on budget, you know, the good news would be that we've we've tightened things down The bad news is that we've still got further further and further to go And long-term economic development is going to be a source of revenue for us Helping us on the property tax front and sales tax front But that is more long term. I'd like to mention a couple of things looking forward to 2015 now Water project cost savings, which I mentioned that's very exciting and then seeing how that might help us Reduce the water rate increases that we're anticipating On the revenue front. I mentioned as well We probably have to look at a revenue measure coming on the ballot in June We actually have to declare that we're going to put that on the ballot in February. So everybody will see that coming up With UC Davis, I'm very very excited our work on what we call the downtown University Innovation District and this Nishi property That has been talked about for years and years and this council and our staff now Really moving on that project with with campus I foresee continuing increases in partnerships within the city where we look to great great community groups To work with us more I want to make sure that the city is in as good a position to support those partnerships as possible Swim America on the swimfront Davis diamonds and the gymnastics front Explore it on the education front We're gonna have a wonderful community build this spring this council has been working with the innovation of the downtown arts and entertainment folks on the area around the first in F Regal theater that can it gets a little bit dark and it's not real creative around there And so we're gonna be sprucing that up and adding some benches and adding some art And there's gonna be a huge community build group coming in to do that volunteer work for us Volunteer day will be April 26th, and we anticipate getting Hundreds of people out onto the Davis streets for that volunteer day One of the things that I talked about last year my state of the city address to was the creation of a Davis community foundation We all know that this is a very generous community to so many of our nonprofits But the city doesn't really have kind of a glue that encourages philanthropy and increasingly in communities community Foundations play two important roles one is they can help facilitate what are called donor directed funds Where people can give their money to a community foundation when they have a tax need to do that And then they can designate those funds in a different Calendar year for a charity of their choice and we want to set up that mechanism here in the city of Davis And then that helps also the community foundation can help with plan giving we have a Tremendously active an aging population Davis They're certainly setting up wills and have an interest in giving back to the community in which they raise their children And they grew up themselves. And so plan giving and helping people do that will also benefit our nonprofits in town So those are things to look forward to perhaps the biggest challenge I'd like to indicate for the city is is the council continuing to interact with the incredibly engaged public that we have and I get so many emails every day from people on so many different issues my colleagues on the council do As well and our city staff are constantly Handling inquiries that I think one of our greatest challenges is communication and our website is going to be redone In the next month or so in the city of Davis to make sure that people can touch the city more I want to encourage everybody when you get interested in an issue to go to our website and find the staff report And I think you'll be absolutely impressed at how outstanding the staff work is in the city and how much we think through things And so if you're concerned about water conservation or solid waste Read the staff report and just see all the considerations that went into the city ordinance that's guiding us in those areas So with that I'd like to thank all of you for coming here this evening I'd like to thank the vanguard again For hosting this state of the city address and I'd like to open this up for any questions that we've got from the audience on Topics, and I'm delighted that the state of the city is taking on a higher profile and that in the future. We'll have our other mayors coming up here and Talking about the city and making sure we have a strong a dialogue as possible with our citizens So thank you all very very much for being with us Okay, Stacey has got a microphone and if anyone would like to ask a question or two, I'd be delighted to I'd be delighted to answer Okay, so let's get the My understanding was that you said that The labor cost represented at 80% And that there had been a reduction of 22% by Nutrition and a few layoffs and so I'm wondering if that 22% reduction was enough to change that I Think that we're we're you know the It's getting better Or or it may be it may be coming down I haven't seen the new number since the last budget when we were pushing up toward 80 But even as we bring the 20 the 22% has been over the last seven years So we're still kind of in a small percent per per year But they think that's something that we'll watch one of the things we've done with retiree benefits So-called OPEB other post-employment benefits is to is to absolutely make sure that a long term We're putting in money now That we can always keep our obligations for retiree health to our employees And that does mean that we've increased some of our payments to make sure that the benefits are solved at long term So while we've brought Certain we reduce staffing overall in our most recent labor MOUs We also gave modest salary increases to our employees But we also made sure that we're kind of fully funding the things that are non-salary So there's there's trade-offs within that Next question This isn't a question, but it ties into two of the things you said the water project There's an open house at the senior center on Thursday at 6 30 for anyone who wants to meet the Contractor who is going to be building the surface water plan and tomorrow night is the first meeting of the coval Corridor task force. I think also at the senior center I'm not sure Is it the senior center? Do we know there was an article in the newspaper about it? Might be the bed. We'll find out before we very lively week this week. That's right And tomorrow there's a brown bag downtown on parking meeting meters. So where's the Where's the The coval corridor meeting tomorrow night is what time six o'clock? Six o'clock six o'clock tomorrow night at the vet center the coval corridor presentation will be made and then Six o'clock at the senior center on Thursday evening. We'll have meet the contractor Which is CH2M Hill for the regional water project and tomorrow downtown will have Parking meters at a brown bag lunch of the Davis downtown. I believe good at the Pence gallery Good so all kinds of community engagement going on on the projects of the city. So next question So I have a question about the state-managed diversion rates I'm totally understand this when you say we have a 75% state-managed diversion rate. That's based on our what like what Number what we're diverting now It's it's 70% of our waste needs to be diverted from the landfill Based on when we were like what number yeah, it's it's a baseline because for a long time the goal was 50% and then you know, I don't five years ago or so We met other cities met the 50% and now the new goal is 75% Diversion and there's actually a fair amount of debate about what's included in that 75% And so the one of the challenges of the NRC was you know, what what the baseline was So I understand your question and and I'm not capable of answering that right now So because if we because I understand David has a pretty good diversion rate already So there are so we're actually expected like 75% of 80% For 50% is much harder like it's almost like we're already diverting Actually bigger burden. So we actually we are not as good as we we should be I mean we certainly met the 50% But there are communities that recycle there or that take compost And have a much higher diversion rate than the city of Davis does I mean it depends again how you count it But after we got past our 50% you know, we're somewhere. I think in the the mid to low 60s now So we've still got a ways to go to get to the to get to the 75 But the 75 is not on top of our current success the 75 is on top of what we what we what we disperse from our homes Yeah, so there's the same baseline with with other communities and there are and there are communities in California that have already Moved past 75% We've still got a challenge and that's why we're looking at it very very closely One of the things we're going to do in our new contract with Davis waste removal is we're going to have very aggressive Performance standards and I'm very proud of this Councilmember Frerichs and I worked closely on this we're going to have very strong performance standards So that our waste hauler is is going to be paid more if they meet certain targets in diversion And the view is that the waste hauler DWR in town knows more than anything About what's really going on on the street and they're they're best able to you know Do the outreach to our citizens and tell us just what we should be doing differently And I think that sets up the right incentives for us to get to 75 percent as fast as possible Okay, we have another question here I'll say to yeah, I was just Wondering how much research has gone into looking for maybe private sector solutions for some of the services that Davis delivers to us Since the the 80% is a really high figure Towards the total budget Has the private sector been looked at Yeah, I think there's I think there's a couple ways to address that. I mean one is that You know in my my personal experience You can often find that when you when you contract out You know, you can become very dependent on Private party and then the next time you bid it out. You're not in his competitive Situation but we do look at areas for example the water project is without any question The biggest new cost of the city and we're we're certainly bidding that out And we're not only bidding out the the design and the construction But we did go with operate as well so we did what's called a design bid operate contract and The bidder CH2M Hill the successful bidder on it has to operate the project for 15 years And what that meant was that you made sure that the person that designed it knew that they were going to have to build it And the person who built it knew that they were going to have to operate it so it wasn't just do it and then you know move on and We found that in the cost then the overall cost of the community is locked in because we know exactly what the Operation costs are going to be for this very expensive water project for the next 15 years We also found kind of a nice co-benefit Which was in energy savings because if they know that they're going to operate it they want to have Operating costs as low as possible, and we did something with with the DPO contract where we said We're going to set an energy use number That is kind of the best practices for what it would cost to process that amount of water and if the bidder saves more Saves it uses less energy than the baseline that we've set then They get half of the savings and the ratepayers get half of the savings And if they use more energy than we predicted they should then in fact they have to swallow that and it comes out of their profit So we created an energy incentive there the other piece on the privatization is The idea I think that we just work with so many great community partners on different projects So we have a great great core staff But some of our recreation now is popping up as as private recreation And so that relieves, you know us from doing that in the city. Maybe we would be able to do it Maybe we wouldn't be able to do it, but I think there is a there's kind of a trend in that direction But we also want to have outstanding core staff with that institutional memory long term And we've certainly got that in the city of Davis now I think you know, I will add to that there is a great movement in Yolo County and in the region Toward what we call shared services Where we look at what other jurisdictions are doing where we could team up and the Consolidating the upper levels of our fire management is a great example of shared services in the city of Davis It's kind of staring us in the face to make sure we were coordinating UC Davis and city of Davis fire management at the highest levels And I think we'll continue to look at that. There's a lot of interest at the county in doing that We do that in animal services for example in the county all of the cities bundled their dollars together so that we have one Animal services facility in in woodland, and I think shared services will continue to be at the fore as well Question yeah, you mentioned earlier I saw it floated the other day about Initially owned a utility could you talk about why that might be cost-effective my understanding from past campaigns is that our current provider campaigns very aggressively against those sorts of initiatives and how how Davis could do that and save money Right, so, you know, I would just I would commend to everybody the the two studies that have come before us on a publicly owned utility and you just you just you just crunch the Numbers and there's you know There's different charges on your utility bill and so on and some of those You know certainly go to the go to the PG&E today But if we were to take over we would do it ourselves and we would capture those dollars You know the question is You know, what's the cost of providing the service and what would the cost be of purchasing the infrastructure now if we go forward with a Publicly owned utility. We're looking just on the electricity side. It wouldn't be feasible on the natural gas side but the the numbers we have is that over a 30-year period of time between 100 and 130 million dollars could be saved by the community and in addition You know, some of our rate-payer dollars could be put into programs that would help people save money and meet our sustainability objectives Now PG&E is doing sustainability objectives now. There's no question about it But for example, one of the great interests of this community a bill sponsored by Senator Wolk Was to allow Davis to have a community solar where the city could put up the land Our residents could pay in their private dollars And we could create a large solar array on the edge of the city and you'd receive a bill credit Almost as though you had the solar on your roof But we'd be able to build the big array with economies of scale And there's many people in Davis who can't have solar on their roads because they're apartment dwellers or because they've got shade or They don't want to put it on their roof because they don't want to replace the roof quite yet Or they've got a lot of turrets and tile or something like that And that's something that the utilities have not been in favor of So we take a little bit more control of our energy destiny if we were to go to a POU But the dollars are something we have to be very careful about if we're going to move in this direction We're going to ask the citizens to trust us. We have to make sure that it's really gonna really gonna pencil out There's no question about that. So Everyone who wants to follow this should the reports are all there and we'll we'll see where we end up Good another question Well or an observation if that's okay, please and perhaps a suggestion one thing I saw missing from your presentation was much with regard to health wellness and safety Good good. So on you know on the safety side certainly roads are you know are part of that You know typically it's the counties that are more involved in health But there's a couple things that that I will mention one is that all of the cities in Yolo County Have a wonderful ten-year plan to eliminate homelessness and we're collaborating on that That's a very complicated web of different social services Where we bring the cities and the counties together. We have Davis community meals Here in town and we have our interfaith rotating winter shelter, but we need to coordinate more on that And I will mention I'd like to acknowledge too that our council made a decision not to Floridaate our water But concurrently made a commitment to make sure that we're working for dental health Countywide and I'm watching to make sure that we kind of hold to our commitment there Because we're not going to use our water supply to Florida We do have an obligation to make sure we do things to reduce the carries rates in our in our community And I think our council is very interested in overall, you know health and welfare and so I'd encourage citizens that you know have ideas in that area to come to us and you know It fits into the category of how we can effectively partner to make sure that we're not doing everything as a city But we're facilitating as much as we possibly can within our within our borders to improve the quality of life in Davis More questions We have city staff here today too We have our chief innovation officer Rob white if there were any questions for Rob in the area of economic development We have Stacy Winton with us Stacy is really our outreach coordinator for the city She she does the fantastic Davis neighbors night out 120 plus parties that we host in the fall. We also have Yvonne query with us and Vons our deputy city manager and handles the whole finance side For for the city of Davis. So if there's any questions of them, I'd like to bring that up You know, let me mention one issue too that I didn't have on my outline But it really is going to affect everybody in the city of Davis In the next couple months really and that is we're going to complete our fifth street redesigned project the so-called road diet for the city of Davis from a through L And it turns out the city of Davis. We have about 65 plus thousand people and probably About 64,000 traffic planners who all have an opinion about the fifth street project And I want to make a couple of points The number one reason that we're doing the fifth street project in Davis is for safety a disproportionate number of our accidents car on car Car on pedestrian car on bike are in the corridor from a through L street on on fifth street and To address this we're going to go from four lanes on fifth street down to two lanes But we're going to have dedicated left turn lanes and for traffic People are very very concerned because intuitively if you go from four to two the idea is that it's not going to be as good And so I want to make it clear that the speed through that corridor will be diminished But safety will certainly go up, but the travel time From a to L will be reduced on average by 45 seconds the travel time from a to L On fifth street will be reduced on average by 45 seconds. So you'll go slower But you won't stop as much you won't have to stop when somebody wants to take a left turn It won't back up traffic because they'll go into a dedicated left turn lane And the big way that this happens is because the signals at F and G Will go from three phase to two phase. So right now if you're at F and G and you miss the light You have to wait through two phases The traffic going the opposite way on fifth street and then the north-south traffic happening And so when we go to two phases there, that's going to really change everything right around F and G It might be a little bit harder if you're crossing from south to north of north to south And you're trying to get across fifth street, but I think people's behavior will change They'll turn left and then they'll get in the left-hand turn lane and they'll turn They'll turn right get in the left-hand turn lane and then turn left So you might jog one block either way But it'll actually I think be easier to get across fifth street now With the with the redesign and then we're gonna have bike lanes there And so everybody's very frustrated when we see bikes on fifth street because it feels so unsafe it makes Drivers very very nervous But the bikes also have the right to be there. So as long as we have great bike paths on fifth street that are west of a and also that are East of L people are gonna want to ride a bike on fifth street We're gonna provide a safe way for them to go forward and do that So I hope everybody will be a little bit patient, but it looks like the data is there that this is gonna be a good thing I also think that the fifth street redesign is gonna be very good for downtown because if people go slower Through the a to g corridor. I think they may be a little bit more inclined To turn off of fifth and visit downtown as opposed to feeling like they're just going through a quick gauntlet And we're gonna hopefully get more people from Old North Davis Pedestrians to walk into downtown so we'll get more connectivity between the neighborhood to the north And and downtown so fifth street is another big thing. That's coming up for everybody Another thing I'll mention in the area of partnerships, too Is we have probably somewhere between 1700 and 2000 swimmers in the city of Davis our city pools are highly valued and the city council is very interested in Figuring out some kind of a funding mechanism again where we can kind of provide the foundation But the community might be able to come in and do some fundraising Maybe with some supplemental funds from the city to figure out how we can improve our pool system There's great interest in a 50 meter pool in Davis and the council wants to figure out a financing mechanism to make that happen It is very expensive to run pools. So this will absolutely have to be a partnership But there is the interest on behalf of the city and having a partnership in this this area So any other questions before we before we wrap it up? Okay, we've answered everything Thank you again to the Davis vanguard for hosting this and bringing it forward. David. Would you like to make any? remarks to to conclude Very good We in our economic development team Sarah Worley Sarah. Thank you very very much for being with us tonight He was hidden she was just looking like such a polite citizen back there. We didn't we get it. Thank you, Rob Very very much there. Good Okay, David. I wanted to thank the mayor again for for doing this again I thought it was important that The town folks all the citizens in the city get it an opportunity to see this because this is a critical year that we're facing We have elections We're going to have decisions on revenue issues and and we're going to have decisions on Economic development and and so laying it all out so that the citizens can understand in advance What we're facing is critically important. So again on behalf of the Davis vanguard And I want to thank my board who's Here in the audience as well For helping to put this together. Thanks for coming tonight. Thanks