QUIT WASTING
OUR TAXES
Our Davis City Council has irresponsibly granted excessive salary increases to Senior Management and staff while the city is in dire fiscal straits. The latest salary increases, granted by the current Davis City Council, will cost taxpayers millions of dollars over the coming years.
9.25%
sales tax
$11 million
average annual cost of staff raises in excess of inflation this decade
3 years
behind on city audits
0
accountability for new taxes
About Measure Q
If passed on the November ballot, Davis Measure Q would double the extra sales tax imposed by the City of Davis from 1% to 2% on all goods purchased or used within the City except for some food and medicines. Like the previous two ½ percentage point sales and use tax hikes, this tax is permanent. It doesn’t matter if the City’s financial condition substantially changes for the better in the future, this tax never goes away!
8 Reasons to Vote No
THE COUNCIL HAS MISMANAGED OUR FINANCES AND LACKS TRANSPARENCY
The City Council suspended operations of our watchdog Finance & Budget Commission.
For decades, the citizens of Davis have relied on the citizen’s advisory Finance and Budget Commission to provide needed oversight of the City’s finances. But our City Council has been so contemptuous of this Commission that they quietly refused to appoint any new applicants to fill Commission vacancies for more than a year. As a result, they have not met since July, 2023. So this critical Commission never even got the chance to weigh in on the need for new taxes or how the proceeds will be spent. What is the City Council trying to hide from us?
The City Council suspended paying down $42 million of unfunded employee benefits.
The City has a massive $42 million debt for unfunded employee healthcare benefits. The City’s former Finance and Budget Commission made this a central theme of many of its publicly-noticed meetings, demanding that we not keep kicking this debt down the road for our children to pay. Progress was made for many years until this last year when the City Council decided to suspend payments. So that debt has started rising again. Why can’t we trust our City Council to honestly disclose and address this huge City liability?
The City Council last produced audited Financial Statements for 2021 - 3 years ago.
The City is 3 years behind in producing a set of audited financial statements – even though under state law they are required to do this annually. It is almost inconceivable that the City is refusing to perform this most basic step to ensure honesty and transparency in reporting City finances. But the City Council has offered no reason why this task has not been completed for so long. Would you invest in a company that was 3 years behind in preparing audited financial statements? Would the IRS let you be 3 years behind in filing your taxes?
The City Council has squandered many millions of dollars on “Nice-to-Have” projects Instead of maintaining what It already has.
In 2022, the City Council authorized the purchase of a brand new ladder truck and equipment for the City’s Fire Department for millions of dollars, even though the City has access to UC Davis’ ladder truck only about a mile away. And there are only a few Davis buildings high enough to even need a ladder truck and these are already fully equipped with sprinklers. Even worse, the City also has to spend more than $1 million per year to hire additional firefighters and incur other costs to operate the truck. They also needed to spend $600,000 more to expand the downtown fire station to accommodate this larger truck. Further, the City Council authorized spending over $1,500,000 refurbishing the kitchens in the City’s three fire stations even though all of them were perfectly functional and are used by only 3 firefighters at a time to cook meals. And the list of wasteful spending goes on. Why are there no checks and balances in place to limit our Councils’ wasteful and profligate spending?
THE CITY COUNCIL HAS FAILED TO PROPERLY MAINTAIN CITY ASSETS
The City Council reduced the budget to repair roads, bike paths, and sidewalks by $1.5 million per year.
One only has to look outside our front windows to see the awful state of our roads, bike paths and sidewalks. Our street’s are objectively the worst in the County, and there is a huge backlog of major repairs and routine maintenance that still needs to be performed. Even though we have been promised for years that the City Council was laser-focused on improving efficiency and reducing waste to devote more resources to road and infrastructure repair, our City Council reduced the funding for pavement and sidewalk repairs by $1.5 million this year. Why won’t the City Council keep its priorities straight and hold to its promises on how they are spending our money?
The City Council has shown Itself to be grossly incompetent at managing street improvement projects like the “Mace Mess”.
With great fanfare, in 2017 the City began spending over $2 million to supposedly “improve” Mace Blvd south of I-80. The redesign was promised to improve pedestrian and bike safety while increasing traffic flow through the corridor. Yet the end result was a disaster with traffic backed up all the way into the countryside for hours each afternoon. The City was forced to spend over $3 million more over 4 years just to get Mace Blvd functioning again. Why were other street design options not explored more thoroughly before wasting millions of dollars?
The Council refuses to commit to a specific plan on how they will spend our money.
The City Council claims the new tax revenues will be spent wisely but refuses to tell us exactly on what. Meanwhile, they also promise to expand programs and create more services with the new revenues. But when asked what they will be doing with $11 million more of our money every year, unfortunately, our City Council merely says “TRUST US”. Why does the City Council continue to play games by being purposely vague about how our money will be spent?