Normally I don’t delve much into Davis politics; we’re a small city with lots of bikes: what more do you need to know? But recently, there was quite a stir about the salary that the City Council offered to a new city manager (he took the job). There was a lot of confusion first, about the amount of the offer specifically, and then, about whether it was an appropriate amount given the city size and complexity. These issues, of course, blend into what a city council expects from a new manager and how that should feed into a salary offer. And it also brings up the issue of transparency (of both process and expectations).
I used the state Controller city salary data from 2009 to plot salary against: 1) CA cities with population between 55k and 85k and 2) against cities within Solano, Yolo and Sacramento counties (Davis is in Yolo). The League of Cities has suggested negotiating city manager compensation based on, among others, salaries in comparably sized cities and cities within geographic proximity.
I then added two estimates of the new Davis city manager salary. (They are estimates because some parts of the salary may be deferred in any given year). The first estimate came from Rich Rifkin, a local columnist, and the second from Sue Greenwald, a city council member. When asked for salary figure comparable to the controller data, the Davis Human Resources Department sent me the new city manager’s contract and told me that they couldn’t provide estimates until the 2011 taxes were filed. (It’s pretty strange to me that we hire people with public funds without being able to provide at least an estimate of this number). Finally, I also plotted the new city manager salary for Sacramento, a city with a population nearly 7x larger than Davis. (Note: When asked, the City of Sac seemed to be able to provide comparable estimates to the controller 2009 reported data).
Looking at the plot on the left, the salary for the incoming city manager will move Davis to from slightly below the 25th-percentile to above the 90th-percentile for all CA cities with populations between 55k-75k population. This is not an outrageous Bell-level salary, but certainly represents a big jump in what the City has traditionally paid its managers. Manteca is highlighted because that’s where the new Davis manager came from. If you look at the average salary paid for cities within and adjacent to Yolo County, Davis’ previous city manager (Emlen) was paid about the average amount. The new city manager will be paid at about the 95th percentile of cities within the 3 county comparison (Yolo, Sacramento and Solano).
So what does all of this mean? Well, first, it suggests that the City is paying a premium to get this particular city manager relative to previous city managers. Based on what’s been publically circulated, his experience seems to be about average for CA city managers. Given this, it would seem sensible to have some very public expectations about job performance. What are the performance expectations that demand this high salary level? This is a transparency issue: the City Council does not seem to have any clear performance goals, other than the usual “run the City.”
I looked around for cities who seem to have performance goals and greater transparency. I found a number, and here I highlight two. The first is Vancouver, WA, which has an amazing wealth of information available to the average citizen, and the second is San Ramon, which has the highest paid city manager in the 55k-75k population group. Maybe the City Council could use these two sites to help us understand their goals for what the new City Manager should accomplish in running the City (and, of course, to justify the salary).
Finally, a few caveats on the analysis. While I do know there is at least a solid $45k difference between the old and new city manager, with Human Resources unable to estimate the salary for the new city manager, I’m left the Rifkin/Greenwald estimates. Next, the controller data is for 2009 and the new city manager data is 2011. I don’t think this is a serious problem because the CPI last year was about 1.6, so in real dollars, there won’t be much difference. Finally, city population, of course, doesn’t explain all the variation in city manager salary (about 35%); lots of other factors can play a role in setting salary levels.
“We stopped a war”
Yesterday I went to the campus protests. I listened carefully to each of the 7-10 students personally describe their experience of being pepper-sprayed. Then at some point during the telling of these stories, a highly respected faculty member who had gone to college in the 60s, turned to me, and shaking his head, said: “ ‘We’ stopped a war.”
Everyone I know is appalled at the pepper-spraying incident. The video is devastating to watch. I’m also hearing a lot of: what is it they [the protestors] want? I have to confess I find this confusing as well. Sunday night I went to dinner at one of the dorms and sat with 10-15 undergraduates ranging from political science to biology. They were unanimous in their condemnation of the police actions; they were also unanimous that – at least on the UC Davis campus – the protestors did not fairly represent their concerns. I asked them what their number one concern was and they responded tuition increases. I asked them what they thought the protestors were protesting, and they paused and said, that’s the problem, we’re not sure.
Yesterday’s protests seemed to be some about the experiences of the students who were sprayed, reasonable enough. Some of it also was about ‘taking back the system’, which means what? And a lot more than I expected seemed to revolve around a young English professor getting everyone to chant that the Chancellor should resign.
If she did indeed authorize force that night, I’ll be the first to say she must go, but the things is – we don’t know. We don’t know what the chain of command approved, said, or did that day. And we won’t know for a while. So what is it that the English professor thinks the Chancellor should resign for exactly?
Which brings me next to the “Davis Faculty Association”, who has also called for the Chancellor’s resignation and has been quoted everywhere (BBC, ABC News, WA Post). Who are they exactly? According to their membership list, there are about 120 active faculty members. The UC Davis faculty comprises roughly 1400 faculty. How is it that these 120 represent the rest of us? Among the faculty I have spoken to, none have said they want the Chancellor to resign ahead of fact-finding. I wouldn’t expect them to, we are a science and engineering campus. We tend to value the process of fact-finding. [I subsequently added an apology to this statement - see here]
While I am completely in sync with the students regarding the pepper-spraying, I see yesterday’s protest as a lost opportunity for them. Tuition increases (not to mention completely revamping police training) are a very big deal. The unwillingness of taxpayers, corporations, the whole lot, to pay for public education is a travesty. We are sacrificing everyone’s future. Yet, none of this seemed to be the focus of the day’s protests, especially for the young English professor, who is mostly aimed at having you buy tents (“100s’ of them) to populate the quad, because that’s what the “administration cannot tolerate” . Now that’s helpful to the students.