2007 Year in Review--10 Biggest Vanguard Stories of 2007

As the first full year of the People's Vanguard of Davis comes to completion, we will countdown the top 10 stories from year. This is the second year we have done this.

Last year we counted down the 10 Biggest Stories in Davis.

This year we countdown the 10 biggest stories that we followed on the People's Vanguard of Davis.

We continue with the 8th biggest story: Saylor Claims He's Civil.

There are times when politicians make claims so outrageous that you just have to shake your head in amazement at the audacity. Such was the case on April 8, 2007, when Don Saylor wrote his treatise on Civility in Public Discourse.

Mr. Saylor writes:

"Nearly every day, someone in Davis expresses concern to me about the stark incivility that mars much of the public dialogue in our community. While we can certainly point to glaring examples of discord around the world, I prefer to think our community can do better."

The problem is of course, Mr. Saylor himself has the reputation for being incivil and at times an outright bully within this community.

As I wrote at the time:

"As I read Davis City Councilmember Don Saylor's treatise in the Davis Enterprise Sunday on civility in public discourse, the first thought running through my head is who is Don Saylor to be lecturing to the community on civility. This is a man with a widespread reputation in this community for treating people in a very non-civil manner. He has berated many individuals in front of others when he has had disagreements with them. Moreover, in public discourse Mr. Saylor often gets away with making very malicious, cynical, and critical statements of others due to the measured way in which he speaks."

There are a number of examples of Mr. Saylor's incivility in public life, but by far the most pertinent example is an attack letter signed by Mr. Saylor's wife, Julie who unleashed an attack on then candidate Lamar Heystek charging him with sexism and misogyny based strictly upon a tongue-in-cheek column he penned for the UC Davis Student newspaper, the California Aggie.

Mrs. Saylor concluded her attack by suggesting that Mr. Heystek should not be considered a viable candidate for council:

"I recommend that Lamar Heystek get a decade or two distant from his Aggie column before anyone consider him a viable candidate for council. This is not a comment about chronological age. We need to choose candidates with the emotional maturity, balance, perspective and experience to serve our whole community."

The irony of course for many observers is that Mr. Heystek is likely the most congenial and often the most mature and respectful member on the council, addressing his colleagues by their formal titles, disagreeing with his colleagues without being disagreeable. In short, in his brief time on the council, it is Mr. Heystek and not Mr. Saylor who embodies the ideal of civility that we ought to strive to be as a community.

This is not the only example of Mr. Saylor failing to practice what he preaches. Last February, during the course of a debate over the Cannery Park property, Mr. Saylor spoke from prepared text and suggested that he was being disrespected.

"I want to make one small observation, in our council ground rules, under the first paragraph, it says that each councilmember should treat each other with respect and dignity even when disagreements arise. I feel disrespected and treated without dignity when my motivations are questioned and it is assumed that I am leading to something that I have not said."

The irony is that while his opponents on the council were suggesting the council majority had ulterior motives for their proposal--to eventually develop the Covell Village project--their criticism was not directed at any individual and the tone was very civil.

Of course that has not stopped Mr. Saylor from questioning the motives of others from the dais.

In the fall of 2006, during a discussion on living wage that Councilmember Lamar Heystek had been encouraged (by his council colleagues) to bring forward as an item written by a councilmember.

“There’s just a number of questions about this. To bring it up as a discussion is appropriate. To bring it up as a full-blown ordinance for a first reading, that’s not talking about policy, that’s talking about politics in a lead-up to an election.”

Remember this was after Councilmember Souza specifically encouraged Councilmember Heystek to bring forward this item as an item by a councilmember.

Councilmember Saylor also complains that certain actions by the public have produced "a chilling effect on the practice of community."

As the result of this, he argues,

"Many residents have told me they no longer feel they can "safely" participate in public discourse; they are reluctant to write a letter or speak in public for fear of vilification."

In fact, it has often been the actions of city council members that have produced this kind of atmosphere. Councilmember Saylor and his colleagues are as guilty of that as anyone.

Last spring, the ASUCD Senate passed a resolution in support of the creation of a civilian police review board. Rob Roy, a UC Davis student and also a candidate for the city council, presented the resolution to the city council during public comment. Saylor then proceeded to accuse him of presenting a distorted account of events and calling this manipulation "cynical," "malicious," and most likely "politically motived."

And what is that--that is the questioning of the motives of ASUCD when they brought forth a resolution that they deemed important. Exactly what he would later preach against when he found his motivations (nominally questioned).

Perhaps the most disturbing part of all is that Councilmember Saylor appears to believe what he wrote. He uses the article as a campaign piece, trotting it out to all events.

At this point, the more observant Vanguard Readers are saying, okay that is an interesting story, but why is it the 8th biggest story of 2007? Because the story does not end here of course. Mr. Saylor's preachings had to be put into motion of course with a two session retreat last summer where the council endured at city expense a special workshop on Transactional Effectiveness.

In it were two themes of the five topics--the idea of questioning of fellow council members' motivations and the second was the treatment of staff by council.

I wrote at the time:

"Councilmember Don Saylor suggested that it was "uncivil" to question the motivations of fellow councilmembers. He suggested that the councilmembers could disagree on the issue but there was a general notion by all of the councilmembers that each one was doing what they thought was best for the city."

Nothing wrong with the general notion, the problem here is the fact that the preacher is not following his preachings. If you want people to not question your motivations, start by not questioning theirs.

The next portion of the agenda was used to attack Mayor Sue Greenwald who has found herself in the position of having to grill staff in order to get them to do their jobs. Sorry to be so harsh, but that's the bottom line. Staff is biased toward the council majority, which leaves you two choices if you are a minority member--either you force staff to admit things or you find your own staff.

As I wrote at the time:

"The second point brought up and this one was transparently aimed at Mayor Greenwald, was the treatment of staff. City Manager Emlen, who is of course in charge of city staff, suggested that the staff does the best they can to produce the reports that they do and their recommendations represent their best assessment based on the information that they uncover. There was a general consensus that the staff should go to greater lengths to provide all sides of the argument in their report, even if they end up recommending against it.

The suggestion by council is that councilmembers are free to question the staff. They are free to disagree with the staff. Mr. Emlen made it clear that they do not take it personally if a councilmember or even the entire council disagree with their recommendation. That is part of the process.

The complaint was that some members did not treat the staff with the professional courtesy that they thought was due. It is entirely acceptable to question staff, but not to publicly berate or embarrass staff.

I can see both sides of the story here. On the one hand is the need to maintain professional courtesy to individuals. However, I do not think the counterpoint was as well articulated as it needed to be. From where I sit, there are times when the staff is either unprepared or they get tunnel vision. The councilmembers have a severe disadvantage in this system. They do not have their own staffers. They also lack the time and expertise to research on their own. So it is easy to suggest that the councilmember is free to disagree with a staffer, but when there is an information asymmetry that disagreement becomes more problematic."

The irony of the Transactional Effectiveness workshop is that perhaps the most lasting aspect of it has been a modification of the rules of debate and procedure--a modification that Councilmember Saylor bitterly opposes.

"The council has stringently been operating under the rule that there needs to be a motion on the floor prior to any discussion. The problem, opponents argue, is that it limits debate, because the moment someone moves for an item they are locked into a position. What we then see are a series of motions and substitute motions and friendly amendments as the council tries to figure out where they really stand, which locks them in, but also bogs them down in procedures.

There was really only one person objecting to the changes in the procedure, and that was Councilmember Don Saylor. In the end, even he voted for it. But during the course of the discussion on Tuesday night, and further during the course of workshop, Mr. Saylor argued forcefully that it would lead to longer debates. I disagree. I think it has the possibility at least to lead to shorter debates, because when the motion is finally made, most people will know where they stand and there will be a good gauge as to who supports what."

It is far from clear that there have been longer debates as the result of the rules change. If there has been any effect, it has been to produce more concise motions because everyone is clear where they stand.

The rules were too stringent, too formalized for most subjects.

As I wrote at the time that council adopted these changes in September:

"I agree with those on the council who have complained that the structure of council meetings, as dictated by Councilmember Don Saylor, is entirely too rigid. The general rule, whether you are using Roberts Rules of Order or Rosenberg's Rules of Order, is that you use the formalized rules when you need to. However, you can also relax the rules when you do not need to. Most bodies, if you watch them, relax their rules except for those intense "to the death" battles that require the most stringent of rules to ensure fairness, and to prevent any bystanders from getting hit with collateral damage."

So it is with great irony that Councilmember Don Saylor's long treatise on civility has resulted in a temporary rules change that he bitterly opposes. For the irony and frankly the sheer hypocrisy of the notion, Don Saylor's Civility Claim is the 8th biggest Vanguard story of 2007.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

"Civility" in Davis Politics

Last summer, the city of Davis paid some amount of money for Transactional Effectiveness Sessions with a professional facilitator. There are all sorts of problems with the idea to do this in the first place, I do not even know where to start.

A few of the recommendations were implemented including a pilot program to change some of the rules that pertain to the operation of meetings. However, for the most part there has not been a huge change in the way in which meetings are run or even the overall level of civility.

Watching the workshops, it did not take long to see why the approach was bound to fail--there was a lack of introspection among the councilmembers with perhaps the exception of the one councilmember least culpable in the infighting. Councilmembers were willing to take others to task but rarely willing to look at their own actions and admit their part in the problems with the way meetings are run. As we know, unless people are willing to look at their own actions and attempt to change their own actions, rarely if ever will real change occur.

But at the end of the day, as we are still on this topic, I begin to wonder if this is something that we ought to really be that concerned about. Local politics is often contentious. Politics in general is in fact contentious. People claim to hate partisanship as it pertains to Washington or Sacramento, but then again they keep electing the same people over and over again--thus rewarding partisan tactics.

I wonder if civility is in fact even that good for the polity. Looking back at the school board, there were divisive issues on the school board over the past two years, but for the most part the members of the board treated each other with respect and disagreements rarely turned acrimonious. Even at points of most tension like the closing of Valley Oak and the September meeting involving the truancy issue, the discourse was reserved and respectful. The school board race itself was largely unremarkable even with a small scandal mixed in. The result, a neat clean election with only 30 percent turnout.

City council races are built on issues that will make the blood boil. The issue of growth is pardoning the pun, explosive. People will come out until three in the morning on hot issues like the building of a new Target store in Davis. Passions will fly. Fights will erupt.

In the ideal world our councilmembers could debate the tough issues and then go get Martinis afterwards. However in the real world, issues are passionate and the bars close at 1 am. Do we really want to take that passion and energy away from the council and make them stale like the school board?

The biggest disappointment this year were survey results that showed how few people watched the City Council on television let alone come down to council chambers. Democracy able to come into people's homes. Issues vital to the community live on our screen. Is it that incivility coming back to bite us yet again? Would people watch their city council if only for the venom and backbiting they watch on the tube that just turns their stomach and forces them to go play a game of soccer, ride their bikes, or watch God forbid, commercial television?

Unfortunately, you see none of that venom at school board meetings. Their meetings are also on TV. And yet, if they did a survey, I would wager that their Nielsen ratings would be through the floor.

Everyone claims to want civility in this society but their actions tell us a different story. They watch the blood and the carnage and turn the station when things get too nice.

Civility sells well in a campaign package, but it isn't what we really want. We want good old bare knuckle, backroom, brawls. We want screaming in the bathroom at 2 am. We want people to show that they care about the issues that we care about. That they are passionate about it. That these issues mean something. And anything short of that is simply unacceptable. These are the issues that shape our community and we want our leaders to respect those issues and fall on the sword for them if they must. Our democracy demands no less.

After all this is the People's Republic of Davis and we are the second most educated city in America. We have standards to maintain and a reputation to uphold. Let us not pretend to be something that we are not.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Commentary: Civility and All Yada-Yada-Yada

I have no idea how much the city of Davis spent on their Transactional Effectiveness Sessions particularly the facilitator. Whatever the cost, perhaps they could have instead spent the money padding the community chambers and purchasing foam batons and bats.

Nevertheless, the Council intends to implement a pilot program for several meetings and experiment with a different procedural format. Again, I have no particular problem changing the procedural format, but I also do not believe procedural format is the source of the problem. Therefore, they could have any format in the world and the next time there is a heated issue we will be hearing a cat fight from the nearest lavatory and someone will be taking pot shots on the government channel that no one apparently watches.

That said, I agree with those on the council who have complained that the structure of council meetings, as dictated by Councilmember Don Saylor, is entirely too rigid. The general rule, whether you are using Roberts Rules of Order or Rosenberg's Rules of Order, is that you use the formalized rules when you need to. However, you can also relax the rules when you do not need to. Most bodies, if you watch them, relax their rules except for those intense "to the death" battles that require the most stringent of rules to ensure fairness, and to prevent any bystanders from getting hit with collateral damage.

The council has stringently been operating under the rule that there needs to be a motion on the floor prior to any discussion. The problem, opponents argue, is that it limits debate, because the moment someone moves for an item they are locked into a position. What we then see are a series of motions and substitute motions and friendly amendments as the council tries to figure out where they really stand, which locks them in, but also bogs them down in procedures.

There was really only one person objecting to the changes in the procedure, and that was Councilmember Don Saylor. In the end, even he voted for it. But during the course of the discussion on Tuesday night, and further during the course of workshop, Mr. Saylor argued forcefully that it would lead to longer debates. I disagree. I think it has the possibility at least to lead to shorter debates, because when the motion is finally made, most people will know where they stand and there will be a good gauge as to who supports what.

Remember that because of the Brown act, only two people can partner up before the meeting on an issue, and the other members may have no idea the individual concerns of their colleagues. But putting issues up front, the motions can be tailored to those concerns and not require lengthy amounts of motions, counter-motions, and other procedural tricks. So the potential, is that this could save time. Rules rules have been put in place to prevent filibuster--which would not forestall the item--only make it so that the council has to work later into the night.

So, I am very much in agreement with the changes. Councilmember Saylor's attitude was that he did not care for debate, he simply wanted to make his vote and go home. That's not surprising, since a chief complaint from many has been that the council rarely listens to the public. Furthermore, they often have their statements written out, clearly showing the public that they came to the council meeting with minds made up instead of being willing to listen to the public.

At one meeting that was particularly contentious, a member of the audience yelled to Souza that he was reading his comments and therefore had not been listening to the public's concerns. He responded by saying that he had written them during the meeting. Quite simply there is no way that could have happened, because his comments were too lengthy and he would have spent a long period of time writing them out--again while he was supposed to be listening to the public. So really, either way, he was caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Frankly, it is the height of arrogance, in my opinion, for council to have pre-written statements to deliver. But then again, since no one watches the meetings, it probably does not matter.

As I suggested before, at the end of the day, I'm all for these changes, but the council format, is the not the chief problem facing the council, and therefore changing it, is not going to solve the communication problems between the members. At the end of the day, there is a lack of mutual respect between the members and it shows in their interactions. It is difficult to know the extent that the public is aware of this as the public does not watch the meetings and apparently doesn't read the Davis Enterprise either.

Overall I just wonder at the usefulness of such discourse. I guess we shall see in future weeks whether this model and this workshops had any impact on council relations or whether they will revert back to the "at-your-throat" discourse the moment the heat is turned up again.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Thoughts and Commentary on Special Council Workshop

Yesterday at the Veterans Memorial Hall, the city council had a workshop on Improving Transactional Effectiveness with Lisa Beutler from the Center for Collaborative Policy as the facilitator. I think Ms. Beutler did an outstanding job of facilitating discussion and on some of the smaller issues that arose the workshop might be helpful, but with the big issues, I just do not see a gap that can be bridged. One of the big problems with this sort of format--and in this session the city council only had discussion they took no action--is that change does not occur without ownership of the problems and I saw a lot of finger pointing, but little acceptance of ownership of the problem.

The council met for four hours to discussion a variety of topics. The general theme was that on most issues there was a large amount of agreement. Areas of disagreement are however well known and "based on known, stated, philosophical perspectives. This divide is representative of the community and the discourse in the Council is echoed by the public in multiple settings." There are unproductive interactions. Personality conflicts were the most frequently cited issue.

This article will discuss five of the more heated themes, it is not an exhaustive list, and I will be largely laying out the parameters of the dispute and then my take on the issue itself.

The first topic is the notion of civility. There are two aspects of this that make up the five themes. First, the idea of questioning of fellow council members' motivations and the second will be the treatment of staff.

Councilmember Don Saylor suggested that it was "uncivil" to question the motivations of fellow councilmembers. He suggested that the councilmembers could disagree on the issue but there was a general notion by all of the councilmembers that each one was doing what they thought was best for the city. Honestly, I do not disagree with this viewpoint.

What I have a problem with is that Councilmember Saylor should begin the discussion with the suggestion that he is as guilty of this as anyone--if not more so. The confessional approach here would be more sincere and less of a morality lecture.

This all dates back to a February city council discussion when during the course of debate that was far from heated Saylor said,

"I feel disrespected and treated without dignity when my motivations are questioned and it is assumed that I am leading to something that I have not said."

And yet we can point to at least two prominent examples where Mr. Saylor was on the other end of this debate. On September 19, 2006, during a discussion on a living wage ordinance, Mr. Saylor questioned the motivations of Councilmember Heystek bringing up the discussion:

“To bring it up as a discussion is appropriate. To bring it up as a full-blown ordinance for a first reading, that’s not talking about policy, that’s talking about politics in a lead-up to an election.”

In May of 2006, Councilmember Saylor also characterized a presentation on the passage of a resolution by ASUCD in support of civilian police oversight as "at best ill-informed and at-worst and probably at the heart is malicious, cynical, and politically motivated."

I welcome a discussion of civility, but I think it has to start from the place of introspection. What I see here is that Mr. Saylor is trying to use this as a campaign issue. Indeed, the Democratic Booth on July 4, Mr. Saylor, a non-partisan candidate, placed two of his campaign pieces on the table, one of them was a photocopy of his article in the Davis Enterprise where he talked about civility. As such, it is difficult to accept this discussion as anything other than politically motivated, but of course, then I am questioning his motivations and that would make me uncivil.

The second point brought up and this one was transparently aimed at Mayor Greenwald, was the treatment of staff. City Manager Emlen, who is of course in charge of city staff, suggested that the staff does the best they can to produce the reports that they do and their recommendations represent their best assessment based on the information that they uncover. There was a general consensus that the staff should go to greater lengths to provide all sides of the argument in their report, even if they end up recommending against it.

The suggestion by council is that councilmembers are free to question the staff. They are free to disagree with the staff. Mr. Emlen made it clear that they do not take it personally if a councilmember or even the entire council disagree with their recommendation. That is part of the process.

The complaint was that some members did not treat the staff with the professional courtesy that they thought was due. It is entirely acceptable to question staff, but not to publicly berate or embarrass staff.

I can see both sides of the story here. On the one hand is the need to maintain professional courtesy to individuals. However, I do not think the counterpoint was as well articulated as it needed to be. From where I sit, there are times when the staff is either unprepared or they get tunnel vision. The councilmembers have a severe disadvantage in this system. They do not have their own staffers. They also lack the time and expertise to research on their own. So it is easy to suggest that the councilmember is free to disagree with a staffer, but when there is an information asymmetry that disagreement becomes more problematic.

I recall the water discussion from January. Water is an issue that is so complicated, you almost have to rely on experts for information. Mayor Greenwald asked questions of staff, staff said several times on the question of deep well aquifers, that they did not recommend it or could not do it. But Mayor Greenwald was not asking them that question, she was asking about quality and supply. The staffer three times refused to answer her question without editorial comment. Finally Mayor Greenwald forcefully pressed her point and Councilmember Saylor and Mayor Pro Tem Asmundson complained that Mayor Greenwald was harassing staff.

In an ideal world you would not have to do that, but there are times when a councilmember is trying to get an answer and they do not have the information to agree or disagree, and staff is editorializing rather than answering the question. It may look rude and disrespectful, but the staff is not doing their job. This was not thoroughly discussed yesterday and it needs to be.

The third point was Mayor Pro Tem Ruth Asmundson complaining about the term "council majority." There was the suggestion made that the votes often entail a variety of different configurations. That may be true. But there is a general 3-2 split on the big polarizing issues and with very very rare exceptions, it is a stable majority. In fact, when the Anderson Bank Building received a 3-2 vote, that was the first time I can remember on this council where a major vote had Councilmembers Saylor and Asmundson on the minority side. The council majority is a fact and it is a useful fact to describe the cohesiveness of that particular coalition of Councilmembers Saylor and Souza with Mayor Pro Tem Asmundson.

Along the same lines there was disagreement as to how to proceed after a 3-2 vote. "Some members felt that once the Council had voted then the body should move forward as a team, leaving the conflict behind."

However, as Mayor Greenwald pointed out, that is not how politics works. Councilmember Souza countered that once a law becomes a law, no one cares what the vote split was.

Both of these viewpoints are correct, but let us be realistic here. The fact that it is for instance, official US policy that we are fighting for Iraq, does not mean that the minority simply gets behind the policy. Rather the minority fights against the policy and consistently reminds the public as to who voted for this policy and who voted against this policy. There is no way around that. And the council is not going to be any different. The council majority does shape the direction of policy and it is incumbent upon the minority to disagree and try to rally public opinion against a given policy. That is the way politics works.

On the other hand, it was pointed out that it was good strategy once a policy is passed to attempt to make it as palatable as possible. The example that came up was the work that Councilmember Lamar Heystek made after the Third and B Street project was passed. I agree that it is a good idea to mitigate unfavorable votes as much as possible, but that does not mean that someone should have to accept a policy and move on. That's just unrealistic.

Finally, a heated debate occurred over the issue of Rosenberg's Rules of Order, in particular the structure of debate. The current council policy is for staff presentation, questions, public comment, a motion, and then discussion. The set rule is that you cannot have discussion without a motion and the concern is that there could be discussion about the motion which could potentially shape the motion and also save time.

Here, Councilmember Saylor was most adamant in support of the current rule. He argued that this would lead to an attempt to filibuster. However, as Councilmember Heystek pointed out, filibusters in local government do not lead to halting policy, they lead to getting home later at night. Therefore it is not in the best interest of the council to filibuster or to speak overly long. Moreover, as several suggested, there was nothing in the current policy that prevents someone from speaking for a considerable amount of time on a given subject. Mayor Greenwald argued that the relaxation of the rules could reduce the length of time spent on questioning.

There seemed to be a reluctant agreement that they could relax the rules with the chair having the discretion of moving the process along if the discussion got too long-winded.

In the end, this council is half-way through their term together and 11 months from the next council election. The one thing I would like to see would be a formal discourse, where everyone refers to each other not by first name but by title: "Councilmember," "Mayor," "Mayor Pro Tem." That may bring about more formality which would lead to be better civility.

However, overall I wonder exactly the utility of this discussion. Unless people are willing to be introspective and admit to their own shortcomings rather than pointing fingers, it seems unlikely that these things can change. And it was most distasteful for me to view some of the rank hypocrisy of given councilmembers who evidently do not believe their stuff stinks.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting