The Answer Man
Few Sparks But Some Pointed Questions From the Chamber -
In what figured to be an atypical format stocked with soccer-style color coded cards, rebuttal cards, and a tightly managed clock, the Davis Chamber of Commerce largely pulled these changes without incident. For the most part the council candidate answers were thoughtful, there were few sparks, and few heated words.
The rules were a bit unusual, there were three rounds of questions, each round had a specific question directed to a specific candidate, each candidate also had opportunities to jump in with two thirty second and two sixty second rebuttals. The main question was given 90 seconds for a response.
Round One
The first question directed towards Lucas Frerichs asked him given that city staff pensions are unsustainable and that we cannot afford to wait for the state to enact budget reform, "how do you propose to reform our budget this year?"
Lucas Frerichs: Responded that he is not sure that he said that we can't afford to wait for state pension reform. He said he is a state employee who will have a pension when he retires. "There's going to be pension reform coming from the state level," he said. "In terms of the city budget, there needs to be a comprehensive top to bottom, bottom to top, however you want to start, line-by-line look at the city's budget and prioritization of where we want to spend our dollars, precious sales tax dollars where we fund city programs and there are a lot of ways to be more efficient." He mentioned a line item for interns and suggested that while this is not a huge expenditure, "it is a symptom of a larger issue" where you could through the entire budget to find inefficiencies.
Lucas Frerichs: He said that he originally applied for the Planning Commission because he had been an applicant in front of planning commission. “We do a lot of talking in this community about not having sprawl on the periphery, which is a good thing but we also talk a lot about having infill and we don’t do a lot of infill in this town.” He said that he built an infill project where he lives.
Third question directed toward Brett Lee: “You have stated that you are against peripheral growth except for senior housing and innovation hubs for new job growth…” Question: “including specific peripheral properties can you please focus your stance on peripheral growth?”
Lucas Frerichs: He pointed out all three sitting councilmembers had voted to allow Davis Diamonds to move to the auto mall. “Davis Diamonds is a total community jewel, there’s no question about it. But I do think there are other options and other viable options for them.” He added that had city staff been more engaged early in the process there might have been a real opportunity for Davis Diamonds “to have a win-win solution.” “Putting a kid oriented business in the middle of an automall is not appropriate in my mind,” he said added, “cities rely on sales tax dollars” noting that with loss of Borders that is another sales tax generator.
ROUND TWO
They kept the same order in each of the rounds, so Lucas Frerichs got the first question of the second round and was asked if we needed to reduce the number of city commissions given the fact that there are twenty and they are too narrowly focus and there is too much staff time perhaps devoted to them.
Lucas Frerichs: "The problem is once you create all of these it's very hard to them collapse them or try to merge them. People are very committed in this community to be engaged and serving their committee on various city commissions." He made a few suggestions for specific mergers. One suggestion was the merger of historical management with the Planning Commission.
Lucas Frerichs: "A carrot is just an orange stick," he said joking. He referred to the Governor's pensions reform plan arguing, "There are a number of items I think that ultimately will be adopted that are going to come from the state down to the local levels affecting all cities," he said. "Equal sharing of pension costs, that is something that is going to end up happening ultimately... Increasing the retirement ages for new employees... Stopping the spiking of final year compensation [bell]."
ARTICLE IN PROGRESS - Please check back shortly as we add additional responses from last night's debate