Pinkerton on Davis Discourse: “It’s Amazing”

New City Manager Steve Pinkerton is aware of the level of discourse that takes place in Davis. He felt the swell of response the moment his hiring was announced.

“It’s amazing,” he said in a phone call Wednesday. “Yesterday I had twice as many hits [on my blog] as usual.”

More than thirty people were directed to his personal blog that day from one Davis Vanguard article alone, he said. Add to that all of the calls and emails he received.

The mere fact that Pinkerton keeps a blog, and updates it regularly, says a lot about his approach, which one reporter in Manteca described as out-of-the-box and particularly transparent. With that in mind, he welcomes the intense level of discussion that sometimes characterizes Davis politics.

“You usually end up with a better result when there’s that much interest,” Pinkerton said of the high level of engagement. “That’s one of the biggest appeals I find in this community.”

His background is in redevelopment, and his recent work in Manteca was characterized by reorganization and cuts made to balance the budget. Both will be put to the test immediately in Davis.

The city council has asked staff to find $2.5 million in personal savings. Pinkerton will be at the forefront of that effort, which will certainly draw heat from a variety of directions as staff hones in on the specifics.

Pinkerton successfully made similar cuts in Manteca, but as you can see in this Manteca Bulletin article, not everybody loved them.

“When you’ve gone from 430 to 340 employees and on average they’re making 18 percent less,” he said, some people are going to be understandably unhappy.

But the bottom line, he says, is that the city of Manteca did what they needed to do, and the people sounding off in the comments section of the newspaper article are not the majority. Everybody took cuts, including Pinkerton himself.

“Right now you always have to have half of your brain focused on budget,” he said. “The other half must be focused on moving forward in the world. There are so many challenges ahead.”

He says he’ll approach Davis with that same mantra. We’ll see how it manifests itself beginning in September, after the council returns from their August break.

“I’m not going to pretend I know exactly what’s happening here yet,” Pinkerton said of the settling-in process. “You want to deliver the best service at the lowest cost. It’s really simple. Everything else flows from there.”