In early 2004 I profiled Springfield Mayor Tim Davlin for an article about his first year in office.
SPRINGFIELD’S MAYOR REFLECTS: Davlin’s first year
April 4, 2004
Tim Davlin is obsessed with money.
The city’s money, that is.
Approaching the anniversary of his April 16 inauguration as mayor of the capital city, Davlin admits he has spent much of his first year consumed by financial matters – the budget, in particular, took over his life, he said.
“I really feel like about three or four Wednesdays ago, the day after the city council meeting where we passed the sales tax increase, I felt like that following day was my first day on the job,” he said Thursday.
“I felt like … literally, 10 months, 11 months into the job, I’m just starting. I’ve got a list of things I think we have accomplished along the way, but every day, it was two or three hours every day, Monday through Friday and a lot of times on Saturdays, where we just dealt with the budget.”
Davlin, a Democrat and an insurance and investment broker who previously held no political office, was elected mayor of Springfield a year ago April 1 in a come-from-behind win over Republican stalwart Tony Libri. His win was part of a statewide shift of political control from Republicans to Democrats.
The mayor and city council are officially nonpartisan.
“For the most part, he was unproven politically. He’d never been in office, never ran for any office. That was part of what the attraction was to Tim Davlin,” said Sangamon County Democratic chairman Tim Timoney.
“It was a popular name in town, a big Catholic family from Blessed Sacrament, popular in the political and business community. That made him attractive. He had a little touch of politics, but for the most part, he brought a business approach to politics. I think that’s what helped him win.”
He has faced numerous challenges his first year in office. Chief among them were healing race relations in the city and plugging a budget deficit.
Davlin, 46, earns $94,132 as mayor of Springfield. The job is pretty much what he’d anticipated when he decided to run for election, “but then just even a little more hectic, to just a little more higher power than maybe what I’d anticipated,” he said.
“The surprises that come are usually small. A lot of times you don’t anticipate things. There are little problems, and then some are bigger problems that happen. But for the most part when I took over, we knew.”
Davlin’s key advisers have included his brother, Kevin Davlin, who is treasurer of the mayor’s campaign fund, as well as Todd Renfrow, whom the mayor named to head City Water, Light and Power. Renfrow, a former Democratic county chairman and former head of the city’s public works department, worked on Davlin’s campaign.
Davlin tried to push a plan early on that would have placed control of both CWLP and the public works department under Renfrow, but aldermen resisted that idea.
One of the big surprises, Davlin said, was learning that what he thought coming in was a $1 million budget deficit actually was actually much larger.
“I believe I understand the budget more than probably anybody else in the whole world understands it – where money’s coming in and where it’s going,” he said. “I watch sales tax revenues every day. But I constantly have to be on the lookout for ways to save money.”
One of his campaign promises was that he would run the city like a business, and he claims he has stuck to that promise, eliminating what he saw as unnecessary or redundant jobs, proposing unpopular cuts to city services when faced with a budget deficit, reorganizing the structure of offices and jobs and settling a costly federal discrimination lawsuit against the city.
But he has taken some heat for his approach to running the city, particularly when in January he announced a plan to eliminate 20 police and 13 firefighter jobs, as well as some city services, to balance the city’s budget. Some accused him of presenting a sky-is-falling plan as a political maneuver designed to force aldermen to propose a tax increase so he wouldn’t have to.
“It was the end of the line. The sky was falling and it absolutely was as real as could be,” Davlin said. “I had no idea when I took over a year ago how bad the situation was. It was very real. I can argue with anybody all day long, but until they sit in this chair, they wouldn’t know how real it is.”
Aldermen, in a party-line vote, voted in early March to increase the city’s sales tax from 1 percent to 1.5 percent. However, it will only be in effect for two years, at which point aldermen can vote to “sunset” the tax or keep it in place.
Davlin, who already is anticipating a deficit of at least $3.9 million for fiscal year 2007, said he is not convinced the city will be able to sunset the tax, pointing to needed capital improvements such as replacing police cars and firetrucks, as well as building a new public works garage at an estimated cost of at least $2.5 million.
“Do we sunset it, or do we want to spend any money on capital (improvements)? That’s what it’s going to come down to. It’s going to be interesting because it’s going to come at a time right before the next election,” he said.
Despite the months he spent reorganizing the city and engaging in budget talks, Davlin can tick off numerous things he and his staff have accomplished: Negotiating a contract with city police officers who’d been without one for more than two years; naming an educational liaison to bridge services between the local government and city schools; taking steps to build an east-side community center; starting a task force on homelessness; making the north branch of Lincoln Library accessible to the disabled; and distributing thousands of dollars in grant money to agencies for housing and services for low-income residents.
Last week, he announced a citywide beautification plan called Springfield Gateway Green.
And he decided to distribute $700,000 in surplus downtown TIF (tax increment financing) money to local taxing bodies, including the Springfield School District, which is experiencing budget problems of its own.
Also last week, he announced an out-of-court settlement with former police officer Renatta Frazier, who sued the city in federal court charging racial discrimination and a hostile work environment. Davlin said he handled 100 percent of the negotiations on the city’s behalf.
Courtney Cox, Frazier’s Benton attorney, told The State Journal-Register on Tuesday that he does not believe the Davlin administration is committed to resolving racial issues within city government.
Cox also represents six black officers – five current and one recently retired – who have filed a discrimination lawsuit against the city. He said what has happened to the black officers is symptomatic of a larger problem.
“Unfortunately, at this point, it looks like (city officials) do not want to resolve the larger problem and continue to fight to preserve the status quo, which is unacceptable,” Cox said.
Davlin pointed out he has assembled a recruitment committee made up of employees from the police and fire departments, city legal staffers and the NAACP. The Black Guardians, which represents most black police officers, also was invited to join the committee but has not responded to the offer, Davlin said.
“My gosh, it would be so great if all of a sudden the next class of police or fire came in here and we were able to hire 20 or 25 percent (minorities). You’ve got to have the numbers come first. You have 150 people and if you have four or five minorities come in, what are the chances?” he said.
In addition to the pending lawsuit over racial issues at the police department, Davlin’s administration has been criticized for not being aggressive enough in hiring minorities for other city jobs. Expectations were high that minority issues such as east-side projects would be a priority after Davlin received critical minority support in his election bid.
Davlin hired Ken Crutcher, who is black, as the city’s budget director – a position the mayor said he considers the city’s No. 2 job.
He also hired a black woman, Letitia Dewith-Anderson, to be chief of staff, only to later rename the position “executive assistant.” The move was criticized by many in the black community, who saw it as a demotion and a breach of trust. Dewith-Anderson quit the job in January but declined at the time to say why.
Davlin said he and Dewith-Anderson still talk and she has offered advice to different departments since leaving.
“I think it was made a lot bigger than what it was. She left on her own accord, and I can’t put a gun to her head and say, ‘Letitia, you need to stay.’ You can’t do that,” he said, noting that he never intended Dewith-Anderson to have the same role as former chief of staff Brian McFadden, who worked for former mayor Karen Hasara.
“My management skill is nothing like those two. Chief of staff is chief of staff, and I made the mistake from the beginning of calling it that when in essence it never was,” he said.
Davlin said he is working to rebuild trust between the city and the black community. He also said he is committed to Hasara’s goal of achieving 15 percent minority staffing on the police and fire departments.
“I campaigned on it. I talk about it. And don’t think I’m not reminded every day by the community that a certain segment of this society has not had its fair share of city employees,” he said.
Some aldermen also have been critical of the mayor, saying he does not keep them informed about the things he’s working on or major developments in city government.
Ward 5 Ald. Joe Bartolomucci said he would like to see better communication between Davlin and the rest of the aldermen.
“I don’t think it’s right when you’re sitting on one of the committees and you have to read about something that happens that directly deals with your committee in the press or get word of it on the radio or television. That’s happened more than once,” said Bartolomucci, who, like the mayor, was elected last April.
Bartolomucci, a Republican, also said he believes Davlin has succumbed to political pressure too many times.
“He made some mistakes, I thought, in the first three to six months. I thought I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. I’m a freshman alderman and he’s a brand new mayor with no public office experience. I thought he’d really sharpen his skills as the leader of this community,” he said.
“It seems like he’s more worried about re-election in three years than being a leader. I think we’ve seen that in the budget process where instead of coming out front and really putting together an innovative, problem-solving budget, he came out with a very simplistic budget and really threw it in the laps of the aldermen and said, ‘Here, you fix it.’ ”
County Democratic chairman Timoney said the aldermen sometimes force the mayor to be more political than he would like to be.
“He’s tried to have a business approach to running city government, but sometimes it comes down to a five-to-five vote just based on politics, not on what’s best for the city. The Republicans are going to try to force him to cast the tie-breaking vote on a number of controversial issues just so they can use it against him in three years, such as the sales tax,” he said.
Timoney said Davlin is largely responsible for revitalizing the local Democratic Party.
“The Republicans aren’t used to the Democrats having some power in Sangamon County. Pretty much now we’re at a level playing field; they’ve been used to having an unlevel playing field where they’ve had all the power and control,” he said.
“I think his only weakness is possibly the political side of it because he’s not a politician. Some things he might look at from more of a business approach than a political approach. … Sometimes the business approach is better than the political approach; sometimes it’s not.”
Davlin said he has two priorities for his second year in office: city beautification and economic development.
“Number 1, I want to clean this town up. This town is dirty, in my opinion. I want it to look like downtown Chicago. Beautification to me is so important,” he said, noting that he is working to put a stop to fly dumping.
“I think everything is on the drawing board, from giving (garbage pickup) to one company to sectoring the city, put it on our tax bill, put it on our property tax, put it on our utility bill. Everything’s open.”
Economic development plans include establishing a new industrial park, getting the medical district going, retaining the 183rd Fighter Wing Air National Guard base and attracting new companies to the city.
“I want to make it so we’re more business friendly so that people want to come in and develop and they’re going to look at us as opposed to going to Chatham,” he said.
