Occupy camp costs UCD $8,500 in cleanup and repairs
Apparently, free speech isn’t always free.
In the case of the Occupy UC Davis movement, free speech — as expressed by the occupation of the campus Quad and student services building — cost the university an estimated $8,500.
Most of that total comes from damage to Dutton Hall, where as many as 30 protesters camped overnight during the group’s two-week occupation.
After the last two protesters exited the building last Sunday, ending an occupation that began on the Quad in mid-November, six custodians and five building services employees got to work.
Workers put in 63 hours, fixing broken door locks, removing graffiti, cleaning carpets and removing tape from windows to ready the building for last Monday morning, according to an article in Dateline UC Davis, a newspaper produced by the university.
Allen Tollefson, assistant vice-chancellor in charge of facilities management, estimated a cost of $7,000 for the work in Dutton Hall alone.
The grounds unit also estimated a cost of $1,500 in labor and supplies to aerate and re-seed the Quad, where protesters had erected as many as 80 tents. As of Friday, occupiers had taken down the majority of the tents, including a large geodesic dome late in the afternoon.
According to one Occupy UCD protester, however, those estimates seem too steep.
“The university historically has a tendency to over-exaggerate the cost of maintaining facilities, the cost of operational budgets, etcetera, so I would doubt that it actually costs that much,” said Enosh Baker, a 2007 UCD graduate and co-op business development consultant.
“On top of the fact that we talked to the grounds crew ahead of time to tell them we’d support them with our donations to re-seed the lawn, however much that would cost, our logistics team made sure to rotate the tents on a consistent basis to make sure that the grass didn’t die,” Baker continued.
“Yes, I’m sure there was tape left on windows and, yes, I’m sure there was some dirt on the rugs, but I’m sure it’s all part of operational expenses to clean rugs in general.”
Student services staff held tutoring sessions and workshops in alternative sites during the occupation and provided some student accounting services by telephone, online or outside of the building.
Aside from hourly walk-throughs at Dutton Hall, police responded to nine calls for service in the building.
Police also picked up the belongings that remained in Dutton Hall once the occupiers had left, including sleeping bags, blankets, a cushion from a couch and a scooter.
Interim UCD police Chief Matt Carmichael said the police will hold any property found in the building at the Police Department for safe keeping if owners wish to claim the items.
— Reach Tom Sakash at tsakash@davisenterprise.net or (530) 747-8057. Follow him on Twitter @TomSakash
Short URL: http://www.davisenterprise.com/?p=117622
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on Dec 17 2011.
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Katehi can pay this out of her $100,000 “moving” fee. Or just cutting pepper spray out of the campus budget should do it.
I have friends who work at UCDavis and were on the cleanup crew. They said it was an absolutely disgusting mess the Occupiers left. Much more than “tape on windows and dirt on rugs” as quoted in the article. Too bad the newspaper can’t interview those that had to clean it up to get the facts.
If the cost of decolonizing our public universities is $8,500 a month or $102,000 a year, I’d say the University could learn a thing or two about budgeting from this. Besides the fact that that money comes directly from undergraduate tuition (and UCD would only have to admit 5 students to cover that cost for a year after its egregious tuition hikes) large scale events that the University itself puts on cost far more than that. Picnic Day (which lasts for…a day) sucks up over $100,000 from the ASUCD budget and I would implore critics to weigh the benefits of such an event by comparison to OUCD.
UCD just snapped its fingers and raised the salary of the attorney that represents its police department by $45,000. Before they got wise and started making olive oil UCD would spend over $50,000 a year cleaning up olives that were mashed into pavement.
Besides all of that, 63 hours of work costs $7000? That’s over $100/hr. Are they replacing these supposed “broken locks” with platinum? Are they hiring Lucian Freud to paint over this phantom graffiti? Either way, why go to college when you can make a bill an hour cleaning carpets for UCD?!
And…to hell with lawns anyway.
Enosh – One issue is here is that there is a huge difference between billable hours and salary. $100 an hour is a fairly standard hourly fee for work of this type, and it does not mean that the workers themselves get paid $100 an hour. Assuming a self-financing model, that $100 also has to pay for benefits, managers, secretaries, and time that those workers spend waiting for work to do.
That said, in-house university services in general tend to be on the expensive side, because the workers have more labor rights than in the private sector, and because these units are somewhat shielded from market competition. I’m not necessarily accusing UC Davis in particular, and I’m not necessarily saying that it’s wrong to pay these workers good living wages with benefits. But yes, it’s expensive, and it’s quite common for the university administration to want to save money with these services with outsourcing. Of course when a university does that, then aggrieved employees might well accuse it of privatization.
Also, Campus Counsel Steve Drown doesn’t just represent the police department, he represents the whole campus. That’s a fairly critical job, because universities are often sued for huge sums of money. Some of the lawyers who file suit could well be paid more than university lawyers get paid. There is an instinct out there that universities do bad things and deserve to lose lawsuits. But that’s hardly a way to save money in the face of budget cuts.
That $7,000 figure also included the cost of physical supplies to conduct repairs, not just the labor involved. The Occupy communists really did a number on Dutton Hall.
The article does not tell all of what was left by those that occupied Dutton Hall. Some legal some not. Furniture had to be replaced and cleaned. Thank you!, now when you sit on a couch in Dutton Hall, no worries of the sex secretions that was left on this furniture.
It is a real shame that these students wanted to make an impact with a clear message of their beliefs, but yet could not leave the property that they occupied in the condition that it originally was. Instead it cost more of a already depleting budget to make this place presentable for a normal business day. And they want to claim miss use of funds….A little of the “pot calling the kettle black here”!
Hey, no worries Occupy UCDers, put your wallets away. The 1% pays 40% of all taxes so they will pay for a big chunk the damage. (I know you don’t like them, but they always pick up the tab for your “camping” – just like your parents did.)
47% of housholds pay no taxes at all, so they’re off the hook.
The reamining 52%, who went to work everyday while you “protested” will pay the balance.
p.s. – Your Welcome.
It is completely untrue that 47% of households pay no taxes at all. 47% of households don’t owe federal income taxes. Almost all of these households do pay other federal taxes, and they also pay state and local taxes.
You are correct, i was referring to Federal taxes.
Only federal income taxes, not even all federal taxes.
Bob D.,
Please provide your references.
My source is none other than Christian Amanpour on yesterdays “This Week” show on ABC.
Hold it. UCD gets very little federal funding (and almost all of that is encumbered research funds.) These expenses are covered by state taxes (most General Fund), UC tuition and private donations. I guess that federal money flows through indirectly through financial aid.
Note that all households indirectly pay federal taxes through corporate income taxes. That tax is added to the price of all goods and services. Also, everyone pays various federal excise taxes for fuel, energy and other commodities.
My point does not get obscured in the maze of Federal, State and local tax laws- which can be argued ad nauseum.
The fact is, the same people, in similar proportions, that do, or don’t, pay Federal taxes also do, or don’t, pay State and local taxes in similar proportions.
When all is said and done, all taxes come from the same groups of people in similar proportions. There are the net payers, and the net receivers.
The UC system is funded by State Taxes, paid by taxpayers in similar proportions.
Tuition and fees are paid largley by parents, who are paying Federal and State taxes in similar proportions.
When all is said and done it all comes from the same place.
My point stands.
But your figures come just from the federal income tax, not all federal taxes. The federal income tax is counterbalanced by the regressive payroll tax. Even at the state and local level, sales taxes and especially sin taxes are on balance regressive. If you take all taxes together, then they are roughly flat across the income range. Almost everyone has so-called “skin in the game”, and the inaccurate declaration that half of people don’t pay taxes has simply been used as an excuse to cut taxes for the rich at the expense of the middle class.
Richard – Actually UC Davis gets a lot of federal funding, but it’s true that the lion’s share of it is encumbered research funds. As you say, some of it is federal financial aid.
Meanwhile the main federal tax on the middle class is the payroll tax. It’s a bit hard to trace who pays corporate income taxes — yes, corporations pay them, but corporations aren’t people — but the economists that I trust say that those taxes largely come from shareholders, not customers or employees. But the main thing is that the payroll tax is a much larger federal tax than the corporate income tax. The payroll tax is almost as big as the income tax, and declarations that half of the households don’t pay federal taxes is just a way of talking as if the payroll tax doesn’t exist.
If UCD had hired a consultant to uncover the deep and dangerous flaws in its police department use-of-force policies and practices alone, it would have cost many multiples of that $8,500.00. UCD should thank Occupy UC Davis for saving the campus money.
What about the cost of sending 50 or so riot police and put up a big show?
Another $8 k on top of the $752m the occutards terrorists have cost the tax payers. Since thes useless slugs have never worked a day in their life and probably never will , what do they know about work? Why are they not at Jerry Browns house camping out? he’s letting the illegal criminals get a free ride for tuition.