Setting your clocks exactly will not avoid this particular bug. If the channel is recreated on services's restarted hub server it will be deopped when the other servers come back, no way around that.
Server-server, this deopping does not happen via -o mode changes. Instead, the losing server (higher TS) clears its modes on receipt of the winner's channel description (SJOIN), and the winning server ignores the loser's modes. While this is not as obvious as having the winner send deops to the loser (which Run's original TS8 code did, from which dreamforge is derived), it is both faster and more reliable.
If you're feeling adventurous, the patch for bug #685 also partly fixes this. It will reop botserv and process -ov on any users, but may desync any other modes on the channel if someone set them on the restarted server. (If this paragraph seems unclear, this patch is not for you.)