Richmond, California
A civic pamphlet. Not a newspaper. No ads. Nothing for sale.
Publius
8 January 2026.
The first meeting of a year has a smell to it. Fresh coffee in the back of the chamber, new batteries in the microphones, a clerk with a clean legal pad. Everyone looks rested. Nobody has yet said anything they will have to walk back. It is the closest a city council gets to innocence, and it lasts about forty minutes.
On January 6 the Richmond City Council opened 2026 the way it closed 2025: by deciding not to decide. Three items of new business went over to the next meeting. The Port’s financial overview, which had already been continued from December 16, went over. The outside evaluation of the Richmond Fund for Children and Youth, also continued from December 16, went over. An ordinance on wildfire rules for homeowners associations in high-risk areas went over.
I have no quarrel with a continuance. A continuance is a tool, like a wrench. Sometimes the bolt is rusted and you come back with oil. But I read the minutes, and the minutes say these items were continued to “the January 20, 2025, City Council meeting.”
Twenty twenty-five. A year that had already ended five days earlier.
It is a typo. I know it is a typo. Every clerk’s office in America has typed last year’s number into January. But the minutes are the City’s official memory, and a reader is entitled to notice when the official memory sends its unfinished business backward in time, to a meeting that cannot be held because it has already happened. If you wanted a single sentence to explain how Richmond handles hard things, you could do worse.
Consider what did get done that night, quickly and without fuss. The consent calendar carried a construction agreement for the 13th Street Complete Street Project, not to exceed $4,393,481.50 with contingency. It carried on-call financial and economic analysis contracts of up to $500,000 per vendor. It carried tow contracts, a public art mural, and a boat lift for the Fire Department. Real money, real contracts, approved in one motion. This is not a criticism. Consent calendars exist so that a Council can spend its evening on what matters.
The question is what the Council decides matters. The Port is a City enterprise with its own revenues and its own debts, and its financial overview had now been put off twice. The children-and-youth fund is a voter-mandated set-aside that sends millions a year to local organizations, and an evaluation of whether that money works had now been put off twice. The wildfire item concerns the hills, where the fire season no longer bothers to wait for summer.
None of these are glamorous. That is the point. A government reveals itself in the unglamorous items it keeps pushing to the bottom of the stack. A ribbon-cutting gets heard on time. A financial overview gets the next meeting, and then the one after that.
I sat with the agenda and a pen and tried to imagine the meeting of January 20, 2025, where these items now officially live. It is a calm room. The Port report is read aloud in full. The evaluators answer every question. The homeowners associations are fireproof. It is the best-run meeting in the history of the City, and it is a pity none of us can attend.
Back in the year we actually occupy, the items will come up again on January 20, 2026, along with whatever else has been saved for that night. A careful reader will want to see whether the Port report, twice delayed, is heard or delayed a third time. A careful reader will also want to see whether the minutes of January 6 are corrected before they are approved. It is a small thing. Small things are where you find out whether anyone is reading.
The next regular meeting of the City Council is Tuesday, January 20, 2026.
— Publius