Richmond, California
A civic pamphlet. Not a newspaper. No ads. Nothing for sale.
Publius
7 May 2026.
Near the end of a budget presentation, there is a ritual. The slides stop. The department heads sit down. The Mayor asks if there are questions, and the Council, which has been quiet for an hour, wakes up all at once like a flock of birds startled off a wire.
On May 5 the Council received the draft 2026–27 operating budget and the five-year capital plan. The City Manager, the Finance Director and her deputy, and the heads of community services, police, and public works presented. Then the Council asked for things, and the clerk, bless her, wrote them all down.
Here is a partial list from the minutes. Make it easier to communicate community needs with transparency and accountability. Say how many staff work in the Housing Division and whether that is enough to revitalize downtown. Confirm there is enough staff in Community Development. Plans for paving surplus funds. Break down large numbers. In the future, a “digestible scope” of how to get the City where it needs to be. Solutions to homelessness. Streamlined permitting. Bar charts for tables in the budget documents, with values next to items. An explanation of the Rent Program allocation. A grant office. The results of the needs assessment. Whether the Community Crisis Response Program had reduced the load on police. The cost of the Hilltop police substation. Public safety signage, painting, and fire lanes. Clarity on capital funding by year. And, finally, “suggestions from staff for ways to track council requests and make publicly transparent.”
I want to frame that last one and hang it over the dais. Having asked for nineteen or twenty things in a single breath, the Council asked staff for a system to keep track of the things the Council asks for. It is the bureaucratic equivalent of a man at a restaurant ordering every item on the menu and then asking the waiter for a notebook.
I do not mock the requests. Many are good. Bar charts are good. Knowing whether the crisis response program reduces police calls is very good, and the answer should drive real money. A grant office is a reasonable idea. The trouble is not any one request. It is the volume, and what the volume does to a staff that is already stretched.
By September, staff would tell the Council that a prioritization of 34 Council-requested items was coming, and the Council would vote to prioritize its own plans, studies, and assessments. That is where lists like this one go. They become an inventory. The inventory becomes a burden. The burden becomes a reason to hire consultants, who generate new lists.
The motion to receive the draft budget passed 6–0, with Councilmember Zepeda absent. Receiving is easy. The hard part comes in June, when someone has to decide which of the twenty things will actually happen, and which will join the inventory.
A modest suggestion: next year, before the questions, let each member choose three. Only three. Write them on the board. A Council that can rank its requests can rank its budget. A Council that cannot will keep asking for the notebook.
The next regular meeting of the City Council is Tuesday, May 19, 2026.
— Publius