Richmond, California
A civic pamphlet. Not a newspaper. No ads. Nothing for sale.
Publius
25 June 2026.
Every household knows the trick of the two pockets. You keep the rent money in one and the fun money in the other, and when you run short on rent you look sorrowfully at the first pocket and never mention the second. Cities do it too. The pockets just have longer names.
On June 23 the Council adopted the 2026–27 operating budget and the five-year capital improvement plan, 6–0, with Councilmember Brown absent. That is the first pocket.
On the same agenda was item O.2: the findings of a survey about an “Emergency Response Measure,” with direction to the City Manager to proceed with “Phase 2 ballot readiness and informational work” to evaluate revenue options for Advanced Life Support, emergency services, fire station improvements, and replacement. Consultants presented the survey. The Council asked staff to keep reporting on whether earlier steps had pushed firefighters back into mandatory overtime and to provide estimates for more staffing. It also “suggested that staff consider bond alternatives that did not cost the residents anything.” Then it approved the item, 6–0. Within a month it would vote to put a fire station bond on the November ballot.
That is the second pocket: the voters’.
Here is the third pocket, which nobody mentioned. Since January, the Council has been engaging the community, at some length, about how to spend the Polluters Pay settlement money. In January it voted to hire a consultant to ask. In April it approved a contract with Dalberg Advisors to do the asking. In January, too, it heard about Advanced Life Support and asked staff to find funds to pay for it in an amount tied to the settlement money. So the City knew in January that paramedic service was a priority. It has a pot of new money that it has not yet decided how to spend. And in June it began preparing to ask taxpayers for more.
I will grant the obvious. Settlement money is limited in time, and auditors frown on using one-time money for ongoing costs. A fire station is a capital project, and a bond is a normal way to build one. Survey work is what responsible cities do before they go to the ballot. None of this is improper.
But the suggestion recorded in the minutes, “bond alternatives that did not cost the residents anything,” deserves a frame on the wall of the chamber. There is no such thing. Every dollar the City spends costs residents something, whether it comes from a bond, a settlement, or a foundation. The only question is which pocket it comes from and whether the residents get to see all the pockets at once.
A modest proposal: before any emergency-response measure goes to the voters, put one page in front of them. On it, list the settlement money received to date, the money committed, the money still unassigned, and the cost of Advanced Life Support for one year. Let the voters do the arithmetic. They are good at it. They have been doing two-pocket math at their own kitchen tables for years.
The next regular meeting of the City Council is Tuesday, July 7, 2026.
— Publius