Richmond, California
A civic pamphlet. Not a newspaper. No ads. Nothing for sale.
Publius
16 October 2026.
Richmond is a city of a hundred thousand people, but on paper it can feel like a village where everyone serves on everyone else's board. I say this with affection. Villages are efficient. Nobody needs an introduction, and nobody needs to fill out a form twice.
Consider the Air District. On September 9, its Community Equity, Health and Justice Committee met to recommend how fine money from industrial polluters should come back to the community. The chair was Supervisor John Gioia. According to the draft minutes, Chair Gioia made the motion to recommend $38,752,145 for Richmond and surrounding communities. It passed 5–0. The full Board approved the awards on October 7, and the Air District announced them on October 9, at the RYSE Center, which Supervisor Gioia co-founded.
Of that sum, $12,934,417 goes to Contra Costa County, with Urban Tilth listed as a co-applicant. The County's own application, approved by the Board of Supervisors in May, proposed $6.49 million of the County's request for Urban Tilth. Another $10,681,489 goes to the City of Richmond, whose co-applicants include Rich City Rides and RYSE. The final split of the County's share has not been published. It will appear, one expects, on a consent calendar.
The choice of venue was apt. RYSE began in 2008 in a county-owned building that, by the County's own account at the time, the Supervisor secured "at no cost." In 2019, RYSE closed a New Markets Tax Credit financing of about $11 million to rebuild the site as RYSE Commons. At the groundbreaking, the Supervisor observed that the property had all been owned by the County and was now "owned free and clear by RYSE." Few organizations get to hold the press conference in a building the announcer helped them acquire. It saves on travel.
Urban Tilth has a similar history with the County. It farmed the three acres at North Richmond for years under County leases, the long one signed in 2016. On September 14, 2021, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved selling the land to Urban Tilth. The Supervisor's statement at the time was gracious: transferring County land would let the community finish the farm. The farm the County sold is the same farm whose "Community Resilience Center" the new Air District money will help complete. On March 17 of this year, the Supervisor moved a $60,000 County payment to Urban Tilth for solar work there. In August 2024, the County agreed to partner with Urban Tilth on a $19.1 million federal EPA grant, with Richmond LAND among the planned subrecipients. EPA cancelled it in 2025.
The City has done its part as well. Richmond leads a state Strategic Growth Council "Richmond Rising" grant of about $35 million. On October 3, 2023, the Council approved sole-source agreements under it of $7,042,833 to Urban Tilth and $3,680,657 to Rich City Rides. Councilmember Doria Robinson recused herself. Two years later, the Fair Political Practices Commission found she had not stated the nature of her financial interest on the record that night, a $400 matter (Case 2025-00236). Four hundred dollars is not much, but it is a receipt, and receipts are what this column collects.
The results show up on the balance sheet. Urban Tilth reported $13.8 million in revenue for fiscal 2024. Before 2019 its assets were under $1 million. They are now about $31 million. That is a remarkable harvest for any farm.
The County keeps a web page on urban agriculture and another on the North Richmond Farm. Both list Tania Pulido as Supervisor Gioia's staff contact. Urban Tilth's filings with the IRS list Tania Pulido as a member of its board. Both listings are public. I mention them side by side only because they sit so comfortably together.
The County also gives each supervisor $1 million for a district Community Impact Fund, approved by the Board in June 2025. I have not yet seen the list of District 1 recipients. It is a public record, and I look forward to reading it.
Then there is Richmond LAND, the community land trust. Its founding executive director, Valerie Jameson, came up through the RYSE Center as a youth leader. Richmond LAND was written into the County's May application for a line of $907,750. The Air District's award summary does not list it among the County's co-applicants. Whether it is in or out is, for now, unclear.
Richmond LAND has had a difficult few years, and to its credit it has said so. Its own IRS filings report that a board member authorized to sign checks wrote checks to himself: $78,972.50 in 2023 and $135,000 in 2024. Its new executive director, who started in June 2024, says she found the problem on September 5, 2024, while reviewing the books, and has put the unauthorized withdrawals at $204,960 from January 2023 to September 2024. The organization says the board member was removed, repayment was demanded, a police report was filed, and new controls were adopted. As of its latest filing, the money had not been returned. I have found no public record of charges, a civil suit, an insurance recovery, or an audit finding. None of this is a reason to doubt anyone now in charge. It is a reason to ask what the County checked before proposing nearly a million public dollars for it.
The circle has a housing wing. Melvin Willis, a Richmond councilmember from 2017, rented a home owned by Valerie Jameson's parents until early 2023. He paid $650 a month, with two dogs. HUD's fair market rent for a studio in our area in 2020 was $1,488. Under the state's gift rules (FPPC Regulation 18940), a discount not offered in the ordinary course of business is a gift, and a gift of $50 or more belongs on the official's Form 700. His Form 700s report none. There may be an innocent explanation. Landlords are allowed to be generous. Officials are required to say so.
The circle also has an academic wing. Eli Moore, a former Urban Tilth board member according to its old IRS filings, went on to the Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, where Ms. Jameson has also spoken. Residents have asked how that institute's work with the City relates to Councilmember Claudia Jimenez. I have not yet found the contracts or payments that would answer the question. If the City has paid the institute, the amounts are a records request away. That is where I would start, rather than with anyone's friendships.
And the circle votes. Supervisor Gioia is listed among the elected leaders endorsing Councilmember Jimenez for mayor, alongside Councilmember Robinson and others. Endorsements are a lawful courtesy between colleagues. I note only that the people who endorse each other also fund, staff, house, and audit each other, and that the audit seems to be the part done last.
That question isn't really about any one person or land trust. A small, busy group of nonprofits now sits at the receiving end of a very large public pipe. It flows from the Air District, through the County and the City, from Sacramento, and in some years from Washington. These groups are often the right people to do the work. But in a village, the people who write the application, chair the committee, staff the program, sit on the board, and sign the endorsement can turn out to be a short list. The minutes are in order. The votes are unanimous. That is exactly the trouble with a village: everything is in order, and nobody is outside it.
A modest suggestion. Before the County signs its sub-agreements, it could publish the split, name every subrecipient, and attach each one's latest audit. Where a supervisor's own staff sits on a recipient's board, the County could say so in the staff report, in plain words, rather than leaving residents to match two web pages. The City could post every payment it has made to the institutions its councilmembers work with. Councilmembers could file their gifts on time. It would cost nothing. Sunlight is one of the few things in Richmond that doesn't need a grant.
The Board of Supervisors meets next on Tuesday, October 20, 2026. Will anyone at that table, I wonder, be in a position to ask?
— Publius
Sources: Air District committee minutes, Sept. 9 · Air District Board packet, Oct. 7 · Air District announcement, Oct. 9 · County application, May 2026 · County urban agriculture page · County North Richmond Farm page · County notice on the RYSE building · RYSE Commons tax credit financing · RYSE Commons groundbreaking · Urban Tilth on the 2021 land purchase · Urban Tilth IRS filings · Richmond LAND IRS filings · Jameson biography · FPPC gift rules · Richmond Form 700 filings · Jimenez campaign endorsements