Richmond, California
A civic pamphlet. Not a newspaper. No ads. Nothing for sale.
Publius
29 January 2026.
There is a particular silence that falls over a Council chamber when the subject is money that has not been spent yet. It is the silence of a dog watching a sandwich. Everyone in the room is perfectly still, and everyone has an opinion about where the sandwich should go.
On January 27 the sandwich was the Polluters Pay settlement: new General Fund revenue, limited in time, arriving from the refinery’s settlement with the City. Item P.3 directed the City Manager to engage a consultant to work with staff, the Council, and “community stakeholders” to “gather input on a framework” for spending it, with the consultant reporting back by May 26. It passed 5–1, Councilmember Brown voting no and Councilmember Bana abstaining.
Item P.4, the companion proposal, would have directed the City Manager to hold at least six community meetings a year, in every district, to gather input on spending the same kind of money before each budget. The minutes record no motion and no outcome for P.4. One proposal hired someone to ask. The other would have made the City ask, every year, in every district, in person. The first is in the minutes as passed.
I understand the appeal of a consultant. A consultant arrives with slides and leaves with an invoice, and in between you get a framework. A framework is like a trellis: nothing grows on it, but it makes the garden look intentional. And a consultant takes the question out of the Council’s mouth for four months, which is a long time in an election year.
But consider what the City already has. It has a budget process every year, in which staff ask residents about priorities. It has seven elected members, each of whom asked the voters for the job. It has an open forum at every meeting where residents line up to say, at no charge, exactly what they want. Some of them were in the room that night. They did not need a framework. They needed a vote.
The same evening, the Council heard an update on Advanced Life Support, the paramedic-level first response the Fire Department has wanted to restore. The minutes record that the Council asked staff to identify funds, in an amount tied to the settlement money, to cover what that service would cost. So on one item the Council knew exactly what it wanted to buy, and on the next it hired someone to find out.
There is no villainy in this. There is a habit. When a question is easy, Richmond answers it. When a question is hard, Richmond commissions a process to discover what the answer would be if anyone were willing to give it. The process then reports back, usually late, usually with a recommendation to continue the process.
The consultant is due back May 26. Mark the date. I would like to know what the framework costs, who the stakeholders turn out to be, and whether, on May 26, anyone in the chamber is surprised by what the residents said. I suspect the residents will say what they said in January: fix the streets, keep the fire stations open, send someone when I call. That advice is free. It has been offered for years.
The next regular meeting of the City Council is Tuesday, February 3, 2026.
— Publius