Richmond, California
A civic pamphlet. Not a newspaper. No ads. Nothing for sale.
Publius
19 February 2026.
I have sat through enough Council meetings to know that a city can do several things at once. It can approve a loan, buy trucks, give grants to children’s programs, and, in the space of one consent calendar, conduct the foreign relations of the United States.
On February 17 the Richmond City Council approved an additional loan for capital costs at the Civic Center Apartments, a Homekey project. It approved $1,217,161 in Richmond Fund for Children and Youth grants for 2026–2027. It bought twenty fleet vehicles for the Fire Department, the Police Department, and abatement operations, up to $1,125,000. And it adopted item V.7.d, a resolution “opposing unauthorized United States military intervention in Venezuela,” 6–0, with Councilmember Brown abstaining.
The resolution affirms the City’s “commitment to peace, human rights, constitutional governance, and the prioritization of public resources for local community needs.” I read that last phrase twice. It is a fine phrase. It is the kind of phrase a resident might wish to staple to the front of every agenda.
A city resolution on foreign policy is a strange object. It costs very little to adopt, which is part of its charm. It requires no staff report on fiscal impact, because there is none. It is never implemented, because there is nothing to implement. No one in Caracas reads the Richmond minutes. No one in Washington reads them either, which is a pity, since the minutes have other things in them Washington might enjoy, such as twenty vehicles bought from a dealer in Dublin.
The resolution is not for Venezuela. It is for the room. It tells the people who came to speak for it that they were heard. That is not nothing. A government that listens has some value even when it cannot act.
But there is a cost that does not show up in a fiscal-impact box, and it is attention. A Council has one evening every week or two. Its members have finite patience and the public has less. Every hour spent on the world’s problems is an hour not spent on the City’s, and the City’s are close enough to touch. You can walk out of the chamber and step into them.
The same Council that found time for Venezuela in February had, in December and January, twice sent the Port’s finances and a children’s-fund evaluation to a later meeting. It would, two weeks later, appropriate $8.2 million in unspent funds after a motion to build a park restroom died for want of a second. These are the local community needs the resolution so warmly prioritized. They do not get resolutions. They get continuances.
I do not mind a city having opinions. I mind a city that has more opinions about the hemisphere than about its own budget calendar. If the Council wishes to prioritize public resources for local needs, it has a simple way to prove it: put the local needs first on the agenda, hear them on time, and save the hemisphere for the end of the night, if there is any night left.
The next regular meeting of the City Council is Tuesday, February 24, 2026.
— Publius