Today the city of El Cerrito put out a packet for the planned budget meeting June 9th at 1pm. The Consultants were brutally honest. The link is here. I will copy some slides below but it is really important to view the entire packet. The consultants call out that El Cerrito was in a fiscal crisis before COVID contrary to what the City Council and City Manager have been stating. See the slide above.
The cuts proposed are dramatic. LIBRARY HOURS are back on the table. Reduced fire station services at station 72 are on the table.
If you care about the library or any of these other services please send comments in for the meeting.
So what is confusing to me is that the first priority of cuts is service delivery cuts. There is no mention at looking at staff compensation which has been increased an astronomical amount over the past few years.
To make a public comment
Public Comments may be submitted one of two ways:
Via email to Cityclerk@Ci.El-Cerrito.ca.us Email must contain in the subject line Public Comments Not on the Agenda OR Public Comments Agenda Item #.
Via Voicemail at (510)306-2558. The caller must start the message by stating Public Comments Not on the Agenda OR Public Comments Agenda Item # followed by their name and city of residence, followed by their comments
El Cerrito Committee for Responsible Government (ECCRG) 
What about the upper management taking a 15-20% pay cut until the budget is balanced.
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I hope you send that suggestion in to the public comment of the budget meeting. Many of us have been suggesting either that or laying off some staff people. We have three city managers. Richmond has 2. One less City Manager pays for the library hours with some extra.
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The proposed cuts to the recreation department will be astronomical. Many of the part-time staff will be let go as a result of this and many of these employees have served the city for upwards of 10 years. The total sum of Recreation staff (excluding supervisors) is EXTREMELY small compared to those in higher-up positions.
The city has been reducing our hours for years! The new aquatics supervisor makes 10s of thousands of dollars more than the last Aquatics supervisor yet the first people who will be cut are the lower-paid recreation staff making under $20/h with NO BENEFITS and apparently now, no job security. These employees are working often, more than one job to afford to live in the Bay Area.
DEFUND THE POLICE!!
The city of El Cerrito needs to stop taking from the bottom to fix the mistakes higher-ups have made!
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