Ensuring that the appropriate personnel are in optimal positions and performing effectively is a fundamental principle of management. This principle becomes particularly apparent during the city’s annual budget development.
The City Manager frequently dismisses requests for more detailed information or budget modifications with a recurrent excuse: a shortage of staff. This repeated response, which residents have grown weary of hearing, raises concerns that the City Manager might be seeking unquestioned approval rather than open discussion.
In a striking contradiction, the Finance department is fully staffed, yet the city has historically and continues to depend on Management Partners and HdL for essential analytical work. The ECCRG points out that this excessive dependence on external consultants, rather than leveraging the capabilities of existing staff, or finding personnel with the appropriate skillset is a significant problem.
This strategy results in increased expenses for the community while often producing inadequate analysis – remember the million property tax estimate that was corrected by reserves? The analysis’s reliability is compromised because the consultants are not directly affected by the outcomes. Unlike external consultants, staff members often have a personal investment in the organization’s success.
The ECCRG is also skeptical about whether the City Manager truly has confidence in the management team’s capability to deliver the expected results.
The ECCRG proposes that the real solution is not merely to increase the number of staff members but to strategically hire individuals with the necessary analytical skills. A strong analytics team, guided by an adept manager, is essential. Despite the state auditor identifying a lack of analytical depth in the city, there has been minimal progress in rectifying this issue over the past three years.
ECCRG urges the City Manager to minimize the reliance on external consultants and instead concentrate on cultivating a robust and capable internal team. This shift would not only provide more thorough analysis but also lessen the city’s dependency on consultants for tasks that could be effectively managed in-house.
Your Thoughts? What are your experiences with city services in El Cerrito? Do you see similar issues, or do you have a different perspective? Share your stories and suggestions for how our city can improve. Let’s start a conversation for change.
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- Share this post with other residents.
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- Voice your concerns with the Council.
Council meetings are remote and in-person, but public comment is now limited to in-person attendees.
If you want to contact City Council Members or the City Managers, all their emails are below:
- Karen Pinkos-City Manager kpinkos@ci.el-cerrito.ca.us
- Councilperson Gabe Quinto gquinto@ci.el-cerrito.ca.us
- Councilperson Carolyn Wysinger cywysinger@ci.el-cerrito.ca.us
- Mayor Lisa Motoyama lmotoyama@ci.el-cerrito.ca.us
El Cerrito Committee for Responsible Government (ECCRG) 
The City of El Cerrito has 16 Commissions to take care of a population of 24,000 residents and they all have “staff” and every analytical resource at their disposal. The problem is the City leadership is feckless and needs to be replaced with practical leadership. People know how to use common sense to solve a problem and not in need of outside consultants to tell them the simplest of things. Move on folks.
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well, in order for the City Manager to make sure the right people are in the right spots, that would require she is actually at work. From 2016 through 2021, she spent an average of 640 hours traveling and her highest uear she was gone for 818 hours. These are not vacation hours; these are hours in which the city pays her salary, her travel expenses, and then she gets to tale 200 hours of vacation on top of that. The entire working year is based on 1950 hours. Complete and total scam. Only makes sense this trickles down to the over reliance on consultants, since in essence she is a consultant for ICMA and city duties take a backseat to her travel blog.
Where do these consultants come from? They are the same people on these ICMA junkets in which the City Manager uses to increase her travel at city expense. Every one of these consultants is a company doing business with the League of California Cities or ICMA (International City Manager’s Association) and since the City Manager has been in Australia, Greenland, New Zealand, Mexico, and several other destination with these people, one can see the connection. It is a pure kick back scheme; give City Manager an award (ICMA) and provide travel opportunities, come be a consultant for tiny El Cerrito. Sick really when we pay a FTE to do a job and hire a consultant right behind that person.
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