Image First, City A Distant Second

The City Manager is supposed to be the city’s CEO and chief strategist — the person responsible for setting priorities, stewarding resources, and ensuring residents receive the services they depend on. But in El Cerrito, the record tells a different story.

The City hasn’t really recovered from her lack of focus. El Cerrito’s finances remain fragile. Years of draining reserves to cover operating costs have left little cushion. Pension liabilities continue to climb, and service cuts have become routine. Residents feel the consequences every day — fewer programs, deferred maintenance, and a city that can’t seem to regain stable footing.

This is precisely when residents need leadership that is laser-focused on fiscal recovery and community priorities. Instead, they watched their City Manager devote extraordinary energy to her public image.

Beginning in late 2018, when she was sworn in as President of the International City/County Management Association (ICMA), City Manager Karen Pinkos embarked on a year defined less by El Cerrito’s urgent fiscal problems and State Auditor inyervention and more by her global professional profile. By conservative estimates, she spent 50–70 days away from El Cerrito in 2019 attending conferences, summits, and international meetings.

Baltimore, Maryland (Sept 2018): sworn in at the ICMA Annual Conference. Multiple U.S. Cities (2018–2019): frequent trips for ICMA regional meetings, League of California Cities events, Cal-ICMA activities, and leadership summits. Qingdao & Beijing, China (June 2019): a two-week trip to attend the Urban Governance Conference, lead workshops with the ICMA China Center, and promote international collaboration. Europe (2019): additional international travel to represent ICMA’s global initiatives.

At times, she was joined not only by the Assistant City Manager but even her Executive Assistant, meaning the entire top leadership of a fragile city was gone together. That meant higher travel costs and an empty bench at City Hall when El Cerrito needed its leaders most. Even modest estimates put international travel for three staff at $15,000–$20,000 per trip, with domestic trips ranging from $3,000–$7,000 each. With 6–8 major trips in 2019, total travel-related costs likely exceeded $50,000 — during a year when the city was already draining reserves to cover basic operations.

And while residents saw the Council cut library hours and the senior center, deferred maintenance pile up, and higher fees imposed, their City Manager collected more than $300,000 per year in salary and benefits. In other words, El Cerrito was paying top-tier compensation to its chief while simultaneously funding tens of thousands of dollars in travel that did little to solve the city’s most pressing problems.

On the road, Pinkos was applauded: lauded as ICMA President for promoting diversity, equity, and innovation, featured speaker at international conferences, recognized as a leader advancing the profession of city management worldwide. At home, the picture looked very different: by 2020, El Cerrito was placed on the State Auditor’s “high risk” list for possible insolvency; residents saw reductions in community programs, deferred maintenance, and higher fees; and taxpayers questioned why their City Manager was away building her résumé while their own city was sliding backwards.

El Cerrito didn’t just lose money on travel. It lost focus. While residents endured shrinking services, higher taxes, and a city sliding toward insolvency, the City Manager was building her résumé abroad — sometimes with her closest staff in tow. Taxpayers were not paying for a global ambassador. They thought they were paying for a chief executive officer who would put El Cerrito first. Instead, they got a manager who prioritized prestige and image over stabilizing the city she claimed to care about.

And after all these years, the city’s finances remain fragile.

El Cerrito deserves leadership that measures success not in awards and titles, but in the strength and stability of the city itself.

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