When the Status Quo Becomes the Strategy—and the Excuse

Each budget season over her tenure, the City Manager and Finance team repeat the same core message: delivering services = people. A reduction in staff will significantly impact service delivery. In El Cerrito, that statement has hardened into doctrine. It is no longer tested, benchmarked, or questioned—and that is precisely the problem.

It’s a crippling option of the status quo.

Cities of similar size across California deliver comparable or better services with significantly fewer staff. This is not ideological. It is structural. Yet El Cerrito continues to treat its current staffing model as untouchable rather than as a set of policy choices subject to review.

Headcount Is Not a Strategy at City Hall

Framing service delivery as a simple function of headcount shuts down real analysis. It avoids questions about organizational design, span of control, supervisory layering, overtime dependence, and productivity. High-performing public organizations do not assume every position must be refilled. They manage attrition deliberately, modernize structures, and right-size. El Cerrito does not.

Fire Command Staffing: An Outlier by Any Measure

One example illustrates the problem clearly: El Cerrito maintains four battalion chiefs—a command structure that is highly unusual for a city of this size. El Cerrito has a battalion chief responsible for training. No other Bay Area city utilizes a battalion chief for training. There are no comparable California cities of similar population with that level of fire command staffing. This is not about frontline response or firefighter safety. It is about management layers. As senior staff retire, El Cerrito has a clear opportunity to retire positions, not automatically backfill them. Doing so would preserve service while reducing long-term cost growth.

The Cost Reality Leadership Avoids

Eliminating those battalion chief positions would conservatively save approximately $2 million annually when salary, benefits, and overtime impacts are included. That figure does not account for downstream pension cost reductions. This is not theoretical. It is arithmetic. The upcoming service delivery study will almost certainly confirm what similar studies routinely find: excessive supervisory layers, outdated deployment assumptions, and opportunities to reorganize without degrading outcomes. The real question is not what the study will say. It is whether leadership is willing to act on it.

“We’re Not Hercules or San Pablo” Is an Explanation—Not a Plan

When revenue constraints are raised, leadership often responds with comparisons: we’re not Hercules with a major retail center; we’re not San Pablo with a casino. That may be true, but it is also incomplete. What’s missing is any serious strategy to attract new businesses that generate sales tax, property tax, and long-term economic activity. There is no articulated business attraction plan, no targeted land-use strategy, and no urgency around expanding the tax base. El Cerrito treats its revenue structure as fixed—then asks residents to compensate for that lack of ambition.

“Out of Our Control” Is a Convenient Narrative

Another consistent refrain from the City Manager and Finance Director is that major cost drivers are outside the city’s control, particularly pensions. It is true that El Cerrito relies on CalPERS to invest pension assets. What is not acknowledged is the more important fact: pension costs are high because staffing levels are high. Roughly 30% of the operating budget goes to pension costs. That is not a market accident. It is the predictable outcome of an oversized workforce, layered management, and overtime-heavy operations. The causal chain is straightforward: more staff leads to higher payroll, which leads to higher CalPERS contributions, which leads to higher fixed costs and less fiscal flexibility. Calling this out of our control avoids accountability for the decisions that created it.

The Parcel Tax Bet—and the Absence of a Plan B

This situation reveals an unsettling reality: city leadership seems to be relying almost entirely on a parcel tax set for 2026 to address a fundamental imbalance between revenue and expenses. This approach is not responsible financial management; it shifts the risk onto taxpayers. There is no apparent backup plan if the measure fails, nor is there a serious attempt to proactively restructure the organization. Instead, we hear repeated warnings that any cuts will severely impact services. This calls for a change in leadership.

Why This Requires a Change in Leadership

This pattern is why El Cerrito needs a change in leadership. When leaders default to excuses instead of solutions, reform stalls. When staffing is treated as untouchable, costs compound. When revenue growth is dismissed instead of pursued, taxpayers become the backstop for poor fiscal discipline. Residents should not be asked again to shoulder the burden of fiscal irresponsibility. Taxes should support efficient, well-managed services, not compensate for leadership unwilling to modernize operations, manage workforce size, or plan beyond the next ballot measure. Doing things the way they’ve always been done is no longer neutral. It is a choice. And unless that choice changes, the cost will continue to fall on the people least able to absorb it.

FACT BOX: What to Verify (Before Staff Says “That’s Not True”)

Staffing & Structure
Total FTEs per 1,000 residents compared to peer cities; fire command staffing ratios in California cities under approximately 30,000 population; battalion chief salary, benefits, and overtime impact.
Pensions
Percentage of operating budget spent on pensions; total payroll growth over the last decade; CalPERS employer contribution rate trends.
Service Delivery Study
Determine whether the scope includes management layers and the span of control, who decides which recommendations are adopted, and the implementation timeline.
Revenue Strategy
Existence of a business attraction plan; identification of underutilized parcels or corridors; entitlement timelines compared to peer cities.

Why? Because El Cerrito residents deserve better.