El Cerrito spends a remarkable amount of time celebrating things that would happen whether the City Council proclaimed them or not.
Every year we see proclamations, recognition months, awareness campaigns, ceremonial presentations, and symbolic gestures. Pride Month. African American History Month. Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Women’s History Month. Environmental awareness events. Cultural celebrations. The list goes on.
There is nothing wrong with recognizing the diverse people who make up our community. Most residents support treating people with dignity and respect.
The question is whether these activities deserve the amount of attention they receive when compared to the challenges that directly affect the daily lives of El Cerrito residents.
The City’s own Strategic Plan repeatedly emphasizes quality of life, community safety, financial responsibility, infrastructure, and maintaining a high-performing organization. The plan specifically identifies community safety, infrastructure, amenities, livability, belonging, and fiscal responsibility as core priorities.
Yet many residents look around and see a different reality.
They see a city struggling with long-term financial challenges. They see roads, facilities, and infrastructure that need attention. They see concerns about crime, homelessness, traffic, pension obligations, reserve levels, and the affordability of major capital projects. These are the issues that determine whether people feel safe, whether businesses thrive, and whether families choose to stay in El Cerrito.
Residents rarely ask for another proclamation.
They ask for competent government.
They ask for transparency.
They ask for fiscal discipline.
They ask for accountability.
They ask for measurable improvements to their quality of life.
A successful city should certainly celebrate its diversity. But celebration is not a substitute for governance.
The measure of local government is not how many awareness months it recognizes. The measure is whether residents feel safer, whether parks and infrastructure improve, whether finances are sustainable, whether businesses succeed, and whether taxpayers believe their money is being managed responsibly.
Recognition has its place.
Results should come first.
The residents of El Cerrito deserve a City Council that spends less time telling us what values it supports and more time demonstrating those values through sound decisions, measurable outcomes, and a relentless focus on the issues that actually affect life in our community every day.
El Cerrito Committee for Responsible Government (ECCRG) 
I believe the more important question is whether district-based Council elections will lead the Council and City leadership to focus more consistently on the City’s core responsibilities. My hope is that they will.
At its most fundamental level, local government has three primary responsibilities: public finance, public safety, and public works, including infrastructure, planning, zoning, and code enforcement.
If I were grading El Cerrito’s performance in these areas, my report card would look like this:
• Public Finance: D• Public Safety: A• Public Works: B/B-
I give Public Finance a D rather than an F because the recent budget presentation was the best I have seen in my 24 years in El Cerrito. That said, the presentation alone does not solve the underlying fiscal challenges.
In the area of public finance, the City’s responsibility is to ensure both the short-term and long-term fiscal health of the community while maintaining essential services. While a significant portion of the budget is dedicated to these core functions, I do not believe the Council and City leadership spend enough time focused on financial sustainability, economic development, and growing the commercial tax base.
A financially healthy city requires more than managing expenses. It requires attracting and retaining businesses that want to invest in El Cerrito, create jobs, and generate revenue. Until the leadership (elected and appointed) address the City’s commercial and business revenue growth and viability, the fiscal situation is unlikely to improve in a meaningful way and every city employee should be asking their unions to pressure the city (elected and appointed) to create, fund, and make a priority a commercial and business revenue growth plan as the #1 priority for the next three years.
District elections may improve representation, but the real test will be whether they help City leadership spend more time on these fundamental responsibilities and less time on issues that fall outside the core mission of local government.
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Well said Thank you
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