Category Archives: Uncategorized

So the City Council, which has been unable to move quickly on an financial issue, is moving rapidly to extend the City Managers contract until December of 2023. Her current contract expires December 2021. The negotiators Councilperson Quinto and Mayor Lyman have not asked the City Manager to make any real concessions as the cityContinue reading “City Council wants to quickly extend the City Managers Contract by two years”

Today the State Auditor released their annual list of cities at high risk of financial difficulties. This list is based on FY 18/19 figures which was a better year for many municipalities. However, El Cerrito dropped from #7 to #6 largely based on lack of reserves (El Cerrito not only has no reserve but owesContinue reading “Do Nothing City Council continues to do nothing even as the State moves El Cerrito to #6 on the state high risk list”

Things you should know about the budget before the next City Council meeting on November 17. 2020. The packet is found here. 1. Charges for Services (mostly Rec Dept) are now estimated to end the FY 600k in the hole. Staff has slightly woken up and decided to maybe do cuts in the third quarterContinue reading “El Cerrito is in big trouble and the Finance Director continues to project we are okay”

After my last post lamenting the lack of information from the city I tried one more time to get information from the Mayor and he too said just look at the budget book. It’s all there. But it’s not. There is not a clear spelling out of the cuts made as shown here. Check out theContinue reading “Things to know about the 20/21 budget”

I follow the budget pretty closely. I read the materials put online and try to translate them for the average resident who is interested but not able to dig through all the documents. I have been trying for months to get a detailed answer as to the budget cuts that have been made thus far.Continue reading “City Council and Staff refuse to give basic information”

But they refuse to take action! Councilperson Pardue-Okimoto was once again the lone voice saying make cuts now. As you can see from the below statement included in the packet we are at 11% of revenues with 25% of the year completed. Now there is an issue with the city getting our Transfer Tax moneyContinue reading “We are alarmed but refuse to take action-City Council meeting 10/20/2020”

The Election News page has been updated with the 2nd campaign filings for the candidates. The candidates will be meeting with Daniel Borenstein of the East Bay Times and I will post that when it comes out. It is a shame since many of us have voted already. Most significant findings form the campaign financeContinue reading “Election News Updates”

The packet is out for the meeting on October 20, 2020. It is a shorter agenda with the financial reporting agenda item 7-A. The information for this item in the packet starts at page 42. A quote from the section on Revenues. Bold is mine. “The expectations for Charges for Services is  based on historicalContinue reading “The City Staff continues to “monitor the deficit” as our revenue projections are way off.”

The El Cerrito City Council continues to refuse to take real action on the budget. I will start this post by stating that Councilperson Rochelle Pardue-Okimoto was a superstar during the meeting and she would have taken action. I will also be honest and say that I did not watch the entire meeting. I didContinue reading “More of the same inaction from El Cerrito City Council on the budget-When is enough enough?”

I just reviewed the 419-page packet for the City Council meeting on October 6, 2020.I have many questions because the numbers are just not matching. The document starts on page 140 of the packet. In her memo (page 141), Karen Pinkos says the following-(Bold is added by me) “With these adjustments staff is proposing aContinue reading “The numbers don’t work-El Cerrito Proposed Budget 20/21”