Richmond, California
A civic pamphlet. Not a newspaper. No ads. Nothing for sale.
Publius
21 October 2026.
I asked, at the end of the last number, whether anything at Tuesday’s Council meeting would be continued to a date certain. I owe the Council an apology. Several things were. The meeting ran about seven and three-quarter hours, from a closed-session roll call at half past three to an adjournment at two minutes before eleven. By the end, the calendar held more firm dates than a dentist’s book. What it lacked was anything scheduled to be finished.
The regular meeting opened at six with all seven members present. It then spent most of a quarter hour taking its own agenda apart. Councilmember Bana withdrew two of the eight new-business items. One was the Disaster Preparedness Commission, which will return “in a revised format.” The other was the armored-vehicle grants, which the dais was told were unnecessary because the Police Chief had already been authorized to pursue them. The veterans housing presentation for 338 Carlson Boulevard went to November 17, because its presenters couldn’t come. It has now been scheduled for three meetings and heard at none. The audience called out and was told to stop. A member asked the clerk to restate the changes, since by that point everyone was thoroughly confused. It was the most candid remark of the evening.
Then came a small procedural comedy. Councilmember Bana, citing the interim City Manager, proposed moving the two traffic-safety items to November 17. One was immediate measures on 23rd Street. The other was a citywide plan sponsored by Councilmembers Jimenez and Wilson and Vice Mayor Robinson. A co-sponsor objected that the citywide item could be heard that night. The Mayor ruled that the two would be heard together, with public comment combined and actions taken separately. At open forum, a speaker complained that combining items halves the time the public gets to speak on them. The speaker needn’t have worried. At 10:58 p.m., neither item had been heard. Having refused a date certain, they were moved to no date at all.
So consider what the Council did fix firmly.
The data-center moratorium was adopted on September 15 as a 45-day urgency measure. On Tuesday it was extended, 7–0 on the roll call, to September 15, 2028. Staff told the Council that no data-center applications are pending, and I don’t doubt it. A moratorium on something nobody has asked to do is the safest act in municipal government. It costs nothing, offends no one, and can’t be proved wrong. The ordinance needed four-fifths of the Council and got all of it. In No. 21 I said urgency has stamina. I now think it could run a marathon.
Compare the sewer at Keller Beach. The Council has a moratorium there too, on new connections to a failing shoreline line. Staff said it was adopted in April 2025 for 22 months and expires in mid-February. The consultant recommends an interim gravity diversion, about $800,000 on the slide and nine or ten months to build, along with the design of a permanent fix for the pipe along the beach. The Council agreed, 7–0, and told staff to come back with the design “when we have a plan to fund the project.” So the moratorium on a thing no one has applied for runs to 2028. The moratorium on a thing residents actually need ends in four months, on schedule, and the money will be found later. I don’t object to either vote. I only notice which one has a date.
Then there was the money. The Finance Director gave a report that the Vice Mayor called “a breath of fresh air,” and it was. The Chevron settlement has paid two installments of $50 million. After $3 million went to Kids First and about $2.7 million in interest was added, the estimated balance on September 30 was $99.7 million. Staff said none of it was spent to cover deficits in the audited years. Then came Dalberg Advisors, the firm the Council authorized in April to ask residents how the money should be spent. Staff received a revised scope at about 2:30 that afternoon, and the contract will return November 10. A date certain, about seven months after the authorization. Meanwhile, the Finance Director put last fiscal year’s interest at about $1.85 million, which works out to a little over $5,000 a day. At that rate, the fund earns the cost of the $20,000 license-plate study about every four days. The money is the only party to this matter that has been working.
The Mayor took the floor first after public comment. He said the money is General Fund money, not a special fund, and that calling it “polluters pay” is “misleading.” I take the point. I’d add only that residents didn’t invent the name. The agenda for that very evening listed item W.1 as an update on the “Polluters Pay Settlement Funds.” If the label misleads, it misleads from the City’s own letterhead. Councilmember Jimenez said the one-time money should help the City move from dependence on Chevron toward a more diversified, greener economy. No one said how, and how is what the consultant is for. The consultant, as noted, is scheduled for November 10.
Earlier in the evening, the interim City Manager, two weeks into the job, used his report to speak to anyone applying for the permanent post. He told them Richmond has “the most hopeful, collaborative group of residents” he has worked with in a long time. Then he gave the dates for public input on the recruitment: Zoom on October 21, in person on October 28 from two to three, and Zoom again on the 29th. I believe him about the residents. By ten the chamber looked like a bus station after the last bus, and some of them were still in it.
At 10:49 the license-plate study finally came up. Councilmember Wilson moved it with an amendment I rather admire. Before the consultant studies whether the readers work, it must send the Council a one-page “research design” explaining how it will do the studying. The sequence now runs like this. On October 6, the Council declined the readers. On Tuesday it paid to learn whether they would have helped. First, though, it will learn how that will be learned. The clerk announced the vote as unanimous; the mover’s own vote was the one I couldn’t hear. Each step can be defended. Together they form a staircase that leads down.
None of this breaks a rule, and a body that has sat for seven hours may go home. But a ledger is a ledger. Here are Tuesday’s dates certain. November 10 is for a contract first authorized in April. November 17 is for a presentation on its third scheduling. September 15, 2028, is the end of a ban on applications that don’t exist. Mid-February is the end of the sewer moratorium, with the fix to follow “when we have a plan to fund the project.” And the two traffic-safety items, one of them about the places where people are killed and badly hurt in collisions, got no date at all.
According to the Finance Director, the Council is due back on November 10, and the veterans housing item is set for November 17. Will either agenda make room for the streets?
— Publius
Sources: KCRT video, Council Oct. 20 · Council agenda, Oct. 20 · Council digest, Oct. 20 · KCRT video, Council Oct. 6 · KCRT video, Council Sept. 15 · Council minutes, Apr. 28 · Publius, No. 25 · Publius, No. 21