Two Votes for Change

Issues

There are 6 candidates for El Cerrito City Council and ONLY 2 ARE FOR CHANGE.

Not only are Wally and Kimberly the only two candidates who voted No on C, they were core members of the organizing committee that made No on C happen with a 70% to 30% defeat.

Coming out of No on C, Kimberly and Wally felt - and agreed with - the frustration from El Cerrito neighbors around the need for the city government to listen to residents and be more fiscally responsible.

The ultimate goal

Quality of Life

The measure of good governance is simple: are residents better off today than they were a year ago? For El Cerrito, that means safer neighborhoods, well-maintained streets and parks, and faster permitting.

01

Safety

Residents feel and are safer in their neighborhoods and public spaces.

02

Infrastructure

Streets and parks are well maintained, not left to deteriorate.

03

Permitting

El Cerrito should have the smoothest, quickest permitting process in the area, removing friction for residents and local businesses.

A plan for better government

Here’s How Kimberly and Wally Will Get There

01

Listening to Residents

Wally and Kimberly believe El Cerrito's priorities should be set by listening to residents and taking into consideration short- and long-term city needs. Listening to residents starts with making city government genuinely accessible, not just meeting the legal minimum.

  • Use community input to determine El Cerrito's priorities, rather than leaving decisions to City Hall alone.
  • Increase access to city meetings through virtual and in-person channels. Other cities have leaned into greater access to government meetings in the years since COVID and with the passage of SB 707, while El Cerrito has opted to provide only the barest minimum required by law… Despite the capability already being in place through recent upgrades to the communications technology (eg: for recording meetings)
02

Oversight

Despite pledging to the State it would address the deficiencies that landed El Cerrito in the bottom 3% (10 of 450+) of California cities in a 2020 state audit, the city has left its most consequential commitments unmet nearly six years later.

  • The city disputed several of the audit's findings (items 6, 7, and 12) and requested extensions to address them rather than accepting them outright.
  • The structural deficit identified in the audit persists today:
    • The Section 115 trust holds just $3 million against a $90 million unfunded pension liability (UAL)—a small fraction of what's needed.*
    • The promised service delivery study has neither been released nor implemented.
    • Reserves have fallen below the city's own 17% policy threshold, meaning the city has drawn down its financial cushion further, not built it back up.
03

Economic Development

A stronger local economy reduces El Cerrito's dependence on taxes as the primary lever for balancing the budget.

  • Prioritize economic development to grow revenue from a thriving local economy rather than repeatedly turning to residents for more taxes.
  • A vibrant downtown and business corridor (as seen in neighboring Albany) creates jobs, foot traffic, and tax base growth that doesn't come directly out of residents' pockets.
04

Responsible Financial Management

El Cerrito spends 20% more per resident than neighboring Albany yet has less to show for it, while years of inaction on how city services are delivered point to a Council that hasn't prioritized resident needs. The delay is costing taxpayers, degrading services, and creating barriers to local economic development.

  • El Cerrito decided how much to pay staff before they determined what services El Cerrito needs and at what level. The Council implemented a classification and compensation study (completed March 2024) without first completing a service delivery study to determine what services residents need and how to deliver them efficiently.
  • In fact, that service delivery study still hasn't been publicly released, and the current City Council has yet to demand it.

Supporting evidence

The Pension Liability

*A note about the ‘Unfunded Pension Liability’: El Cerrito has blamed CalPERS for its ballooning pension debt. Unfortunately, that's not the whole story; much of the debt-load is from poor fiscal management:

  • Neighboring cities of similar size, including Albany, San Pablo, and Hercules, also use CalPERS but carry significantly lower unfunded liabilities, undercutting the claim that market losses alone explain El Cerrito's $90 million debt.
  • Paying only the minimum bill each year, instead of putting extra money toward the debt when the city can afford to, lets the debt linger longer and accumulate more interest.