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.
Safety
Residents feel safe in their neighborhoods and our public spaces. Enforce the traffic laws we have on the books to ensure everyone feels safe on our streets and public spaces like the greenway.
Infrastructure
Streets and parks are well maintained, not left to deteriorate.
Permitting
El Cerrito should have the smoothest, quickest permitting process in the area, removing friction for residents and local businesses.
Where we stand
Measure C
Kimberly and Wally helped lead the campaign to defeat the parcel tax for the BART library project earlier this year. It was a bad plan, and they spoke up.
Senior Center
Kimberly and Wally support a dedicated senior center. They would start by finding ways to restore services in an existing space while working toward the goal of a dedicated facility.
Bike Safety & the Ohlone Greenway
We should prioritize maintaining and improving the Ohlone Greenway. It is an amazing piece of bike infrastructure. It should be kept in good repair and we need to make sure the crossings are safe.
Flock
Kimberly and Wally oppose working with Flock surveillance. Public safety decisions should be evidence-based, transparent, and made through a public process that considers effectiveness, cost, privacy and civil-liberties concerns before new surveillance technologies are implemented.
RESPONSIBLE SPENDING
Insist on responsible budgets that account for predictable expenses instead of dipping into reserves.
New Small Businesses
Kimberly and Wally want to refocus our community development office on attracting new small businesses to San Pablo Avenue and our other commercial hubs.
A plan for better government
Here’s How Kimberly and Wally Will Get There
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)
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.
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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.
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.
- Make El Cerrito easier to invest in: streamline permitting, establish clear timelines and performance standards, work proactively with property owners to fill vacant storefronts, and identify City rules or processes that unnecessarily discourage small businesses.
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.