The Richmond City Council adopted a 2025-2026 budget Tuesday night that leaves about $48 million unbudgeted to give staff time this summer to “fully analyze” what might happen to the city’s federal revenue sources.
Some of the potential federal funding concerns highlighted by staff at recent council meetings include the executive order by President Donald Trump threatening to withhold funding from a list of sanctuary cities, including Richmond, and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
The budget was approved with District 4 council member Soheila Bana casting the only “no” vote after Mayor Eduardo Martinez thwarted her effort to allocate $2,000 for the El Sobrante Stroll, an annual festival held in September along San Pablo Dam Road in unincorporated Contra Costa County.
In addition to the stroll funding, Bana requested a bathroom project for Cheese Park, but some council members said she needed to follow the city’s capital improvement project prioritization protocol.
“District 4 has always been an unwanted stepchild of the city,” Bana said before she was cut off by Martinez.
In total, the operating and capital budget for the next fiscal year was set at $645.4 million with $385.4 million in non-general funds and $260.1 million in general funds.
The plan includes a $58.2 million increase in general fund revenue over the current fiscal year, driven primarily by increases in the utility users tax and the Chevron settlement funds.
“Staff will evaluate options to invest the principle until council is ready to appropriate those funds,” said Richmond’s Director of Finance Andrea Miller at Tuesday’s meeting.
Richmond’s Reimagining Public Safety program will receive an additional $600,000 in funding, bringing its budget to $9.4 million in 2025-2026. The program was originally budgeted to receive $7.8 million in 2024-25 but ended up spending $8.8 million.
According to staff, the program — a four-program approach that includes YouthWORKS, the Office of Neighborhood Safety, the Community Crisis Response Program and Safe Organized Spaces (SOS) Richmond — has increased its budget by 47% since it was implemented in 2021, when it had a budget of $6.4 million.
Major general fund expenditures include $170.9 million for salaries, wages and fringe benefits, $24.8 million for professional and administrative costs, and $22.7 million for cost pool allocations.
Recent adjustments to the five-year Capital Improvement Plan, which covers physical infrastructure projects, include $3 million for the Harbour 8 Park Expansion Project, with the money being reallocated from three community center HVAC projects at Nevin Community Center, Richmond Recreation Complex and Shields-Reid Community Center.
The council also approved $100,000 for addressing gender-based violence and funding for new events, including a “Green and Sustainable Business” expo.
Initially the city budgeted $500,000 for the Black Resiliency Project and Fund — a new initiative cosponsored by Districts 3 and 6 council members Doria Robinson and Claudia Jimenez to develop a “State of Black Richmond” report and to provide money to address inequities and disproportionate impact experienced by residents of African descent, but the council voted last week to allocate $1.5 million for the project.
Staff initially said the city could fund $500,000 of that $1.5 million by diverting money from the city’s $11.8 million vehicle fleet fund and that it would replenish the fleet budget later once it becomes clear in October how much unspent money the city has toward the end the 2024-2025 fiscal year.
Through a motion by Robinson, the council ultimately approved funding the entirety of the $1.5 million Black Resiliency project using money from its vehicle fleet fund.
City to prioritize filling public works jobs amid hiring challenges
During Tuesday’s budget discussion, the city council said it wants to see more “priority” hires in specific departments, such as public works, and asked how the city could potentially fill all of its full time jobs in a given year.
According to this year’s position control list, the list of jobs authorized by the council, there are 800 positions budgeted, including 55 new positions created by the council in the 2024-2025 fiscal year.
Curl said the city currently has 662 employees and has hired 51 people since 2021-2022. She said that the city’s goal is to fill 38 more positions to reach 700.
“The focus right now is on the positions that we think are critical based on the city council policy direction which includes facility maintenance worker, gardners, groundskeeper, maintenance worker, parks and construction maintenance worker and tree trimmer,” she said.
Additionally, positions must remain open until filled for the Richmond police and fire departments because their bargaining agreements establish minimum staffing levels.
Curl said that it has been challenging competing with other cities’ similar pension offerings.
“Now that we are in a more competitive environment with all the cities having the same pensions, so people will leave and bounce around just like they do in the private sector or nonprofits so that they can get promotions,” she said. “Because we are a smaller (to) mid-sized city, some people leave for other agencies.”
Curl added that the city is in the midst of contract negotiations with its unions, and once those negotiations are complete the city staff will ask the council what an “appropriate number” of positions should be.
“Once the MOUs are completed we can see if we can get closer to that 700 number, and if there’s not a pullback in federal funding that impacts the (Richmond) Housing Authority and the employment and training department, we could conceivably be able to go over that 700 number if revenue continues to increase,” she said. “But at this juncture with the information that we have we think 662 is a good starting place.”
District 5 council member Sue Wilson, who is in her first budget season as a council member, said the city’s communication about staffing and staffing goals is confusing.
“I think it is not really clear. It’s barely clear to us on council, I don’t think it’s clear to employees and certainly not clear to the community that we have a position control list with 800 positions but no intention of filling those 800 positions,” Wilson said.
Wilson also pushed back on the idea that the city was aiming to fund a 9.7% position vacancy rate when the city can’t afford to fill its full list of positions. If staffing increases to 700, Wilson said, the vacancy rate wouldn’t be 9.7% but would be closer to 12.5%. She pointed out the 2024-2025 proposed position control vacancy rate of 6.7% wasn’t close to the actual rate of 18%.
“I really think it is important that at least for the next couple years that we keep a closer and more frequent eye on the discrepancies between those two numbers,” Wilson said.
As part of the adopted budget, at Wilson’s suggestion, the city will start providing quarterly reports, similar to the annual position control report, so that the city council can stay abreast of its vacancy rates and hiring.
I found this post to be very informative and well-written.
Its never to late to start thinking about Voting… Voting out the RPA don’t let history repeat itself..
If some reasons were given to vote out RPA members I would consider working on campaigns to do so. However, the fact of the matter is, the city is in: 1. Probably the best financial condition in my life time.
2. Has well run meetings free of the rancor of past councils.
3. Made the council more democratic by voting to pay members a raise so that residents not involved in FIRE i. e. Finance, Insurance, Real Estate, can run for office. All across America city councils are dominated by these interests.
4. Has brought back , are you sitting down? Compassion for our neighbors.
5. Many other successes.
This is another example of the forward, responsible actions by our city council.