The Richmond City Council has decided to hire a consultant to gather community input on spending the $550 million Chevron settlement instead of asking city staff to lead the process.
The council voted 5-1 Tuesday night to spend $150,000 to $300,000 on a consultant who will design and lead a “comprehensive community engagement process.” District 1 council member Jamelia Brown voted “no,” while District 4 council member Soheila Bana abstained.
The approved proposal, put forth by Mayor Eduardo Martinez, Vice Mayor Doria Robinson and council member Claudia Jimenez, initially asked for the process to be completed by May — before the finalizing of the upcoming fiscal year’s budget — but Mubeen Qader, deputy finance director, said it couldn’t be done until sometime before July.
The $550 million Chevron settlement and how to spend it has been a hot-button topic since it was announced in August 2024, when a council ad-hoc committee of Martinez, Robinson and Jimenez struck a deal with Chevron to drop an effort to place a controversial measure on the general election ballot that, if approved, would have imposed a $1-per-barrel oil tax.
According to the settlement, Chevron, which the city said initially suggested paying it $300 million to drop the ballot measure, will pay $50 million per year for five years and $60 million per year for five years. The money goes into the city’s general fund, something Martinez has emphasized whenever the council discusses the money.
In early 2025, the council floated the idea of using the money to pay off its pension liability — something that has long plagued the city, which has ongoing staffing shortages and a steep unfunded retirement obligation. It then shifted its approach after President Trump was elected, pointing out that the Chevron payments become part of its general fund budget and setting aside $48 million (about the amount of its first Chevron payment) during last year’s budgeting process to account for uncertainties in federal revenue sources given that Richmond is a sanctuary city. Currently, according to City Manager Shasa Curl, the funds are being invested.
“We brought an item (to council) several months ago that asked if it was smart to pay the unfunded accrual liability due to pension obligations. Is that the smart thing to do? Or maybe not? What are the things that we can do to really make sure that we extend the life of these funds,” Jimenez told the council as she introduced Tuesday’s proposal. “What are the investments we have in terms of economic development and just transition that brings jobs but brings new sorts of revenue that start filling and diversifying our revenue so we are being prepared.”
Robinson, who has consistently cautioned that the city must rethink its reliance on a “single industry,” called the settlement a “once-in-a-generation opportunity.”
“To have this scale of general funds coming into the city for only this period of time, I think we are at a moment where we can make some really bad decisions,” she said, “We could move forward and spend it all every year and not really know when we look back on it, what happened? What did we spend it on again? Where did it go?”
Robinson told the council she hopes that the city strategizes how it spends the funds to stretch them past the 10-year payout period.
Brown, however, criticized the anticipated cost for the consultant as well as wording (that was later removed) stating that the consultants would work with community-based organizations that were “part of the Make Polluters Pay initiative.”
“This item seems and sounds like to me … to be set up to be spent on a just transition, which I am not opposed to, but it is not what the community speaks about,” she said, referencing residents in her district (including the Iron Triangle and Belding Woods neighborhoods). “If you go and ask for (residents’) Top 3 concerns, air quality is not going to come out of most residents’ mouths. They speak about safety. They speak about clean streets, options for youths, etc.”
Brown said that, while APEN and CBE are “amazing stakeholders,” they aren’t the entirety of Richmond and that the community engagement process shouldn’t be centered around one “coalition or advocacy group.”
Community will be asked to discuss how to prioritze funds across five categories
The approved proposal includes a framework of five spending categories: “Large-scale economic development, inclusive economic development, community-visioned projects, investments in essential services and public works, and city staffing and consultants.”
According to the drafted request for consultant proposals (RFP), the city is seeking a contractor with community engagement experience and one that is able to serve as a data collector and liaison between the city and community groups.
The scope of work will include conducting input sessions in all six council districts as well as online.
The RFP framework also mentions creating union jobs and “repairing harms” to neighborhoods close to Chevron’s Richmond refinery. It also calls for establishing a community advisory board to “develop criteria, solicit and prioritize projects for the community-visioned projects category and ensure transparency in project execution.”
Council member Cesar Zepeda proposed that city staff host at least six community meetings annually across the council districts to gather input before each budget cycle, with the cost to be absorbed by existing department budgets.
In December Zepeda hosted a community engagement meeting in District 1 that, among council members, was only attended by Brown, she said. Zepeda said he set up the meeting after hearing concerns that community discussions about the money weren’t taking place as had been promised when the settlement was announced.
“I took the initiative to get that feedback,” Zepeda said at Tuesday’s meeting, adding that he thinks city staff “is more than capable of doing this on our behalf.”
Qader disagreed, saying the staff’s workload is too heavy.
“I just want to be honest with you guys, with the council and mayor, that the timeline that has been given and the task being given right now is going to be literally the core budget department’s task,” Qader said. “The budget division is overwhelmed and going to be further overwhelmed for the next several months starting tomorrow as we kick off the fiscal year 2026-2027 budget development process.”
Tuesday discussion was similar to one held in 2024
Tuesday night’s council discussion mirrored a September 2024 meeting that was held a month after the settlement agreement was announced.
In that meeting, Bana attempted to direct city staff to consider spending $100,000 on a consultant to determine what the community wants the money spent on. The council eventually approved a resolution that established “guiding principles” while outlining broad spending categories and prohibiting city employees from making “alternative” plans or committing the funds without the council’s approval.
But, instead of having city staff first identify needs, as Bana had suggested, Tuesday’s proposal established the spending categories.
At the September 2024 meeting then-council member Gayle McLaughlin said that, “it should not be put in the hands of staff” and that because the council worked directly with environmental groups, such as APEN and CBE on the oil tax ballot measure, she believed the council needed to “do right” by them.
At that time, activists with the Asia Pacific Environmental Network (APEN) and Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) criticized Bana’s plan, stating it was “too vague” and “wasteful.”
Sandy Saeteurn, political director of APEN’s Contra Costa County chapter, told Richmondside after that meeting in 2024 they were concerned about the amount of funding being set aside for consultants and the proposed six-month timeline, which they believed wouldn’t be enough time for a thorough community outreach.
On Tuesday night, however, members of APEN, CBE and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) spoke in support of the proposal penned by Martinez, Jimenez and Robinson.
APEN’s newly minted co-director, Michelle Chan, told the council to not “forget how we got here.”
“It was a grassroots coalition of residents who went door-to-door to, under the Polluter’s Pay Initiative, to bring Chevron to the table,” Chan said. “So I think it’s only fitting that the community also should be deeply involved in how this money should be spent.”
Robinson, who opposed Bana’s proposal in 2024, told Richmondside on Wednesday that she doesn’t view hiring a consultant in the same light as the city assessing community needs. She sees it engaging the community in a public priority-setting process.
“These are really complex topics,” she said, adding that the city has brought in a municipal financial advisor to discuss potential scenarios for investing the settlement funds or using them to finance a bond measure, something that was mentioned by city manager Curl Tuesday. “We can’t do everything so what is our overall strategy?”
On Tuesday a number of speakers suggested the money could be used to improve streets, fund a just transition, help the formerly incarcerated and unhoused communities or support Richmond schools. Robinson said that the council will have to continuously listen to the community in case their spending priorities change.
“Do we have the stomach to do something like investment and then use the money slowly by using the investment funds, the interest we’ve earned instead of the principle, essentially creating an endowment for the city which would be huge,” she said. “We still have to have priorities. We can’t do it all.”
APEN’s Local Policy Coordinator Emma Ishii issued a statement Wednesday saying that the issue is about more than just hiring a consultant.
“The proposal council passed yesterday does more than hire a consultant: It begins the process of creating a transparent, accountable framework for spending these funds that the community can shape and respond to,” Ishii wrote. “Our members see this as a positive first step toward delivering on the promise of the Polluters Pay campaign and building a better future for Richmond.”
Money spent on a consultant… Sounds like WCCUSD AGAIN..
How about the city actually does something productive and not spend it on frivolous things and actually make an impact on residents.
I’ll throw an example,Buy equipment to revitalize roads reusing the same millings.. Fix the darn potholes over there on Giant Road by Parchester Village and get the new HOA built by the golf course to fix their damn drainage so it’s stops flooding, it slopes down the hill and there has been so many vehicles caught in the flooding.. To the extent that i feel like insurance companies should take a look at the developer..
At least 50% of it should be used on the pensions to decrease our property tax bills. We have been paying far more for all the bond issues and assessments than people in more prosperous cities and counties, and that’s not right. Further, a consultant should be able to cover the expense for far less than $300k. We don’t need to get ripped off again.
I proudly open a home in the city of Richmond since 2013. I think the city should focus on the funding priorities to minimize taxes and inspection fees for small businesses, this will not just to give the small businesses to save the expenses, it will also encourage others to open business in the city. Providing childcare expenses for daycare and kindergarten, parents will have more money to spend and this will increase city tax. Give home owners a deduction on yearly special property taxes, Richmond home owners are paying one of the highest property taxes in the state, home owners will have more money to spend business in Richmond and this will increase the city tax