Richmond City Council members clashed with outgoing City Manager Shasa Curl Tuesday over staff concerns that the city’s spending is outpacing revenue.
Curl, who announced her retirement earlier this year and is leaving Oct. 2, and her finance department staff told council members that the city overspent by nearly $9 million on daily operations last year and questioned whether the city should continue its $550 million Chevron settlement community engagement project given the uncertain financial outlook. (The city retained a consultant earlier this year to oversee the process.)
However, Curl said that the contract with Dalberg hasn’t been finalized because the city can’t confirm how much of the settlement will be available for discretionary spending if they end up having to use some of it to close the budget gap.
“We can’t just start a community engagement process on (for example) $300 million, right?” Curl said. “You have to have finite information that you’re giving these consultants to proceed with or we say that the city council said to start with unknown variables, which we’re happy to do, but I don’t feel comfortable saying ‘start with unknown variables’ of this magnitude for something this important to the community.”
Though the city is reporting a $40.2 million surplus, that figure includes a $50 million Chevron payment that hit the city’s coffers earlier this year, according to Richmond’s Finance Director Emily Combs. The city is also using interest from the city’s American Rescue Plan Act funds and Environmental and Community Investment Agreement to cover a separate $3.44 million shortfall.
Deputy Director of Finance Mubeen Qader said that the 2025 financial shortfall, a gloomy five-year fiscal outlook and the cost of pending employment contracts with police officer and police and fire management unions will come from a good portion of the settlement money, which is paid to the city in $50 million increments annually over about 10 years.
“It (those contracts) will have a negative impact on those revenues,” Qadar said, referencing one ‘pessimistic’ financial forecast that estimates the city would be left with just $15.4 million a year of settlement money.
The at-times tense budget discussion took nearly three hours so the council postponed a discussion about switching from Flock to a new police surveillance service. It did approve a 45-day moratorium on data centers just seconds before the meeting ended at 11 p.m.
City staff tell council that they’ve previously warned them about budget deficits
Combs told the council that the city had alerted the council about its deficits in prior years, pointing to the financial numbers from 2023/2024 through 2025/2026.
In those years, Combs said, staff presented the council with “pessimistic,” “middle of the road,” and “optimistic” budget forecasts for future years but, in each of these forecasts, the city still had a budget deficit due to increasing hiring costs since 2021.
“Even with our ‘optimistic’ forecast back in 2024, we were still projecting deficits,” Combs said, adding that those projections came prior to the city securing the $550 million settlement.
Curl and her financial staff in recent months have repeatedly asked the council to rein in new city programs.
During those meetings, Curl detailed financial strains due to hiring, labor costs and national economic uncertainty and a pending contract with the city’s police union which has unknown budget impacts.
On Tuesday staff gave the council some alternatives to moving forward with the Chevron settlement discussions: Wait for staff to finish assessing and prioritizing the city’s infrastructure needs; finish negotiations with the police union first; or continue as planned.
Public Works Director Daniel Chavarria told the council that he estimates that the city has about $1.5 billion in “infrastructure needs” though the formal assessment of the city hasn’t been completed.
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“…instead of accepting that we’re leading with integrity, we are being chastised because of the decisions you’ve made.”
— City Manager Shasa Curl to the Richmond City Council
The council ultimately voted 4-1 to continue the community engagement process with Mayor Eduardo Martinez casting the “no” vote, and council members Cesar Zepeda and Soheila Bana abstaining.
The council will also not pause any of the 55 council-directed projects, some of which have not started, and instructed staff to come back with a “prioritization” plan for the council to review later this year.
“I would hope that the prioritization process ends with a realistic number of projects that could be done in the fiscal year that actually meets what the capacity of staff is and not what an imagined capacity is,” Robinson said.
Council questions city staff assumptions
But the conversation revealed a disconnect between some of the city council members and the staff members giving them recommendations.
At one point in the meeting, Robinson asked why staff had recommended the council use unspent funds in recent years if they already had forecast an impending deficit.
“Why were we advised to do that?” Robinson asked Curl. “Why did we get that advice from staff?”
Curl said that the deficit projections aren’t new and that the council doesn’t like the “truth.” She said that staff have been following the council’s directions to prioritize things such as parks projects, immigration legal defense and the Black resiliency project.
For example, one of the adjustments made in the last quarter of the 2025-2026 was to redirect $1.6 million back to fleet vehicle maintenance to replace funds that were diverted to the Black resiliency project.
District 6 council member Claudia Jimenez, who is running for mayor against Ahmad Anderson this November, said she believed that the city is operating in the “unknown” with projections that come years in advance. She said she thinks that the city doesn’t know if its Chevron tax revenue will be increasing and that this information isn’t being reflected in the projections. She also said the city should invest in “new” technologies that will decrease the city’s financial dependence on Chevron.
“What we are not seeing here is …we can have good and smart investments that can help us in these 10 years to have better revenue and move away from that dependency that we have right now from one industry to other industries,” Jimenez said.
Curl told Robinson and Jimenez that she believed the council was reprimanding staff and blamed the council for the bleak financial outlook.
“You asked us to finish built-environment improvements (parks) to a high standard. That’s what you told us to do,” Curl said. “You approved (union contract) increases in excess of what we suggested. So, it’s a confluence of factors. It’s not just one thing that led to where you are today … It wasn’t just one decision.”
Robinson said that the council needs another opinion on its financial outlook and that she is seeking more information about how council-related projects relate to expenditures in other departments.
“You’ll have one (another opinion) on October 3,” Curl answered, seemingly referring to her successor, who hasn’t been named.
In closed session Tuesday, the council discussed Curl’s job performance and hiring an interim city manager. City attorney Shannon Moore announced before the regular session that the city has made an offer to a candidate but did not identify them. Moore said that if the city’s first choice for the interim position doesn’t accept the offer, the city has another candidate in mind.
“It’s really difficult because we’re working really hard to give you a balanced budget,” Curl added. “We’ve really tried hard to achieve the city council’s policy direction and instead of accepting that we’re leading with integrity, we are being chastised because of the decisions you’ve made.”
