With a new council majority, the Antioch City Council has been tasked with fiscal responsibility and closing a $54 million budget deficit.
This prompted a series of budget session meetings since January to go line-by-line of money coming in and money going out – this exercise exposed a crisis that I doubt anyone expected to be this bad.
After four years of reckless spending, to the point where Finance Director Dawn Merchant proclaimed in a public meeting that the prior city council had a spending problem versus a revenue problem, the council did nothing to address future deficits. Instead, they doubled down on financial illiteracy and spent away as if money would continue to fall from the sky.
In 2021, the two-year budget was passed in a 4-1 vote with councilmember Lori Ogorchock dissenting. Then in 2023, the next two-year budget was passed in a 5-0 vote with $10.2 and $15.4 million deficits—while using budget stabilization funds to offset the budget.
The council got away with this spending spree because of salary savings from vacant positions – as high as 24% at one point thanks to the environment created by former Mayor Lamar Hernandez-Thorpe and his accomplices Monica Wilson and Tamisha Torres-Walker. Today, the budget issues are compounded because they spent knowing one-time monies were used on “wish list” programs versus long term needs. Hernandez-Thorpe even hinted at a tax to fund homeless services, but it didn’t go anywhere.
Impressively, rather than looking for ways to reduce spending given salary savings of staff, the council spent on more programs and services. Even with Measure W, cannabis and ARPA monies, the council spent the city into a worst-case scenario leaving future councils to deal with the fallout while residents and businesses will be the ones impacted. All this, while being warned by Merchant every year about deficits—which even Merchant underestimated the deficit 5-years ago.
Fast forward to last fall, the residents had enough on many levels. Mayor Ron Bernal and councilmembers Don Freitas and Louie Rocha ran on public safety, cleaning up the city, fiscal responsibility and accountability. They won by large margins which mandated a change both in spending and policy. Compounded with the stability City Manager Bessie M. Scott has provided since being hired, Antioch has taken a vacancy rate from 24% to under 10%.
That is both good and bad news.
While increased staffing levels have certainly improved Antioch in many areas from staff workload to better service to residents and business, it has also created an issue with the budget – the “salary savings” excuse has essentially dried up. That said, to the credit of Scott and Merchant wearing down every red pen in the city striking line items from the budget with the help of the council, spending has been reduced by $22 million thus far, leaving a shortfall still of roughly $30 million over the next two years.
Scott also provided the city council with 5 budget models – with Option 5 reducing the budget deficit to as low as $5 million in Fiscal Year 2026. Simply put, Option 5 stinks! It is painful, hurts everyone and seems unreasonable. However, it ultimately is necessary in order to put Antioch on a path to prosperity going forward to rebuild rather than continuing to kick the can down the road or continue with band-aid approaches like prior councils have done for two decades.
Unfortunately, economics 101 has been neglected by most of the council. Somehow with a need for spending cuts, the council is adding items into the budget—which makes cutting much more painful. And bizarre.
While Scott had the budget deficit down to approximately $5 million, the council has somehow added spending back into the budget and currently sits around $12.6 million in cuts still needed in order to balance the budget. Should HomeKey+ be awarded, the deficit jumps to $14.6 million.
I understand the decision in wanting grand monies from the state, but to utilize Antioch’s only real hotel, the Comfort Inn for 55 years as a permanent supportive housing for homeless individuals, some of which, may be living on the streets in another city in Contra Costa County, is again making the mistake of past councils funding a responsibility of the state & county. Antioch should have learned its lesson, not doing the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome.
Compounding the budget issue, with the confusion at the end of the May 28 Special Meeting, Antioch residents should be worried as to how the council will close the gap. Will they do the right thing or take the easy way out and use funds they should not be touching at this point in time?
Bernal seems to be the only one up there understanding the need not to touch the general fund reserves or the budget stabilization funds. Even in a best case scenario, those funds are going to be needed in future years, especially given the likely cuts from the County, State and Federal Government. Should major cuts come and Antioch has spent their reserves, the city is doomed. If further State and Federal cuts don’t come, the recovery comes quicker.
With Scott calling it the “hard conversation”, on June 9, the council will be given its final chance to cut items from budget before it returns three weeks later for final approval. A couple of questions come to mind:
- Does Antioch make the difficult decision to make the big cuts now and plan for recovery beginning in 2027?
- Does Antioch do what it always does and kick the can down the road by making some cuts and pushing out the deficit to future years?
- Does Antioch truly become the “undo council” and get rid of the “wants” funded the past few years and focus on the “needs” of today?
- Is the general fund and budget stabilization funds on or off limits?
While Bernal seems to want to keep his campaign promise with regards to the budget, Freitas and Rocha appear to be waffling as these cuts are brutal – with real impact on people’s lives. Doing the unpopular thing, sometimes is the vote one must make in order to stop the bleeding.
The entire city council should commit to fixing past mistakes and address the budget once and for all by making the choice no one wants to make which is to stop kicking the deficit down the road and balance the budget without using any reserves.
Antioch deserves its “great reset” at all cost, as painful as the next 16-months will be and allow Scott, and the rest of the staff, to finally have a budget they know they is working with, implement a plan, create processes and systems that can streamline many issues that have plagued the city for years. This should set up the city for rebirth and prosperity going forward—the council will then need to help educate the community as to the “why”, the “how” and “where” the city is headed. This also allows the city to work on its General Plan which has not been updated since 2003 and sets the stage for the future—this work should also be pushed out to 2028.
The current state of the city, and soon to be impacts, is not on the backs of Scott, Bernal, Freitas or Rocha, but rather financially illiterate prior city councils who did not understand simple math or how live within a budget. But as bad as the budget position is, good is actually occurring.
Antioch is already seeing people want to work in the city again going from 24% vacancies to under 10%, so it is up to the council to make the hard decision today to set staff throughout the city up for success tomorrow. Also, the negative phony rhetoric and negativity is slowly going away while the police department is making progress towards greater transparency and trust. The community engagement is improving and more people are wanting to become part of the solution under new city leadership—bridges are being built, but more importantly, many more are being repaired.
On June 9, each city councilmember had better be well prepared with its plan on where to cut $12.6 million (or $14.6 with HomeKey+) from the budget and as someone who attempted the exercise myself–let me tell you, it is brutal, it is a headache and everyone will feel the pain of the cuts in one form or another.
Unfortunately, the reality of poor leadership in the past has arrived today. Elections have consequences and Antioch is paying for the past six years of ignorance. Which is why a mandate of public safety and fiscal responsibility was voted in—for these very difficult choices.
If June 9 comes and goes with a plan for a balanced budget without mortgaging the future budgets, the next part is being fully transparent with residents, staff and the community of what the cuts and impacts will be. The council is then tasked with getting buy in from the community and staff. The council is also going to have to be flexible with agenda requests and policy to allow a reset to truly occur versus boggling down staff with meaningless busy work — this means focus only on “needs” vs. “wants” for the next year.
I would like to remind Bernal, Freitas and Rocha each of you were elected to clean up the city and that starts with the budget. Equally important, while Torres-Walker and Wilson helped cause this deficit crisis, they also should come up with solutions on how to balance the budget versus taking the easy way out and use reserves or budget stabilization. The budget is a no-win situation this council must deal with given the insane discovery of these budget study sessions, but now is not the time for cold feet.
Make the cuts, set up the city for future success and pray nothing else goes wrong. Including Wilson and Torres-Walker who can write their budgeting wrongs by supporting a balanced budget while remembering they all committed to fully staffed Antioch Police Department at 117 officers—to ensure a safer city and provide confidence to residents and businesses.
Bernal, Freitas and Rocha were all voted in to clean up the city, it starts with the budget. Now is the time to do what they said they would do during the election, not get cold feet when difficult decisions must be made.
Mike Burkholder
Publisher of ContraCosta.news
[email protected]
