We are looking at a budget with depleting reserves, a vanished contingency fund, and a growing deficit. But our true problem isn’t a shortage of taxpayer dollars — it is a shortage of fiscal discipline and financial transparency.
Look at the facts. When voters approved Measure G in 2008, the city made a clear promise: 50 percent of the tax would be permanently sequestered to fix our broken roads, and 50 percent would go to the General Fund. The public trusted that promise.
Now, City Manager Kelly McAdoo and Finance Director Keith DeMartini are pushing an amendment. They call it a “modernization” to provide “flexibility.” In reality, it is a shell game to transfer our much-needed road money directly into the General Fund to cover the budget deficits. This is the exact same deceptive playbook we saw with Measure A 2026.
Every time this council uses the word “modernization,” it is a vague disguise to pull a bait-and-switch on the public. The voters thought they were voting on a binding mandate to fix infrastructure. Instead, the council set up a structure where the tax is permanent, but the promise to fix the roads is temporary. The taxpayers did not vote for an open-ended piggy bank to hide structural deficits.
The public deserves to know exactly what was promised, exactly what is changing, and exactly where their money is going.
