Campaign ’24 Fact Check: $12 Million Budget Deficit is Not "Financial Solvency"

Campaign ’24 Fact Check:

Mayor Welch’s Campaign Lie Hides 

Huge Deficit 

She Replaces Budget Hole Reality with 

Personal Fiscal Acumen Fiction

Telling voters she's "fighting for the people", we're left wondering what people the Mayor is talking about?  

Take a look at any of the expensive election flyers hitting your mailbox from Mayor Courtney Welch and your take away will be that she’s personally responsible for and a capable financial steward of the people’s money at City Hall.  What she’s not telling us this election season is Emeryville is in dire fiscal straights, saddled with a $12 million budget deficit this year, the worst in Emeryville history.  Mum's the word on this now but we think it will be quietly announced after the election. 

City Hall’s financial problem is walloping and growing.  The deficit, at $12 million, amounts to almost $1000 in red ink for every Emeryville resident.  Not only does the Mayor hide the sea of red ink from voters, she flips the script:  “Mayor Welch has a proven track record of delivering results for Emeryville families” , she says in her campaign flyers.  And then she lists as her top achievement that she is “Maintaining a financially solvent city”.

Never mind that the Mayor is pandering to a fake demographic, families (of which Emeryville has the lowest percentage of any city in the East Bay), the bragging about her financial acumen against a massive deficit done on her watch, is Orwellian manipulation meant to deceive the voters.  This is a lie.

From a Courtney Welch Mailed Campaign Flyer
Our hornswoggling Mayor tells voters how great a job she has done with the budget.

The Tattler gives this a 
"Pants on Fire".

School District Budget Crisis

Another contentious meeting:

Teacher Lay-Offs at Center Of Looming Budget Shortfall

The Emery School Board was inundated again last night with parents, teachers and citizens demanding that budget cuts not come in the form of teacher lay-offs.

It was all budget talks at an overfilled Emery Theater that featured Alameda County School Superintendent Sheila Jordan advising the Board how it could engage in arcane money shifting tactics to stop the 'short horizon' cash hemorrhaging brought on by funding loss due to plunging student enrollment among other reasons.  In addition to laying off teachers, the Board indicated that the School District is facing a looming $1.6 million shortfall beginning next year.  The loss of income from the falling enrollments the District was highlighted as a major contributing factor in the budget crisis as was the fact that the District has stopped collecting money it had gathered by renting out Emery's Ralph Hawley Middle School to Piedmont Unified School District for two years, softening the ill effects of the ongoing cuts coming from Sacramento.

Some 14 people spoke, mostly imploring Board members to not cut the budget at the expense of the actual classrooms by laying off teachers.  Executives from the Emeryville based alternative bio-fuels company, Amyris spoke on behalf of a science teacher they have mentored that has received a pink slip from the District, one of several.

School Board member Josh Simon said the Board is ready to listen to the citizen's ideas for balancing the budget, "We're looking forward to the creativity of the community" he said.

Last night's crowd at the regularly scheduled School Board meeting came on the heels of the March 12th meeting, which also drew an angry crowd of parents, teachers, et al.