Toby the "Watchdog"

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City Council Meeting Summary - Jeff Wan 3-3-26

City Council Correspondence: The excerpts below have been sourced from the website of council member Jeff Wan to share with the Clayton Watch Community. You can access council member Wan's website by following this link: https://www.jeffwanforclaytoncitycouncil.net

While we may not always agree with the opinions shared, we believe in facilitating a platform for respectful debates. Thank you for contributing to the ongoing conversation in the comments section. Remember to keep your comments respectful and concise.

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Jeff Wan, Mayor

Last night the Council met and discussed a couple of significant items: 

At our meeting this week, we received and discussed the audited Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) for the fiscsal year ended 6.30.25.

There weren't any surprises from the audit - FY25 ended with a managable deficit as anticipated. There were a two items that I wanted to call out.

- The Successor Agency, which is the entity that took on responsibility for funds after the prior Redevelopment Agency was folded due to state level action that dissolved RDAs in 2012, had been receiving funding from the County in order to wind down the activities of the RDA. The Successor Agency completely wound down in FY25, and as a result the revenue related to the administration of the Successor Agency decreased signficantly - nearly $350K. This will go away completely in the out years, and is the cause of projected revenue decreases in the next few years.

- The other item I wanted to call out is what did not happen. Our auditors did not identify any signficant deficiencies or material weaknesses in internal controls. Internal Controls are critical in the financial operation of the City. As a reminder, starting in FY20 through FY23, our auditors identified both significant deficiencies and material weaknesses in internal controls. They were serious findings, and for years the City was unable to remdiate them. As we have brought on different staff, the City has been able to address these areas and as was the case last year, in the current year there were also no findings.

The Public Should Not Be Subsidizing Private Nonprofit Events

When required City fees are redirected, the burden doesn’t disappear, it shifts to residents.

Dear Clayton Residents,

Good government relies on consistent rules and transparent decisions.

One of the simplest principles is this: when an organization uses public property, it pays the required fee. Those charges are not symbolic. They exist to reimburse the community for the very real costs the City incurs, closing streets, rerouting traffic, assigning public works crews, providing police presence, managing risk, handling wear and tear on parks, and completing cleanup and restoration once an event ends. Staff time is diverted from other priorities. Normal services are interrupted. Residents experience detours, noise, parking limitations, and restricted access to their own downtown. Those impacts remain whether a fee is collected or not.

At a recent City Sponsored Special Events Committee meeting, Carl Wolfe, president of the Clayton Business and Community Association (CBCA), asked during public comment that required downtown and park special-event fees for use of the entire downtown and The Grove be treated instead as sponsorship support for the City’s Concerts in the Grove series. Click here to watch the video of Carl Wolfe speaking at the meeting. 10:13 on the timer is where he starts to speak. (What he is suggesting may sound generous, but it can also come across as sneaky, and possibly illegal.)

But it is important to recognize what it means. This is not new money. It is a request to relabel funds owed for the exclusive use of Main Street, our downtown, including The Grove Park, and apply them somewhere else.

And remember, Mr. Wolfe is a former Councilmember and former Mayor. He understands how municipal finance works, or does he? He should know that when revenue owed to the City is waived or redirected, someone else ultimately absorbs that cost.

That someone else is the taxpayer.

Once those fees are paid, they are public money. They are deposited into the General Fund and belong to the residents of Clayton, not the CBCA, not event organizers, and not any individual requester. They are no different from any other user fees collected by the City. No private organization gets to pay a bill and then dictate where the money goes or reclaim it in another form. Public funds are controlled through the City’s budget process on behalf of taxpayers, period.

Over the past two years, CBCA leadership has pushed to cancel or reduce the special-event fee (as reflected in the Master Fee Schedule adopted in August 2023), despite the fact that the organization has been paying only a fraction of what comparable private users would normally pay. Public financial filings show that the CBCA holds more than $300,000 in the bank. By any reasonable measure, they have the ability and the means to meet their obligations without asking to shift those costs onto residents.

When events occupy our downtown, streets close, personnel are deployed, and cleanup follows. Those bills do not vanish. If the City does not collect the required fees, the expense shifts to residents.

Many taxpayers share a straightforward belief:

• The public should not subsidize private organizations and their events.
• Groups should raise sponsorships, donations, and vendor revenue to fund their own festivals. That is part of hosting them.

There is also a practical reality

The Concerts in the Grove already receives generous support from Clayton businesses, families, and volunteers. Residents may reasonably ask why money owed for exclusive use of public property should be rerouted away from the general fund and labeled something else.

Clayton Watch is focused on process, not personalities.

We are not aware of any adopted policy that allows mandatory rental fees to be converted into sponsorship credit.

If such authority exists, the City should identify where it is written, how it works, and whether it is available equally to every organization.

• Consistency protects public trust.

A constructive path forward

Clayton has a proud tradition of voluntary sponsorships.

We strongly encourage the CBCA to return to that tradition. Since the Master Use Agreement (MUA) was canceled, the organization has stopped contributing financially to Concerts in the Grove, a sharp departure from prior years when support was routinely provided.

Choosing not to contribute while simultaneously asking to redirect money owed to the City sends the wrong message to residents.

If the CBCA wishes to support the concerts, it can do what businesses, families, and other sponsors do, write a check.

At the same time, it should continue paying required fees for the use of our streets, our downtown, and our parks, just as any other group would.

Clayton Watch supports community events and the many people who make them possible. But the financial rules governing public assets must remain clear, consistent, and fair.

Because when the rules are steady, trust follows. And when trust follows, Clayton wins.

Respectfully,

Clayton Watch

City Council Meeting Summary - Jeff Wan 2-3-26

City Council Correspondence: The excerpts below have been sourced from the website of council member Jeff Wan to share with the Clayton Watch Community. You can access council member Wan's website by following this link: https://www.jeffwanforclaytoncitycouncil.net

While we may not always agree with the opinions shared, we believe in facilitating a platform for respectful debates. Thank you for contributing to the ongoing conversation in the comments section. Please keep your comments clear, concise, and appropriate for the discussion. 

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Last night the Council was introduced to four new staff members, including a neew police officer, and three new administrative personel.  And while staff turnover is a normal circumstance, it is great to have a full compliment of staff to support the community.  There remains one role that is still open in the Public Works area.

- We also discussed the timeline of acitvities related to a sales tax measure, and the renewal of the LMD.  The discussion focused on what role the Council has, what role staff has, and when various activities will take place.  This included how and when ballot language would be drafted, when staff would hold informational town halls to inform about each measure, and the timing of each.  The Council gave its preference that staff hold two informational townhalls - one each before and after ballots were mailed to residents.

There was a question posed by a resident which I wanted to address.  The gist of the question was, given the City has a healthy reserve, why is it appropriate to seek a tax increase rather than spend down reserves?

At first glance, it may not make sense to hear that the City needs more tax revenue when it is maintaining a large reserve.  After all, reserves are like savings.  But savings alone do not keep a a household or a City financially healthy if ongoing operations exceed revenue.

Reserve spending may be appropriate in some circustnaces.  Things like emergency response, smoothing during short term economic downturns, one time investments for major equipment, or even costs to cover efforts during reorganization may be appropriate.  These are all one time in nature and time bound.

A city’s reserve works like a rainy-day fund. It exists to help during emergencies, economic downturns, or unexpected events where a large expenditure may be required.  Reserves are not designed to pay for routine, ongoing costs such as wages or maintenance.  Reserves are a fixed pool of money. Operating deficits repeat every year. If we spend reserves on routine services, it is choosing to spend down a limited asset to cover an unlimited problem. That math never works. It only postpones the moment when the money runs out.

At our December 2, 2025 meeting, staff presented a projection of the general fund if no new revenues were implemented:

And the gap will likely grow.  City revenue is largely based on property taxes.  Because the increase in property taxes is capped, inflation has been outpacing proprty taxes for several years.  This means that while our operational costs rise, our revenues are not able to rise at the same rate.  With a sales tax that puts us inline with neighboring cities, the projection looks quite a bit different:

There is also a fairness issue. Using yesterday’s savings to pay today’s bills pushes the cost of current services onto future residents. Rather than address the underlying cause of operational deficits, using reserves asks future generationsn to solve and pay for the the services that are being consumed today.  We as a Council are elected to make decisions and address issues that impact the City.  We know this is an issue, and it should be addressed.

Increasing tax revenue addresses the core problem. It brings ongoing revenue in line with ongoing costs. That balance protects essential services, preserves reserves for true emergencies, and helps ensure the city remains stable and resilient over the long term. In short, savings provide security, and in some cases can buy some time.  But only stable revenue buys sustainability.and keeps the City running.

Top Story

Rear-View Mirror: A Look Back at Clayton Watch

By the Clayton Watch Team

Every town has that moment when you realize someone needs to pay closer attention. For Clayton, that moment arrived in August 2024, and that’s when we founded Clayton Watch.

We didn’t start this site to be popular. We started it because too much of what was being said about Clayton didn’t match the record, didn’t match the meetings, and didn’t match what residents were living through in real time.

So we made a decision early on:

We weren’t going to “join the conversation.” We were going to document it, verify it, and follow it forward.

And that mission has shaped everything we’ve done since.

How It All Unfolded — The Road Behind Us

1) We Built the Civic Archive the Town Didn’t Have

Before Clayton Watch, public meetings were technically public, but for the average resident, following city business felt like a scavenger hunt with no map. You had to hunt through agendas, minutes, scattered videos, and vague summaries.

So we stepped in and built a consistent, searchable archive of:

•  City Council meetings and recaps
•  Budget & Audit and Financial Sustainability sessions
•  Special meetings, study sessions, and key workshops
•  Community letters, public comments, and resident concerns

Our goal was simple: make the civic record easy to find, easy to follow, and impossible to quietly rewrite.

When residents ask, “Did that really happen?” we want the answer to be: Yes, and here it is.

2) We Called Out Leadership Gaps When Leadership Was Missing

A major reason Clayton Watch grew so quickly is that residents could feel it: leadership was inconsistent and, at times, effectively non-existent.

During this period:

•  We documented concerns that Reina Schwartz was working remotely from Sacramento during parts of her tenure, at a time when residents expected visible, hands-on leadership.
•  We also documented community observations that Bret Prebula lacked the leadership presence and people skills needed to stabilize City Hall, rebuild trust, and communicate clearly with the public.
•  During that same time period, an annual $400 parcel tax was pushed by former City Manager Reina Schwartz, supported by council members Carl Wolfe, Peter Cloven and Holly Tillman, while the city had not reconciled its checkbook in over 18 months.

In plain terms: They didn't know our numbers, but still pushed for a tax.

We pushed back because the issue was never solvency, it was the lack of leadership and accountability.

Today, Clayton’s finances are guided by experienced professionals working with strong rigor and transparency. Our mission remains the same: track the record, demand accountability, and protect the facts.

We are not interested in personal attacks. We are interested in performance, accountability, and outcomes, because when leadership disappears, residents pay the price in confusion, drift, and poor follow-through.

And that’s the difference worth preserving.

3) We Challenged the Spin — From Papers to Politicians

When local narratives stopped matching the record, we stepped in.

We challenged the Clayton–Concord Pioneer when it drifted into:

•  One-sided political framing
•  Civic reporting without verification
•  Dramatic claims unsupported by evidence

The publication is now defunct. We didn’t celebrate its end, but we archived its final season for accuracy, because Clayton’s history deserves honesty, not nostalgia.

Misspeaks, Misuse, and a Town That said 'No'

We also documented candidates running for local office when campaign rhetoric crossed boundaries or contradicted facts.

Here are the moments the community needed to know about:

•  One candidate campaigned on outsourcing Clayton’s police services, an idea met with strong community resistance. The town responded immediately and with unity. The candidate later said he misspoke or was misunderstood, a reversal we preserved for the record.
•  Another candidate, holding a high-ranking state title, attempted to use her position to influence internal governance decisions at a local charter high school. Residents viewed it as a boundary failure and misuse of perceived prestige. Her title-driven pressure, applied without process, resulted in a lawsuit filed against her by the charter high school, which publicly rejected outside political interference in internal school governance. We documented it as a clear indicator of flawed judgment by this individual.
•  Another candidate, claimed Clayton was racist, that our police profile, and that residents were afraid to leave their homes at night triggered alarm, but collapsed under verification using actual crime statistics, public safety reports, and council video archives.
•  That candidate, who is now serving on the City Council, later scrubbed the unverified racial claims from her campaign website, raising the key question we preserved for the community:

Were the problems solved, or did they never exist in the first place?

Either way, the town’s resistance to misinformation defined the outcome, and her silence spoke louder than the original headline ever did.

Our mission has never been about personalities, it's about process, proof, and perserving the record accurately, especially when the narratives wobble under daylight.

4) We Elevated Neighborhood Parking Into the Olivia on Marsh Creek Conversation

From the beginning of the Olivia on Marsh Creek project, residents raised clear and consistent concerns about spillover parking migrating into surrounding neighborhoods. Those concerns were often minimized, fragmented, or addressed in isolation, rather than as a direct consequence of the project’s approved design.

So we got specific, and we stayed specific.

Clayton Watch documented and explained how parking tied directly to the Olivia project:

•  We clarified what the approved parking plan actually allowed versus what residents were experiencing in real time.
•  We examined the Parking Permit Program as a mitigation tool, explaining how it works, what it can and cannot solve, and why it should be discussed as part of the project’s impacts, not as a separate afterthought.
•  We pushed for resident-first solutions, emphasizing that surrounding neighborhoods should not be expected to absorb overflow while enforcement and mitigation lagged behind occupancy.

Our position was straightforward:

Neighborhoods should not have to “get used to it” when parking impacts are a foreseeable result of a project’s design and approvals.

Parking is not an abstract policy debate, it is a quality-of-life issue, and in the case of Olivia on Marsh Creek, it deserved real attention, real mitigation, and real follow-through.

5) We Took on “Weeds Gone Wild” Before Fire Season Took Over

We also documented what residents were seeing on the ground: vegetation overgrowth wasn’t just an eyesore, it was wildfire fuel.

Through “Weeds Gone Wild,” we:

•  kept attention on public parcels and rights-of-way,
•  amplified resident warnings,
•  and pushed back on feel-good claims of oversight that didn’t match visible reality.

This is exactly what we mean by watchdog work: Issues don’t go away just because someone stops talking about them.

6) We Documented the Post Office Cleanup Until It Happened

We also kept pressure on an issue that many people quietly noticed but few were tracking publicly: the decline of the Post Office area, overgrowth, dumping, and a general “this isn’t who we are” feel.

We documented it until it became impossible to ignore. And when the cleanup happened, we documented that too, because we’re not here just to critique. We’re here to show the arc of cause, pressure, and results.

7) Olivia on Marsh Creek: The Oversight Story That Defined Our Role

If there’s one topic that shows why Clayton Watch exists, it’s Olivia on Marsh Creek.

We documented something important early:

Olivia on Marsh Creek was never approved or designed as a 55-and-over senior housing project, and the approved parking plan ultimately needed a reality check.

That misconception circulated publicly, and we corrected it, because labels matter, and misinformation becomes “fact” if no one challenges it.

But the bigger issue wasn’t the label. The bigger issue was oversight.

We documented resident concerns that: 

•  Conditions of Approval were discussed, but enforcement wasn’t clearly verifiable, residents asking questions were sometimes treated like a problem,
•  PIRs and public requests were met with defensiveness rather than transparency,
•  and public confidence was being replaced by “trust us” messaging.

So we kept repeating the line Clayton needed to hear:

Approval is not oversight. Oversight is the job.

And we made sure that idea stayed in the public record.

8) We Challenged Misleading Local Media

As the issues grew, so did the spin, and we began documenting something else: the way local narratives were being shaped through a long-running local paper.

We publicly challenged the Clayton–Concord Pioneer when it drifted into:

•  one-sided framing,
•  misleading civic coverage,
•  and unsupported claims presented as reporting.

That publication is now defunct.

We didn’t celebrate its end, but we did preserve the truth of its final chapter, because Clayton’s media history deserves honesty, not nostalgia.

9) Civil Grand Jury Report 2505: The Spark, The Letters, and the Petition

When the Civil Grand Jury Report 2505 was released, many residents felt it read less like neutral fact-finding and more like a targeted narrative.

The complainant remained anonymous, as allowed, but the public roadmap did not.

So we responded the right way: through process, documentation, and formal advocacy.

We delivered:

•  letters to the Superior Court Judge,
•  letters to the Lead County Attorney,
•  letters to the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors, especially Supervisor Ken Carlson,
•  and a formal Petition to Correct or Amend the Public Record, supported by exhibits and primary documentation. (more on that to come later.)

We also documented what many residents recognized:

•  calls for investigation were being amplified by a small, organized circle of unhappy advocates,
•  the Clayton Business and Community Association (CBCA) contract drama and fallout was part of the public context,
•  and the report itself reflected an agenda that did not represent the full town.

Clayton Watch didn’t make it personal, but the timeline made it clear.

10) The Journalism Void Was Filled

When the Pioneer closed, Diablo Gazette stepped up its presence in Clayton and expanded independent coverage of local civic affairs.

We welcome that, because we’ve always believed:

A small town deserves more than one independent voice committed to the public record.

The View Behind Us

Looking back, we’re proud of what Clayton Watch has become, not because we “won arguments,” but because we built something more valuable:

•  A civic archive residents can actually follow
•  A timeline that makes spin harder and facts easier
•  A platform that keeps issues alive long enough for answers to appear
•  A public record that doesn’t evaporate when the headline cycle ends

We didn’t set out to win awards. We set out to make sure the record was accurate enough that awards could exist someday.

And that’s not just a win, that’s a legacy.

Respectfully submitted,

Clayton Watch
Political Action Committee and Members