Clayton Watch

 Clayton Watch · 2026 Council Candidate · No. 4

Kim Trupiano for Clayton
City Council

An update on the Clayton City Council election. The Candidates are set for Clayton City Council. The filing deadline for the Clayton City Council election officially closed at 5:00 p.m., Wednesday, August 12.

With the filing period now closed, four candidates, Councilmember Kim Trupiano, Planning Commissioner Maria Shulman, Amy Callaghan, and Charlie Schmidt have stepped forward to serve our community.

Over the coming months, Clayton Watch will examine the public record of each of these candidates and publish what we find, from City records, our own files, and other background material. We will do this for every name on the list.

Next up, Kim Trupiano, who currently serves on the Clayton City Council and is seeking re-election. Unlike candidates without prior office, she has a voting record. Council votes referenced below are matters of public record and can be verified in the minutes.

Kim Trupiano came to the Council from a career spent reading budgets, and she asked for the seat on the committee where the City’s numbers actually get examined. Her stated aim is putting Clayton’s financial house in order: proactive about the future rather than reactive about the past.

DECADES

Newspapers, shopping centers, nonprofits, and her own small business.

Trupiano spent decades in the newspaper, shopping center, and nonprofit sectors before public office, and owns a small business herself. She points to that background as the basis for strategic financial planning, balancing the budget, and building relationships across the community, and says she understands firsthand what Clayton’s business owners are up against.

THE BOOKS

Four years on the Budget and Audit Committee, sometimes meeting weekly.

Trupiano reviewed dozens of City contracts, pushed for an RFP process so future contracts go out to competitive bid, moved Clayton to a managed investment portfolio, updated the Master Fee Schedule, and scrubbed the budget and scrubbed it again. The committee met monthly and at times weekly to get the numbers right.

Read that list against Clayton’s recent history. A city whose checkbook once went unreconciled for eighteen months, and whose Mayor could not say what it held in its investment accounts, now has a managed portfolio and a competitive bidding process. That is the specific hole, filled.

She also served four years on the City Sponsored Special Events Committee and sits on the East Contra Costa Habitat Conservancy Governing Board.

CERTIFIED

Clayton’s Sixth Housing Element has been certified by the state.

The Council approved the Housing Element more than three years ago. Certification by the California Department of Housing and Community Development came this year, ending a long period during which Clayton was out of compliance and exposed on housing.

It did not move on its own. Trupiano and City Manager Kris Lofthus went to Senator Tim Grayson’s office in person and asked for help securing a meeting with HCD. Her assessment is blunt: without that meeting, Clayton would still be waiting. She also credits City staff and the Senator’s office for the work that followed.

An uncertified housing element leaves a city exposed to builder’s remedy projects it cannot control. That exposure is now closed.

THE LIBRARY

As City Liaison, she led the library refresh from funding through vendor selection.

Trupiano serves as the City’s liaison to the Clayton Community Library Foundation Board and led the refresh process: securing the funding, defining the scope of work, and selecting the vendors. After years of planning, the refresh begins later this year.

Three separate things had to be true at once for that project to move. She made sure they were.

STAFFED

A new City Manager two years ago, and then a City Hall rebuilt around him.

Trupiano points to the hiring of a new City Manager two years ago as the decision the rest followed from. That manager went on to build out the staff: a new Police Chief, Public Works Director, Project Manager, Community Outreach Coordinator, and Community Development Specialist.

Craig Blythe joined as Public Works Director in early June, the first person to hold that position in Clayton. Melissa Rhodes came on as City Clerk the following week. The City reports it is now fully staffed.

Staffing continuity is not a small matter here. Gaps in continuity and institutional knowledge are exactly what has been blamed for missed grant funds and lapsed financial controls. This addresses the mechanism, not the symptom.

CLAYTON 311

The long-delayed SeeClickFix reporting system is live.

Residents can now report weed abatement, downed trees and limbs, graffiti, broken fixtures, code enforcement, and animal control issues through the City website under How Do I? › Report a Problem, or through the SeeClickFix mobile app on Android and Apple.

It gives residents a documented channel and gives the City a record of what was reported and when.

5–0

She voted with a unanimous Council to put a 1% sales tax measure on the November ballot.

The vote followed several months of meetings evaluating the City’s current and projected finances. The Council is also weighing a ten-year renewal of the Landscape Maintenance District, including establishing a reserve for emergency funding.

Trupiano’s stated reasoning: Clayton’s main revenue sources remain stable, but the cost of essential services has escalated. Behind that sits a longer bill. Years of deferred maintenance and unbuilt capital improvement projects have gone unaddressed, and deferring them further does not make them cheaper. The measure goes to voters in November. They will decide it, not the Council.

FOUR YEARS

Four years of delivered work, not a set of promises.

A certified Housing Element after a three-year stall. A managed investment portfolio and an RFP process for contracts. An updated Master Fee Schedule. A library refresh funded, scoped, and out to vendors. A new City Manager and a fully staffed City Hall, including Clayton’s first Public Works Director. A resident reporting system talked about for years and now live. A financial path put before voters rather than deferred to the next Council.

Each of those was pending when Trupiano took office. Each is done. In her own framing, serving has been the honor of her life, and the job is not yet finished.

REGIONAL

She holds seats on boards well beyond Clayton’s city limits.

East Bay Economic Development Alliance Board of Directors, since 2024. Diablo Valley College Business Advisory Board, since 2011. Save Mount Diablo, Moonlight on the Mountain and Development committee volunteer, since 2018. Clayton Valley Village volunteer, since 2022. Member of the Clayton Historical Society and the Mt. Diablo Birding Alliance.

Fifteen years on the DVC board is the sort of tenure that produces the relationships a small city needs when it wants something from the county or the state.

SINCE 2013

She and her husband Rich chose Clayton in 2013.

Rich Trupiano is a Gulf War veteran and former Combat Engineer in the Air Force. They live here with their dog JoJo. Trupiano can be reached directly at kimt@claytonca.gov or 925.673.7324, and closes her updates to residents the same way each time: we are stronger together.

In her own words

“I am running for reelection because I want to ensure that we continue to move forward, address our needs, and not fall back into the old patterns of ignoring priorities and long-standing issues.”

Experience Matters. Proven Results.

By Clayton Watch, FPPC ID #1471612. Council actions described above are matters of public record and can be verified in City minutes; biographical details and stated reasoning are drawn from Ms. Trupiano’s own published materials. Conclusions are the opinions of the committee.