The fact that city officials want to fill the $2.4 million budget gap with another dip into the General Fund reserves should scare the hell out of citizens.
The city has been robbing that fund year after year since ARPA funds dried up.
Finance Director Vanessa Portillo said plugging the budget gap with another $2.4 million in reserves would leave the city with just $2 million, which represents just 6.6 percent of budgeted expenditures, which violates the city’s established 18% reserve target. To keep a 18% reserve, the city needs to keep reserves at about $5.4 million.
Portillo spelled out that reserves are intended to be used “in the event of an emergency or an economic downturn” but noted a reserve of $2 million would not “cover even one full month of operations.”
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Meaning leaders had better find the courage to pull out the carving knife.
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Mayor Javier Lopez’s integrity has been called into question by a number of folks in Ceres.
I was made aware of the flap by Gary M. Condit, one of the mayor’s rival in his re-election bid. Condit is also chairman of the Ceres Planning Commission.
The flap was in response to a Facebook post made by the mayor, in which he was praising the Code Enforcement team for responding quickly and taking care of the illegal dumping behind the abandoned Rite Aid building on Mitchell Road. Lopez used “before and after” photos but something looked fishy about the “after” photo. It looked significantly doctored up, specifically, the appearance of the metal doors on the trash enclosure. A dent in the door was seemingly erased in the mayor’s “after” photo and so was a pink colored mismatch of another door apparently caused when graffiti was painted over. The cement pad also appeared much more uniform than other photos taken by others after the code enforcement cleanup.
“I feel like as an elected official it’s not very truthful to try to alter the reality of constant blight issues in Ceres,” Condit texted me.
As you might figure the homeless (strike that, mentally ill and drugged out) have gone back in and made it look horrible again.
Josh Steeley responded to the controversy, stating: “I have seen another council member using AI to create posts on their Facebook page and then claimed it was their original writing so this doesn’t surprise me. After watching the last budget workshop and how he was reading directly off his laptop I am sure he used AI to help formulate a plan to try and balance the budget which landed on ideas of eliminating the city IT department. He would rather eliminate some jobs than give up his and his buddies taxpayer funded health care, or look into ways to reduce the amount of money spent on city attorneys, all while still wanting to hire a city PIO. This is what the voters wanted – inexperience, lack of integrity, arrogance, and no original thought.”
An anonymous participant rose to the mayor’s defense, posting: “It’s about perspective of the photo. Whether you say AI generated or not, it got the job got done not because they reported it to Code Enforcement but because the mayor had it get done after he seen the post himself. If you don’t like it move to Modesto.”
Doctoring an “after” photo was unnecessary since the point was to highlight the cleanup that was accomplished. It’s unfortunate that questions about the mayor’s honesty have detracted from the praises for the Code Enforcement team in their clean-up Ceres by hauling off 550 pounds of debris.
Now if we could elect a governor who WILL do something permanent to get the drug zombies out of the streets and dumpsters and into mental treatment facilities. Only until then will long lasting change come.
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I must admit that the feistiness of Shirley Rogers, the cantankerous nonagenarian who doesn’t hold back when speaking to the Ceres City Council, makes me chuckle.
When she addressed the council last week asking if the city had a sister city and got no response, she snapped: “Come on, don’t look dumb. Yes or no?”
The mayor got his cue and said Ceres did not.
I seem to recall that seeing in the back issues of the Courier that Ceres did have a sister city at one time. But is a sister city programs a priority weighed against of budget shortfalls of $2.4 million?
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Sebastian Jones, a resident of Ceres, shared at the council meeting of April 27 what I consider a misguided view in his defense of councilmembers receiving taxpayer funded health insurance benefits. His point was that it’s not a “free perk” but “about whether everyday working people can realistically serve in public office.” He said if councilmembers lose those benefits then “only the wealthy, retired or privileged can afford to serve and that shuts out younger leaders, working families and people of color.”
Shut the front door!
Mr. Jones, with all due respect, the council position is not a full-time job nor is it treated as a full-time job with full-time pay as say the mayor of New York City. Members have “day jobs” or own their own businesses where they can purchase their own health insurance.
I’ve never known a wealthy mayor of Ceres. The elected position is more for those who want to serve their community, not financially reap financial rewards for that service.
And why did Mr. Jones feel the need to suggest “people of color” would be deprived of running for council? There is nothing inherently defective in black and brown people that they don’t have the ability to find work that supplies benefits. Jones played the same old worn-out record of race warfare.
Quite frankly most taxpayers want public servants who serve for the good of their community, not feather their own nests. That’s why people resent Congressional representatives going into Congress with modest incomes and leaving multimillionaires like Nancy Pelosi or Ilhan Omar.
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Employees and investors of Kase Manufacturing made their appeals at two recent Ceres City Council meetings to urge a resolution to their plant being closed.
In 2017 Kase was allowed to process cannabis products in an industrial warehouse on Brew Master Drive in southwest Ceres with all kinds of pie-in-the-sky promises to pay these exorbitant fees to the city. From our May 16, 2017 article we reported this: “Under a developer agreement with the city, Mike Reynolds, proponent of the facility, has pledged to give the city $50,000 per month for the first year of operation, $75,000 per month for the second year and $100,000 per month for the third year. To put his money where his mouth is, Reynolds is putting down a $50,000 deposit with the city to accommodate his business proposal.”
That year Councilwoman Linda Ryno was very skeptical and didn’t want to include the $600,000 from Kase being depended on for the budget, preaching: “That’s part of our problem – we don’t live within our means.”
She was right of course.
The city was too greedy and thus market conditions changed and with the drop in business volume, Kase found itself eating its words. It is now in arrears in what it owes Ceres.
The city shut down the plant for that reason and others and lots of folks lost their jobs at Kase.
I’m no fan of cannabis for recreational use but it has its place for those dealing with chronic issues like Mike Reynolds’ son who suffered seizures.
The city should quit playing hardball and allow the company to resume operations and get those jobs back. It was never realistic that the city would be paid millions of dollars for giving a relatively minor overview of operations.
The city also has the option to forgive Kase what it owes. Kase has offered to pay the city $20,000 per month to get up and running. A $20,000 per month revenue stream is better than none if Kase remains permanently closed.
Art Hartog, chief operations officer of Kase, grew emotional on April 13 as he spoke of moving to Ceres to grow his roots and provide for his children. He asked the city for a path to move forward saying “shutting us down without a workable path forward doesn’t solve anything, it just creates more harm.”
Matt Johnson, another Kase employee, suggested that overhead costs in the cannabis manufacturing are so high that tax imposed on them by local governments “makes or breaks them.”
A closed plant does nobody any good. The city needs to get this business back to work.
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Ceres resident Galen Guzman asked the council what became of a survey funded by a consultant in 2025. Nobody on the council replied and there is a new city manager who likely can’t answer.
He also wanted to know the costs.
The Courier reported in 2025 that the city spent $20,000 with the political research firm of Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates (FM3) of Oakland to gauge residents’ “major concerns and how do we go about it and make it a better?” It was a community survey reaching out to a select group of registered voters asking them for their input on prioritizing city services but it certainly had the earmarks of testing the waters for a possible tax hike measure.
The analysis of the survey was not divulged so I assume that residents are not willing to support another tax increase.
So much for council transparency.
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Lots of folks who argued against the fire contract with Modesto said Ceres would have little control over costs in the future.
It might be confusing to see why the contract with the city of Modesto is projected to jump $1.5 million in the coming fiscal year. It’s because there has been a lid on costs during the tenure of the current five-year contract and since it is expiring soon naturally there will be higher costs.
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At the special budget workshop of April 21, former Modesto City Councilman Tony Madrigal, a local Democrat, appeared and suggested all kinds of ideas for Ceres to bail out its financial dilemma – more taxes. He suggested increasing the Transient and Occupancy Tax (TOT) again and ask residents if they want to pay more in sales tax.
More taxes are not the answer. The answer is bigger than the city. The state of California takes most of our tax money and then wastes it on things it shouldn’t.
The base sales tax in California is 7.25 percent, of which 6 percent goes to the state and one percent to the cities and counties. Thus, the state deprives cities of money needed for the direct services of residents – local police, fire and parks – while the state runs up billions in deficits for things like healthcare for folks who aren’t legally entitled to services or giving it to fake hospice companies.
The state also takes most of the property taxes paid. State run schools get 53 percent, counties get 14 percent, special districts (like the Keyes Community Services District) get 20 percent and cities a paltry 12 percent.
The pension issue also needs to be addressed but the unions have bought and paid for the Democrat supermajority that has a lock on state policy.
Some communities have already raised the sales tax for local use but it’s not enough to pay the bills and nobody wants to shell out more tax money when they buy things. The sales tax rate in Ceres is 8.375 percent, which is lower than Modesto’s at 8.875 percent but higher than in Hughson, Riverbank, Patterson, Newman and unincorporated Stanislaus County at 7.875 percent.
Remember that county voters approved a quarter-cent sales tax to keep open the libraries (which only a slim minority of folks use if we’re being honest), and the half-cent sales tax Measure L for transportation. In 2007 Ceres approved Measure H to raise sales tax another half cent to augment police and fire services.
On top of that Ceres Unified School District voters recently voted to increase their property taxes for buildings with Measure Y. That’s on top of Measure U assessments still appearing on property tax bills that were approved in 2008; and the 2001 Measure J bond.
Consider that residents in newer areas of Ceres are paying annual assessments to pay for street lights and landscaping and some an annual assessment for city operations.
It’s no wonder people cannot afford to live in California!
Citizens are not a bottomless pit of money so please stop using them as a convenient backstop for government overspending. California is already the most expensive state in the union to live so let’s not make things worse in Ceres.
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The debate over Copper Trails is sort of over now that the City Council will ship off the request for annexation to the Stanislaus Local Agency Formation Commission which decides if the property is folded into Ceres’ city limits.
John Warren continues to say Copper Trails is not needed since West Landing was annexed and not a single home has gone up. He notes that LAFCO indicated Ceres doesn’t really need Copper Trails because Ceres is at 110 percent of available land for housing demands. West Landing is sized to accommodate on the order of 4,000 housing units.
The dictatorial state of California mandates that cities build “x” amount of houses (3,361 units in Ceres case) but it’s totally up to developers and the market to build them. Ceres has done its part by zoning areas where building can take place. When will Copper Trails build out? That’s anyone’s guess but Economic Development manager Julian Aguirre took a stab at it, saying 10, 20 maybe 30 years.
Meanwhile, Hughson didn’t seem to have any problems getting its growth spurt.
Tim Sanders feels Ceres is too premature in ushering in Copper Trails, noting that Whitmore Ranch hasn’t developed its 372 units and made note of the abandoned and unfinished Tuscany Village project on Whitmore Avenue that “look like derelicts out there.” And he didn’t mention the unfinished homes in the Olive Villas project on Hatch Road.
Sanders believes that any construction should be conditioned to start after the city gets the Service Road overpass completed and that’s been on the books for decades.
Sanders comes from agricultural roots and feels Ceres should draw a line in the sand to declare “this is how big we want our city to be.” But when you have Big Brother California telling you that you must grow by this or that number, good luck fighting them with that line in the sand.
This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or 209 Multimedia Corporation. How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com
