UPDATE: Mayor Kim Trupiano and Vice mayor Jeff Wan will serve on the ad hoc committee to prepare the city’s official response to the Grand Jury Report. They will present their report at a special meeting, Tue., June 24 at 5 p.m. at Hoyer Hall, 6125 Clayton Road. The agenda was posted on the city’s website at claytonca.gov., Friday, June 20.

CLAYTON, CA (June 21, 2025) — In a scathing report released June 2, the Contra Costa County Civil Grand Jury laid bare a troubling pattern of dysfunction, mismanagement and legal violations by the Clayton City Council – many of which were first raised by this newspaper in a March 2024 editorial calling for a Grand Jury investigation.

It seems that someone was ­listening.

The report paints a picture of a small city struggling with big issues: chronic staff turnover, failure to follow its own rules, opaque decision-making and inaction in the face of growing financial trouble. Most damning, the Jury found that Clayton’s governance has repeatedly fallen short of state laws like the Brown Act and the city’s own policies.

Revolving door at City Hall

In “Clayton: Small City, Big Concerns,” the Grand Jury focused significant attention on the alarming rate of senior staff turnover. Between 2019 and 2024, Clayton cycled through 12 city managers – including four permanent and eight interim or acting managers – while most cities in the county had just one or two during the same period. In addition, Clayton had eight finance directors/managers and five community development directors in just six years.

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The Jury concluded that this level of instability undermines continuity and erodes public trust, noting that poor interactions between councilmembers and staff likely contributed to the exodus.

The report revealed that the council failed for years to follow its own guidelines when deciding which items made it onto meeting agendas. Until 2025, councilmembers could request agenda items in public meetings, but a new rule now requires written requests to both the mayor and manager – eliminating verbal requests and consolidating power with the mayor to approve or deny them.

Additionally, the agenda requests list is updated quarterly, limiting public awareness.

Compounding the issue, a so-called “Agenda Setting Committee,” – an unofficial body made up of the mayor, vice mayor, city manager, city attorney and city clerk – controlled what did and didn’t make it onto the agenda until January 2025, when the practice was quietly scaled back.

Unaddressed financial crisis

Since 2021, the city has operated at a deficit, using reserve funds to stay afloat. Finance experts and successive managers warned that the city needed to consider new revenue sources, such as a sales or parcel tax. But despite forming a Citizens Financial Sustainability Committee in 2022 to study the issue, the city hasn’t taken any meaningful action.

That committee itself became an example of the dysfunction: The initial members lacked the required qualifications in government finance, meetings were sporadic and lacked transparency, and minutes were not posted. In April 2025, the committee reported being confused about its purpose and frustrated by the city’s failure to provide necessary information.

Meanwhile, projections show the city’s structural deficit could grow to more than $1 million by 2028. Calling it “fiscally unsound,” the Grand Jury pointed to the council’s strategy of relying on its $6 million reserve – while simultaneously voting to reduce it.

Committees gone rogue

The Grand Jury found that many council committees – including ad hoc and Brown Act-governed bodies – operated outside the bounds of both law and policy. A key example was the Clayton Business & Community Association (CBCA) Negotiation Committee, which acted without council approval to reject a community group’s offer – something it was not legally authorized to do.

In 2024, 48% of all committee meetings were held as special meetings, which require only 24 hours’ notice and don’t need to allow public comment on non-agenda items. Of the 25 Brown Act committee meetings held that year, only six allowed such comment, and just two of them posted minutes online.

These practices, the Jury concluded, deliberately restricted public participation and transparency.

Jury’s recommendations

The Grand Jury offered eight specific recommendations to be implemented by Dec. 1, 2025, with one revenue-related item due by July 1, 2026:

• Create a new, fair process for councilmembers to request agenda items.
• Maintain a public list of all agenda item requests and their status.
• Require committees to post meeting minutes online.
• Ensure that public comment on non-agenda items is available at all regular meetings.
• Enforce council rules that prevent committees from taking unauthorized actions.
• Investigate the reasons behind high staff turnover.
• Explore revenue-generating measures to address the structural deficit.
• Follow established rules when appointing members to financial oversight committees.

Ad Hoc Committee to review

Since the release of the report, the council has remained silent in public. The agenda for the meeting on June 17 includes the formation of an ad hoc committee tasked with reviewing the Grand Jury’s findings and preparing a response. As this meeting occurred after press time, the names of the council members appointed to the committee are not available for this story.

While Councilmember Jeff Wan has shared his own lenthy critique of the report on his Facebook page, it does not carry official weight.

In the meantime, residents of Clayton find themselves with more questions than answers, along with a pressing reminder from the Grand Jury that the need for change is urgent.