CLAYTON, CA (May 29, 2025) — In March of 2024, we ran an editorial on the front page of The Pioneer calling for a Grand Jury investigation into the chaos at Clayton City Hall. By our count, the city had gone through eight city managers, seven finance directors, and five community development directors in just five years. Council meetings had devolved into public spectacles of incivility, senior staff were quitting left and right, and councilmembers were issuing directives in violation of the city’s own municipal code. We wrote then: “No healthy city runs through 20 people for three senior positions in less than six years.”

This week, the Contra Costa County Civil Grand Jury confirmed what many of us already knew: this wasn’t just bad luck. It was bad governance. And it was worse than we even knew then.

According to the Grand Jury’s findings, Clayton had 12 city managers between 2019 and 2024 — more than any other city in the county. By contrast, 15 of the 19 other cities in Contra Costa had just one or two in the same time period. The turnover alone should have raised alarms. But that’s only the beginning.

The Jury found that Clayton’s City Council routinely failed to follow its own guidelines, operated its agenda-setting process in a manner inconsistent with the Brown Act, and consistently suppressed councilmembers’ ability to publicly request future agenda items, requiring instead that requests be in writing. And residents are only to see the outcome once per quarter. That’s not transparency. That’s control.

[broadstreet zone=”160420″]

Meanwhile, the city has run a recurring operational budget deficit since 2021 — and the Council has consistently refused to act on staff recommendations to address it. Several city managers with public finance expertise urged the Council to consider revenue options. The Council ignored them. Again and again.

The Grand Jury also found that nearly half of all city committee meetings in 2024 were called as “special meetings,” requiring only 24 hours’ notice and exempt from public comment on non-agenda items. In only 6 of 24 Brown Act committee meetings in 2024, public comment on non-agenda items actually permitted — a clear pattern of supressing resident input.

Let’s not pretend this is normal. It’s not. And it’s not partisan, either. Competent, ethical local governance is not a left or right issue — it’s the basic expectation of any functioning democracy.

What happened to the Clayton we used to know? The city with a long-tenured manager, steady leadership, civil discourse, and sound fiscal management? That city didn’t collapse overnight. It was deliberately dismantled by Save Clayton/Clayton Watch and its lackeys—a political movement that rejected compromise, scorned experience, and attacked anyone who didn’t toe the ideological line.

The Grand Jury has done its job. It confirmed, in measured legal language, what many of us have witnessed in real time: a pattern of dysfunction, disregard for the rules, and a failure to lead.

Now it’s time for Clayton’s residents — and those councilmembers who are truly committed to good governance — to step up. The community cannot afford more years of excuses, more resignations, and more empty chairs at City Hall.

You deserved better. Now, you know it. What happens next is up to you.

Download the Grand Jury Report.

Related story: Editorial: High staff turnover a sign of Clayton’s decline.