Community Funded Reporting
John Geluardi  |  04 Mar 2009

How The Economy is Hitting Alameda's City Budgets.



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The current California budgetary crisis, coupled with the national economy, seems likely to play havoc with local government budgets in the urban East Bay. 

There have been several reports of how this is hitting Alameda's city budget. The initial coverage starts to tell the story of a small city budget falling apart in these economic times. We want to go a little further.

The reporter will go through city documents to find out just what is happening to the budget and what, if any, role it played in the city manager's leaving. At the moment we aren't sure if the two are related. 

I am getting editorial support from the Berkeley Daily Planet who will run the piece.

How will it help?

In all the discussion about federal and state budgets we might be missing the battles of small city budgets and this is precisely where a community can get hit the hardest.

This story will be a look at what is happening at a small local city budget in the East Bay. The story will focus on one specific city - but the analysis could be applied to other cities throughout the East Bay. If successful - perhaps we could follow it up by with another Spot.Us pitch looking at another city.




I am an experienced reporter and will have the editorial support of the Berkeley Daily Planet
This will be a text story that will run in the Berkeley Daily Planet and may also be used by other media, but must give credit to the author and the editorial support of the Daily Planet.
Picture_3_thumb Author
John Geluardi
Peer review: Berkeley Daily Planet
This story has been published:

Departed City Manager Leaves Big Mess in Alameda

by John Geluardi | 01 Apr 2009 | sfbay
A special report for the Berkeley Daily Planet funded by the Spot.us community Nearly two months after Alameda City Manager Debra Kurita resigned, the island city is still trying to sound the depths of the financial crisis caused by her falsely inflated budgets. Kurita quietly left her job Feb. 26 with little more than a one-paragraph public statement, which was posted on the city’s website. What Kurita did not mention in her statement was that she decided to resign after…
Read the published story
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