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At a time when Hayward officials are working to resolve a post-pandemic structural budget deficit, the city needs experienced and serious leaders who appreciate the challenges ahead.
That’s why, in what will be the last citywide City Council elections, voters should reelect Angela Andrews, a division manager at West County Wastewater in Contra Costa who is completing her first council term, and Francisco Zermeño, a Chabot College professor of Spanish who is finishing his fourth.
And they should elect to full four-year terms Dan Goldstein, a cybersecurity expert who has worked in the tech industry for more than 30 years, and Ray Bonilla, a staff vice president for a health insurance provider.
Goldstein and Bonilla are former city planning commissioners who were appointed to midterm council vacancies in 2022 and 2023 respectively.
The four councilmembers understand, and have been working to address, the city’s financial challenges. The structural budget deficit, about $2 million this fiscal year, is projected to grow in the future, eroding the city’s reserves.
At the same time the city faces a whopping $637 million debt for the funding shortfall in the retirement plans for employees. That works out to more than five times the annual city payroll.
The city has six elected councilmembers and a separately elected mayor, who all currently run citywide. Starting in 2026, Hayward will phase in district elections for the councilmembers, so this will be the last citywide election for those seats.
In our interviews, the four current councilmembers seeking election understood the financial challenges ahead. Challengers Tom Wong and Joe Ramos did not.
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Wong is running for the City Council and the Hayward Unified School District board simultaneously. Why? “Because people can,” he told us.
Joe Ramos, a member of the school board, had planned to do the same because “I figured it would get more exposure.” But he failed to properly complete his paperwork for the school board election.
The seventh candidate, Tom Ferreira, ran unsuccessfully for the City Council in the past three elections. He did not return our calls seeking to schedule an interview.