Davis had his turn, newcomer Rojas falsely claims Antioch had “balanced…budgets in the last four years” and calls facing three years of double-digit deficits “financial progress”

By Allen D. Payton, Publisher

In the race for Antioch City Treasurer there are only really two candidates who should be considered, current District 3 Councilwoman Lori Ogorchock and former Mayor and Councilman Jim Davis. The decision between the two common-sense candidates was a challenge.

The third candidate in the race, newcomer Jorge R. Rojas, Jr., doesn’t have a campaign website nor even a Facebook page, but has been endorsed by Mayor Lamar Hernandez-Thorpe. That’s enough to disqualify him, as the mayor has proven he cannot be trusted with the workings inside City Hall, and previous elected and appointed allies have played political games. Rojas might be willing to do the same in reporting the use of our taxpayer dollars. Plus, while there’s little he can do in the position, it could give him a leg up for a future council run. Antioch can’t afford another ally of the mayor on the city council.

Rojas

The only information about Rojas and his campaign are found in his ballot designation of Chief Financial Officer, what in his ballot statement, which shows he’s an immigrant from Peru and works for a janitorial services company, and his campaign finance reports. Those show he chose to not raise or spend more than $2,000 in the campaign, and his only contribution was $1,449 from Hernandez-Thorpe. But Rojas did not submit a report of how he spent those funds.

The candidate never once reached out to the Herald nor respond to the effort to contact him to provide any information about him and his campaign to our readers. Worse, his candidate statement provides false information about the City’s finances. He wrote, “Antioch has built a $63,000,000 rainy day fund, balanced its over $220,000,000 budgets in the last four years, and made significant efforts to pay down employee retirement debt. We need to protect our city’s financial progress.”

Yet, as previously reported, about the “rainy day fund” first mentioned by the mayor, City Finance Director Dawn Merchant responded, “I am not sure about the claim as we do not have a $63M rainy day fund. I can only assume that claim is adding the Stabilization Fund and General Fund reserves, however, again, I am not sure.”

Furthermore, as that report shows, the City has been deficit-spending using money from those two funds. The budgets for this and the past three Fiscal Years include the following deficits: $3,995,625 in FY 2022-23; $5,343,928 in FY 2023-24; and $4,617,143 projected for the current, FY 2024-25.

In addition, according to the General Fund Projections for 2023-2028 presented to the city council on June 11, 2024, the General Fund is projected to run the following deficits: $12,995,259 in FY 2025-26; $13,561,074 in FY 2026-27; and $14,855,649 in FY 2027-28.

Furthermore, because those projected double-digit deficits the Budget Stabilization Fund will be depleted by the end of June 2008. It will result in that last year’s deficit being covered by the General Fund reserve leaving it with an Ending Balance of just $17.4 million or 17.06% in reserves versus over 31% and 32% for the previous fiscal years.

If that’s what Rojas thinks is “our city’s financial progress” he’s seriously misguided. While his candidate statement shows he “enrolled in DVC to study Business Administration” before a “20-year career in the banking industry, specializing in financial services” it appears Rojas needs to school to gain more education and a better understanding of budgets, deficits and “financial progress.”

Davis

Jim Davis is a good man, and my friend, and has served our community well as a councilman, mayor and then as city treasurer. He has also served as president of the Antioch-Chichibu Sister City Organization. While his background is in banking, Jim had his turn in the position, and I endorsed him for it in 2020, but he was defeated for re-election by current City Treasurer Lauren Posada, that year. I’m sure he will continue to serve Antioch in one way or another.

Orgorchock

That brings me to Councilwoman Ogorchock, who is also a friend, and with whom I’ve interacted since she first ran for city council. She has a background in real estate and years on the council dealing with the City’s budgets. Yet, this year for her is bitter-sweet as she was unable to run for re-election to the city council. That was due to the corruption by the mayor and his two council allies, Tamisha Torres-Walker and Monica Wilson, who gerrymandered Lori out of District 3, literally drawing the line around her neighborhood in live time during a council meeting for all to see and moving her into neighboring District 4 represented by Wilson. While Ogorchock ran for that seat in 2022, due to two others in the race splitting the vote, she lost to Wilson. Worse, the three planned it during at least one private meeting at Hernandez-Thorpe’s home and were investigated for it by the Contra Costa DA’s Office and Civil Grand Jury.

Thus, being elected and serving as city treasurer will be kind of like a consolation prize for Ogorchock and I’m sure she will do a good job. Plus, she has been endorsed by the incumbent, Posada, who chose to not seek re-election and that says something.

So, I’m happy to support and ask you to join me in voting for Lori Ogorchock for Antioch City Treasurer in Tuesday’s election. To learn more about her and her campaign, visit the Facebook page entitled “Lori Ogorchock for Antioch City Treasurer.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 3rd, 2024 at 7:29 pm and is filed under Opinion, Politics & Elections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.