New name. Same commitment to our community!

By City of Antioch

Effective Oct. 22, 2026, the City of Antioch’s Public Safety and Community Resources Department will officially become the Community Services Department. It follows the Council’s decision on May 26 and vote on September 5th.

This name change reflects the Department’s evolving role and its commitment to supporting residents, strengthening neighborhoods, and connecting individuals and families with resources and opportunities.

The Community Services Department will continue its work in four key areas:

• Housing & Homelessness: Advancing housing stability, homelessness prevention, and access to housing and supportive services.
• Violence Intervention & Prevention: Building safer, stronger neighborhoods through community-based violence prevention, intervention, outreach, and partnerships.
• Youth Services: Empowering youth and young adults through leadership development, education, workforce opportunities, and positive engagement.
• Community Engagement: Strengthening relationships with residents, community organizations, and partners to ensure community voices help shape our work.

While our name is changing, our commitment to serving Antioch remains the same. Our programs, services, and partnerships will continue without interruption.

We look forward to continuing this important work as the City of Antioch’s Community Services Department.

In addition, the renamed department’s director, Monserrat Cabral, has the new title of Community Services Director and Alicia Espinoza has the new title of Community Engagement Manager.

As previously reported, the previous name was the brainchild of District 1 Councilwoman Tamisha Torres-Walker who attempted to redefine and expand the meaning of public safety, by including “quality of life, environmental justice, youth services, housing…economic dignity, access to jobs, clean water, clean air.” However, the name caused confusion as the majority of people don’t define the term the same as she does and the department has nothing to do with police or fire services, other than a connection with the Crisis Response Team.

In addition, when the department was approved by the Council and formed in 2022, it took on the responsibility for overseeing five existing City services already handled by other departments, and two new services. At that time, the plan was to include, but not be limited to, the existing services of Animal Control, currently part of the Police Department; Youth Services Network Manager, which was part of the Recreation Department; Code Enforcement and Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program that were currently part of the Community Development Department, and the Unhoused Resident Coordinator, which was part of the city manager’s office. The two new services were the mental health crisis response and violence intervention and prevention.

According to the staff report for the Sept. 5th Council meeting, “As the department’s responsibilities continued to expand, the City Council also began discussing whether the department’s name accurately reflected its mission and public facing role. During several public and administrative discussions, Council considered various naming alternatives intended to better describe the department’s functions and distinguish its community-based services from the law enforcement responsibilities of the Antioch Police Department.”

The Council settled on the name Community Services Department.

Allen D. Payton contributed to this report.

the attachments to this post:

Antioch new Dept name screenshot 102226

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2026 at 2:59 pm and is filed under Government, News. 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.