Redding Councilmember Audette Details Budget Concerns at Public Presentation; Finance Director Robinett Resigns Appointed Role
- Elisa Ballard
- 20 hours ago
- 7 min read
REDDING, Calif. — In a detailed presentation Monday evening, August 24, 2026, at Faith Community Church on South Bonnyview Road, Redding City Councilmember Tenessa Audette outlined her assessment of how missing, incomplete, and inaccurate budget reporting by city staff contributed to the approval of what she described as unsustainable employee raises, particularly for upper management, beginning around 2021. The event, organized by Leslie Sawyer of Mountain Top Media and open to the public, lasted more than 90 minutes.
Audette said the city's current budget crisis was years in the making. As COVID relief, stimulus-driven revenues and other one-time money flowed into the city, revenues and cash reserves grew. Instead of treating that period as temporary, the city increased spending, added staff and made permanent commitments to pay “market rate” salaries, including substantial raises beginning in 2021 and 2022.
When those higher personnel costs began coming due in 2023-24 and 2024-25, the financial picture became harder for Council to see. Detailed budget-to-actual reports were no longer provided, proof-of-cash reporting stopped, and changes in cash balances made it difficult to distinguish ongoing revenue from one-time cash and reserves.
Audette, who joined the Council in December 2022, said the problem became clear to her during the 2025 budget process. Council had been discussing a roughly $5 million shortfall when the City Manager revealed that approximately $8 million in cuts were needed. Audette went looking for the detailed financial reports that could explain the difference, but they were not available. Not long after discussing the shortfall, the Council declared that the problem had been resolved by electing not to fill open positions and by making modest cuts to operations. Now, the official position i s that they are projecting a small budget surplus. Critics are skeptical.
Audette raised concerns that Council lacked sufficient information to determine whether the proposed budget was realistic, but the budget was ultimately approved over her objection. She said the subsequent actual results confirmed those concerns: beg cash was off by 40%, revenues fell short, expenses exceeded projections, and reserves continued to decline.
Her conclusion is that Redding did not suddenly develop a revenue problem. The city made permanent spending decisions during an extraordinary period of temporary revenue and then failed to reduce those costs when the temporary money disappeared. Audette argues the city now has a cost structure, particularly in administration and personnel, that the General Fund cannot sustain.
A related structural change occurred on February 5, 2019, when the Redding City Council approved combining the elected City Treasurer position with the appointed Director of Finance role. This created a single “Director of Finance/City Treasurer” position under the Financial Services Department. The city’s 2020–2021 Biennial Budget documented the reorganization and associated cost savings of approximately $172,500 in FY 2019/20 and $181,232 in FY 2020/21, primarily from eliminating one Administrator FTE in the Treasurer’s Division. Allyn Clark, the long-serving elected Treasurer, held the combined role starting in 2019 until her retirement in early 2023. Greg Robinett has held the combined position since then. The City Treasurer remains an elected office with a four-year term, but the operational and administrative duties were merged with the Finance Director role for efficiency. This reduced the traditional separation of duties between the elected Treasurer (cash management, investments, and independent oversight) and the appointed Finance Director (budgeting, accounting, and financial reporting). In public finance, such separation is often preferred as a check and balance. The prior Finance Director was Dennice Maxwell until her retirement in December 2018. Audette first started looking deeply into the budget discrepancies after City Manager Barry Tippin, at the March 13, 2025, biennial budget workshop, Tippin discussed the budget gap. Audette has stated that the presentation shifted from what had been described as a roughly $5 million deficit to an $8 million deficit. As previously reported by Shasta Unfiltered, Audette spent months looking at the budget numbers to try to understand why the deficit was occurring. Maxwell helped Audette unravel what had occurred and how the reports had changed after she left the position. Audette prepared a comprehensive 154-page report of her findings and publicly released it on August 5, 2025, by posting it on her website (tenessaaudette.com) and sharing it via social media.
Robinett Resigns Coincidentally on the Same Day as the Presentation
On August 24, 2026, Robinett announced his resignation from the appointed Finance Director position while stating he plans to continue serving as the elected City Treasurer. In a statement, he described the decision as extremely difficult, citing a family opportunity he could not turn down, and expressed gratitude to staff, city leadership, and the community. He will remain in the Finance Director role through September 11, 2026, to assist with the transition. The city will recruit for a new Finance Director and announce interim arrangements.
Almost a year earlier, Tippin retired on October 3, 2025, after more than 20 years with the city, including service as City Manager since 2017. William Tarbox was selected in late 2025 and began as City Manager in February 2026. Shortly after starting, Tarbox initiated a citywide efficiency study with Circle 6 Consulting, Inc., focused on operations, staffing, and cost reductions, targeting completion by around September 30, 2026. Tarbox died unexpectedly of cardiac arrest on July 19, 2026, at age 56. Assistant City Manager Michael Webb has been serving as interim City Manager. When asked during the presentation when the efficiency study findings would be made public, Audette said she expected them sometime in September.
Management Salaries are Too High
Audette described the city as “top heavy,” arguing that management salaries are high relative to the city’s size. She said a salary survey used before raises in the 2022–2025 period relied on data from larger municipalities rather than following a city policy favoring local or similar-sized comparisons from the immediate area. She criticized certain salary adjustments under Tippin, including claims of inadequate compliance with the Brown Act and the Government Code in agendizing some increases and the inclusion of cost-of-living adjustments not specified in contracts. Some managers received substantial increases (Audette cited figures up to 100% in certain cases), partly driven by “compression” adjustments to maintain differentials after lower-level raises. She recommended that future Council negotiations with unions include prior Memorandums of Understanding for better historical context.
Audette also stated that approximately 80 positions were added in recent years under Tippin. She challenged earlier narratives by Tiffin, including during promotion of a sales tax measure (which ultimately failed), that the city was running on “bare bones” staffing and that cuts would primarily affect police and fire.
Mayor Littau Wants Respectful Debate
Also on Monday, Mayor Mike Littau issued a statement emphasizing that progress requires “patience, discipline, respectful debate, and the ability to work with others—even when disagreements are strong.” He noted he is not endorsing any candidate and is not up for election, encouraging residents to evaluate candidates on whether they facilitate important work, treat others with respect, come prepared with solutions, can disagree without creating dysfunction, and will strengthen the city’s ability to serve residents.
Audette Makes Recommendations
To remedy the current situation, a new financial advisory committee has been convened, and Audette stated that the first thing they asked for was budget-to-actuals reports. The committee includes two council members and five community members.
Council members (appointed by the mayor):
Mayor Mike Littau
Councilmember Tenessa Audette
Community members:
Jason Richart (sponsored by Mayor Mike Littau) — three-year term ending November 30, 2029
Michael Quinn (sponsored by Vice Mayor Dr. Paul Dhanuka) — three-year term ending November 30, 2029
Bruce Dean (sponsored by Mayor Pro Tempore Erin Resner) — one-year term ending November 30, 2027
Dennice Maxwell (sponsored by Councilmember Tenessa Audette) — one-year term ending November 30, 2027
Kurt Swanson (sponsored by Councilmember Jack Munns) — one-year term ending November 30, 2027
Audette is recommending several reforms aimed at improving budget transparency, fiscal discipline, and oversight. Key recommendations include:
Expanding budget workshops to include department heads.
Salary Surveys must align with Council Policy 206, which requires surveying comparable cities as well as comparable salaries in Redding.
Presenting recommended tax assumption changes in percentages.
Requiring clear, sustainable budget surpluses before any future salary increases are recommended.
Clearly identifying and reporting grant carryovers in financial reports.
Requiring that the Director of Finance hold a CPA credential.
Providing councilmembers with budget-to-actual reports in Quarterly Financial Updates.
Audette is seeking reelection. She has previously raised questions about financial reporting and salary practices in Council meetings, frequently facing limits on further questioning from then-Mayor Jack Munns or current Mayor Littau when staff responses were incomplete. Her calls to revisit certain raises did not gain majority support from colleagues. On October 22, 2025, a special meeting was held to review Finance Director Greg Robinett’s response to Councilmember Tenessa Audette’s “Redding Budget Findings” report.
In her remarks, Councilmember Erin Resner stated she found no corruption, attributed the budget shortfall primarily to inflation and earlier pay raises, and said: “I will not be continuing in this ‘charade’ because we have actual work to do.”
November 3, 2026, Election Context
Three at-large City Council seats (four-year terms) will appear on the ballot. Voters may select up to three candidates; the top three vote-getters win. These seats correspond to the expiring terms of incumbents Tenessa Audette (elected 2022) and Jack Munns (elected 2022), plus the seat held by Erin Resner (elected 2024 to a short term; she is not seeking reelection and will join the Shasta County Board of Supervisors in January 2027). The City Clerk position (four-year term) is also on the ballot, with incumbent Sharlene Tipton running unopposed.
As of the close of the filing period (confirmed in reporting around August 20, 2026), the nine qualified candidates for the three Council seats are:
Tenessa Audette (incumbent)
Mark Mezzano (former councilmember, 2020–2024; former Assembly District 1 field representative)
Rebecca Anne Miller
Jack Munns (incumbent)
Christina Prosperi (business owner of TRUE Ride indoor cycling studio; former Caltrans employee)
Joana Rebollar (business owner and financial professional; founder of Veritas Tax and Financial Solutions)
Paul Saulsbury (mobile crisis clinician)
Elise Ramirez Sloan (community volunteer; also referred to as Elise Sloan)
Russ Wenham (Redding Planning Commissioner; civil engineer with extensive public infrastructure experience)
Tenessa Audette's full presentation can be viewed here:
