The City of Antioch and the Antioch Unified School District will send a delegation to represent the city and the school district at a historic summit meeting of city, county and school officials on July 17 and 18 in Sacramento.

The delegation will include Mayor Pro Tem Mary Rocha, Council Member Martha Parsons, Antioch Unified School District Board Member Diane Gibson-Gray, and Antioch Unified School District Acting Superintendent Donald Gill, Chief Business Official Denise Porterfield and Executive Director-Operations Tim Forrester.

The Local Government Summit on Governance and Fiscal Reform will provide a forum for mayors, council members, county supervisors and school board members from across California to discuss emerging proposals to reform current state governance and fiscal systems.

According to a City of Antioch press release, “Today in California, our state governmental institutions are increasingly seen as broken as evidenced by record state deficits, late and unbalanced budgets, and an inability to address the critical issues of the day – energy, water, education and health services.

“All of these indicators point toward the inescapable conclusion that our governmental systems at the state level are not meeting the needs of our local communities. The state’s governance crisis is due in large measure to the more fundamental problem of over-concentrating decision making at the state level at the expense of true local priority setting and spending decisions.

“One example of state government overstepping its boundaries is the fact that the state has taken upward of $10 billion in city property taxes to help meet state budget obligations to schools since 1991, yet state spending on schools is among the lowest, if not the lowest, in the nation. With the current economic downturn, the state government is facing its day of reckoning, and the prospects for the future are deeply troubling.

As stated by League of California Cities Executive Director Chris McKenzie, “The proposals to both seize and borrow money from local government to meet the state’s obligations are an indication of the state’s inability to govern itself. The League of California Cities helped convene this important event because it is imperative that local government leaders have a voice in helping reform our state system of governance to ensure a strong future for our great state, as well as for our future generations.

"Our three groups – the cities, counties and schools – are coming together because we understand that we must work collaboratively to help restore a greater degree of local control and stability to our state government.”

The summit is sponsored by the Cities Counties School Partnership, which is a collaboration of the League of California Cities, the California State Association of Counties and the California School Boards Association.