Rialto adds $1 million in staff to a surplus budget as pension costs climb
The Rialto City Council adopted its fiscal 2026-27 budget on June 23, pairing a healthy General Fund position with a round of permanent hiring aimed at building the city's own capacity rather than buying it through contracts.
The General Fund projects $175.86 million in revenue, up about 6.5% from the prior year, against $173.05 million in spending. Sales, property, and utility-users tax together supply roughly three-quarters of that revenue — the tax base of a logistics-and-consumer economy. The city holds an unrestricted General Fund balance near $75.3 million and projects a year-end fund balance of about $136.4 million.
The headline surplus is about $2.8 million, but the council's personnel decisions spend most of it down. Roughly $1.03 million in new General Fund positions trims the projected surplus to about $1.8 million. The additions are not spread evenly — they concentrate where a growing warehouse city feels operational strain.
Development and permitting capacity is one focus. The budget adds an Assistant Planner, a Fire Permit Technician, and two Fire Inspectors, expanding plan-review and inspection capacity as construction activity moves through the city. A new GIS Technician position is expected, in the city's own words, to eventually reduce reliance on contracted services.
A second theme is moving work off higher-cost or misassigned labor. The Police Department adds a civilian Logistics Officer to take over fleet and equipment duties currently handled by a sworn officer, freeing that officer for field work. At the top of the organization, the city eliminated a vacant Assistant City Manager post and a vacant Principal Planner, and — as Utilities folds under Public Works — dropped a Director of Utilities and an assistant role, replacing them with lower-cost project-manager and analyst positions.
Separately, the council attached a condition to the budget: freezing half the contract-services budget until December, when Public Works and development-services staff must report back on efforts to fill roles with permanent employees before the rest of that funding is released.
The pressure running underneath all of it is pension cost. The city's CalPERS payment toward its unfunded liability will be $18.3 million this year, and the budget notes those costs continue to rise faster than other city expenditures. Salaries and benefits already account for 66% of General Fund spending. For a city that just chose to add permanent headcount, the pension trajectory is the standing constraint on how much of each future surplus stays a surplus.