By John Geluardi 
The current California budgetary crisis, coupled with the national economy, seems likely to play havoc with local government budgets in the urban East Bay.
There have been several reports of how this is hitting Alameda's city budget. The initial coverage starts to tell the story of a small city budget falling apart in these economic times. We want to go a little further.
The reporter will go through city documents to find out just what is happening to the budget and what, if any, role it played in the city manager's leaving. At the moment we aren't sure if the two are related.
I am getting editorial support from the Berkeley Daily Planet who will run the piece.
In all the discussion about federal and state budgets we might be missing the battles of small city budgets and this is precisely where a community can get hit the hardest.
This story will be a look at what is happening at a small local city budget in the East Bay. The story will focus on one specific city - but the analysis could be applied to other cities throughout the East Bay. If successful - perhaps we could follow it up by with another Spot.Us pitch looking at another city.
