With the election next Tuesday, Riverside voters have a clear choice: continue rewarding the same failed leadership, or finally demand accountability.

The campaign for Measure Z has told us everything we need to know. Instead of earning public trust through fiscal discipline, transparency, and responsible leadership, the backers of Measure Z have relied on fear, pressure, and desperation. We see campaign signs plastered across the city, including places where political signs do not belong. We see taxpayer-funded messaging dressed up as “information.” We see the same tired argument that Riverside is always one crisis away from collapse unless residents hand over more money.

That is not leadership. That is addiction.

Measure Z is being sold as public safety, but the money is not restricted only to public safety. Once the tax dollars go into the general fund, they can support the same pattern Riverside residents have watched for years: vanity projects, political campaigning, pension obligations, inflated compensation packages, and poor financial decisions made by people who then come back to taxpayers asking for more.

When fires or disasters strike, Riverside residents deserve compassion, competence, and calm leadership. Instead, the Measure Z crowd uses crisis as campaign material. Rather than acknowledging years of poor planning and misplaced priorities, they tell residents to be afraid — then demand another tax increase as the solution. Fear is not a financial plan. Panic is not public safety. And exploiting emergencies to push a tax measure is beneath what this city deserves.

We are now being told that the last fire chief was wrong and the new one is right. We were told prior city managers were the problem and the next one would fix everything. Yet residents can see the ongoing clown show at City Hall with their own eyes. The names change, the excuses change, but the results remain the same: more spending, more crisis messaging, more taxes, and less accountability.

Riverside does not have a revenue problem as much as it has a leadership problem.

No more blank checks. No more rewarding mismanagement. No more money until the people we elected start acting like adults and responsible stewards of public funds.

We keep having “crises” in Riverside because we keep electing the same type of people — and too often, the candidates endorsed by the same political network that helped create the mess. If we want a different city, we must stop voting for the status quo.

Vote No on Measure Z.

Vote No on fear-based campaigning.

Vote No on blank checks.

Vote No on candidates controlled by unions, the old boys network, political insiders, and the same officials who spent Riverside into this financial corner.

Riverside deserves better. Now voters must prove it.