Mike Busch Never Presented the Special Fund Balances to Council, Nor has Council Asked for the Balances.
Richard Warne: “I’m going to be upfront with you; because we have this Deficit, the way the City’s able to continue to finance operations over the entire fiscal year is that it must borrow, or take money, the CFD Funds and the Mitigation Funds in order to get through the year,”
The City of Beaumont collects Mitigation Fees from Developers then ‘borrows’ the money from the Special Funds, which creates a Deficit Balance in the General Fund.
Beaumont claims to have a total General Fund Deficit of $6 to $10 Million, but it’s a cumulative Deficit of $6 to $10 Million every year since about 2002.
The City of Beaumont’s total General Fund Deficit is well over $100 Million.
The City of Beaumont filed 2017 Mello Roos Tax Rolls with the Riverside County Tax Collector on 23,215 Properties.
We know that 989 of the 23,215 properties are Heartland Area 5 and were never developed, so I conservatively calculated Mitigation Fees for 22,000 houses.
Based on the Mitigation Fees charged in 2011, which does not include TUMF, the following amounts have been collected by the City of Beaumont:
Basic Services & Facilities $7,700,000
General Plan $770,000
Traffic Signal $2,710,400
Railroad X’ing $3,064,600
Fire Station $2,787,400
Fair Share BRB Facilities $154,885,500
Regional Park $10,975,360
Sewer Capacity $48,372,280
Recycled Water $16,912,060
Sewer Application $550,000
Emergency Prepardness $10,785,940
TOTAL FEES COLLECTED $259,513,540
The City collected $65 Million in Mitigation Fees for Sewer and Recycled Water, but the facilities were never built and at the September 6, 2017 Beaumont City Council Meeting City Manager Warne stated that the balance of the Sewer Fund was $834,000.
As of July 30, 2016 the City of Beaumont had $32 Million in the General Fund Bank Account and $15.9 Million in the State LAIF Account, which is a total of $48 Million. $10 Million was used to pay the CFD Mello Roos Bonds in August, which leaves $38 Million ‘cash’.
The ‘cash’ belongs to the Special Funds, so let’s allocate the cash:
$10.9 Million for a Regional Park;
$2.7 Million for a Fire Station;
$10 Million for an ‘Emergency’;
$16.9 Million for Recycled Water and all the money’s gone.
$150 Million that should be in the Roads and Bridges Fund is gone.
$48 Million that should be saved for Sewer Capacity is gone.
$42 Million TUMF is now a $65 Million Judgement
An audit was performed on Mitigation Fees Fund 35 recorded on the General Ledger from July 1, 2007 thru October, 2014.
Aside from Mitigation Fees paid from the Developers; $23,846,352 was also transferred into Fund 35 from the CFD Bond Fund Accounts.
A total of $13,406,516.76 was paid to Urban Logic Consultants from the following Accounts:
Contract Services: $2,161,279.76
Potrero Bridge: $6,820,893.96
Oak Valley Project: $598,839.22
TUMF: $637,115.18
Traffic Signal: $63,850.00
Mitigation Fees: $1,116,622.47
Basic Svcs & Facilities $717,625.50
Fire Station: $18,725.00
Emergency Prep: $7,071.00
Bridge Overpass: $14,785.00
Noble Creek B&R: $791,969.42
Regional Park: $426,995.25
TUMF CFD: $30,745.00
TOTAL PAID TO ULC: $13,406,516.76