By: Elaine Morgan | Original Article at patch.com
The Beaumont City Council has made, and continues to make, great strides in getting to the bottom of our financial issues.
Misinformation continues to be put forth that you should ‘appeal’ your “Community Facilities District” (Mello Roos) charges on your tax statements to the county. The county tax collector is nothing more than the agency the city of Beaumont uses to collect the CFD payments from residents. They cannot and will not, be able to assist with any adjustments to the payments. Our city determines the amount of the payments due and the tax collector collects the payments that the city instructs them to collect.
“Community Facilities Districts” (CFDs) were designed to allow cities to sell bonds to obtain monies to build out public services and facilities. A CFD is authorized to sell tax-exempt bonds to fund such local improvements and then assess a special tax (Mello-Roos) against property within the CFD to repay the bonds. The amounts that show on the property tax bill are the payments for the bonds. Think of it as any other type of loan. The city borrows the money (sells the bond) and then makes payments to payoff the bond over a specific period of time (typically 20 – 40 years). IF the monies from these bonds were used incorrectly or were stolen as some suspect, this doesn’t mean that payments aren’t still due to the holders of the bond. We, the tax payers, are legally responsible for the payments.
The city of Beaumont has contracted with Urban Futures to audit the entire use of funds for all CFD’s back to the beginning (1994) along with a 3 yr audit of all Mitigation Fee Funds. They have also contracted with Webb & Associates to perform an audit of the CFD payments that have been made to date and are making adjustments based on accurate calculations for each bond that has been issued. In addition, they hired Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth to perform a complete audit of every bond that has been issued to ensure compliance with all regulatory guidelines. Our city employees are working with legal & financial experts to balance all monies, setting up detailed financial tracking records & putting into place checks & balances so that none of what has happened in the past is able to be done in the future.
All of this takes considerable time & money but I, as a tax paying resident of Beaumont, feel confident that once the investigations are completed, any wrong doing will be uncovered and if appropriate, prosecutions sought. I commend our City Council members in looking out for our best interest and working so diligently through each discovery. Within a few months, we all should have the answers that we’ve been looking for.