Thursday, February 22, 2007

City Surplus Continues Its Upward Path

By Daryl Kelley
The surplus in Ojai’s city budget continues to grow, despite a costly cleanup after a recent windstorm and the closure of a top taxpayer, the Ojai Ford dealership, new figures show.
In addition, an audit released Thursday for the fiscal year ending last June 30 reveals that the city’s surplus for basic services last year was much larger than previously estimated, $760,000 instead of $650,000.
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Where is the $50,000 reinstating the Ojai Visitor's Bureau funding?

A city that gets over 28% of its revenue from TOT (the hotel bed tax), and 16% from sales tax can't spend less than 2% of that revenue on a Visitor's Bureau?

This is a lack of vision on the part of the City Council. Period. As Kersnar stated, money is being freed up each fiscal year to meet "council priorities." One of those priorities MUST be supporting our primary source of revenue by funding a Visitor's Bureau, not undermining it.

Sue Horgan, Joe DeVito, and Rae Hanstad - you three voted to kill funding for the Visitor's Bureau in a time of financial crisis. Now that we are in a much more stable financial position, this is your opportunity to restore funding at the earliest opportunity. Steve Olson, please join Carol Smith in her continued support of the Visitor's Bureau. This is a low-cost opportunity to support the very lifeblood of Ojai with vision and foresight.

Anonymous said...

Not for long is there an upward path when the council votes as directed by city attorney Widders for SLAPP suit litigation appeal. Widders has his cash cow at the expense of the general fund, and the council appears,truthfully or not to understand the implications of further debt.