City officials reject allegations of funds misuse

Calexico City Manager Armando Villa spoke out over allegations of misuse of Business Improvement District funds which are spent by a board of 5 appointed BID members.

“This notion of misappropriation of funds is not valid because those monies are sitting in a trust account in the city,” Villa said.

The funds for Calexico downtown promotions come from hundreds of businesses in the downtown area and along North Imperial Avenue. Villa explained where the funds are and why they haven’t been used.

“They’re not spent for any other thing than bid related events. So, because the bid has not convened to make decisions on that spending no money has been spent,” Villa said.

City Council Member Bill Hodge said the BID board hasn’t done their job since end of last year. He said part of the problem is the BID board is not complete.

” It’s a problem that needs to be looked at and solved immediately. BID has not met or maybe just met once,” Hodge said.

A downtown merchant, who wants to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, told us paying fees for one-time yearly events, like BID has done in the past, is like throwing money away. Hodge agrees.

“I wouldn’t want to pay a hundred dollars or so and get nothing in return,” Hodge said.

Economic Commissioner Ben Horton said the council won’t put the BID issue on the agenda.

“Each time I have put it on my agenda it’s been removed.”

Hodge said he’ll make sure the council acts on the BID issue.

“There’s no leadership as far as I know in bid. We need to investigate why it’s dormant. I’ll do that. And we need to get it going. We need to fund it or it needs to have its funding and it needs to get some leadership,” Hodge said.