Yuma man questions City of Yuma’s spending

A video with approximately 2,100 views has circulated around the Yuma community about the Pacific Avenue Athletic Complex.

Henry Valenzuela, who is coining himself as the man with a calculator, questioned the financial decisions of the City of Yuma. He claimed the City of Yuma did not generate the nearly $500,000 in revenue they claimed they did.

“Their math went wrong when they were using the total amount of tournament fees rather than new tournament fees. So the question is how much is this costing us and how much are we earning?” said Valenzuela. “They used the full $138,000. That’s an inappropriate use of information because the true number is close to $36,000 because that’s the new revenue that was created as a result of the PAAC,” said Henry Valenzuela.

Valenzuela added the City used the total sales from concessions sold at the PAAC.

“The real answer is that they only made about 33 percent profit on the total sales. You can’t use the total sales when you’re looking at net revenue,” said Valenzuela.

Valenzuela also addressed the two percent tax that the city claimed the PAAC would generate.

“That money goes into a special fund. That special fund can only be used for certain things. We were told that the PAAC was going to generate so much revenue it was going to pay for the PAAC. Well based off the estimates, the two percent fund only increased $27,000 as a direct result of the PAAC,” said Valenzuela.

The numbers Valenzuela used were presented to Yuma City Council on October 17.

The City explained their numbers are correct and believe this all goes back to police pay, an ongoing issue that the city has been in talks with the Yuma Police Department about for months.

“The PAAC helped. I’m not going to say it’s the whole thing, but it helped the Hobby Lobby come to Yuma. It helped Sportsman’s Warehouse. Now, we’re looking at another La Quinta hotel going next to the PAAC, specifically because of the PAAC. It’s a lot more than just turning in a buck when you walk in the gate,” said Greg Wilkinson, City of Yuma administrator.

The City also clarified that they did not specifically list other sources of revenue. They confirmed to News 11 that they neglected to include sponsorships and rentals of the facility.

They claimed when those are factored in it makes up the remaining money that Valenzuela claimed they missed.

Valenzuela wants checks and balances out of all of this.

“The city doesn’t really have an investigatory organization, somebody that looks into this stuff. So, it’s important that the citizenry pays attention to what’s going on. Then, we need to present that information to our council. Our council is the only people that can hold a public hearing. That can really get to the bottom of this,” said Valenzuela.

The City said the Yuma City Council spends months combing through the budget.

“We’re required to have an independent audit every year. They look at bonds in detail, our expenditures to make sure the money was spent in the right place. We’re required to do that every year. We have multiple CPA’s within the city but we also hire accounting firms that bring in multiple CPA’s to look at all those things,” said Wilkinson.

Valenzuela said that he is not doing this because he wants to get rid of the PAAC. He claimed he wanted to make sure the community is paying attention to the fine details.

We will reach out to the City in regards to a full breakdown of the categories that weren’t listed in the presentation.