Residents allege city’s new budget has fake numbers, no workshops to explain it

Calexico residents said the city might be working with fake numbers in their new budget. Concern is growing.

Local businessman Guillermo Hermosillo said, ” There should have been a couple of workshops, explain to the public what the city is going to invest on or spend on and actual budget numbers, projected numbers. There were no questions from the council on this budget. That was really strange. ”

Council Member Bill Hodge admitted public involvement is needed in the city budget process.

” We need to be transparent. We need to be honest with ourselves and honest with the public, ” Hodge said.

The new budget is over 16 million dollars, with a sizeable portion assigned to the city manager’s office.

Local businessman Joong Kim said, ” This year there’s going to be $765,313 salary and benefits for the city managers. It’s really doing wrong spending. ”

They reminded us that a past city manager put the city under a 4-million-dollar deficit. They said this could be a repeat.

” 2014-[20]15 by Richard Warne , this whole fake numbers. But they put a lot of study there to distract the people, ” Kim said.

” There could be fake numbers. I don’t know. They didn’t give the public opportunity to speak on it, even look at it, ” Hermosillo said.

Hodge defended the budget, while at the same time

” I can understand the concerns of some of our constituents because of the financial debacle in the unethical dealings that took place. The budget that we have is not inflated at all. It is a very, very fiscal conservative budget. ” ” the increase is due to adding half the salary of our assistant city manager. The only way we can go is up, progress, by having new revenues come in, like, for instance, the cannabis industry, ” Hodge said.

Economic Commissioner Ben Horton said the budget was never brought to the Economic Development Financial Advisory Commission for review, either.

“City manager’s office is spending close to almost one million dollars out of a sixteen million-dollar budget,” Kim said.

Hodge said the council is working in good faith and have nothing to do with old baggage from previous city administrations.

“We have definitely been fighting out of a dark cloud left by previous administrations,” Hodge said.

The budget was passed on Monday after announcing. Hermosillo said he was alerted to its presentation barely at the end of the previous week. The city manager and assistant manager were not available for comment.