Watsonville, Calif.- District 6 Council member Emilio Martinez has a bone to pick with his city. He says "We're being out and out lied to!"
Martinez believes he and fellow Watsonville council member Nancy Bilicich are the only ones in the city's leadership asking the tough questions. The title of his recent blog post was "Watsonville Facing Bankruptcy?" Our Center for Investigative Action investigation found a huge potential financial bombshell for Watsonville. The state is asking for a 1.8 million dollar payback in Redevelopment Agency funds...leading us to ask Watsonville Administrative Services Director Ezequiel Vega...does the city have that money? Vega said "the city does not have the money." The city has protested this to the state but a scary response from the city none the less.
On Friday July 20th the state department of finance director sent a letter to every California city. It said that the state may have wrongly calculated pay back amounts for redevelopment funds. Vega and Assistant City Manager Marcella Tavantzis believe the state will admit to making a mistake in calculating Watsonville's 1.8 million dollar bill. But Council member Bilicich says "I hope that's correct..but if it's not..what's plan B?"
Martinez has an opinion on plan B!
"You go bankrupt! Is that a more feasible thing to do for Watsonville? Possibly..why? Because we have no revenue."
The city doesn't deny it has a revenue problem.
Vega says "We do have a balanced budget for 2013, but the services in the city are so many that the revenue will never be enough."
So city leaders are more optimistic than Council member Martinez...saying it won't file for bankruptcy because it's done all the right things such as cutting leaders pay by 10%, making employee reductions and now they're seeing a slight increase in revenues as they labor to climb out of a financial hole.
Story ideas or want us to look at your city? Email me: JonKBrent@KIONRightNow.com Facebook: Jon.K.Brent Twitter: @jonkbrent
