Residents demand clearer accounting of the city’s supportive-housing payments; council agrees to monthly expenditure reports

Public comment at the March 10 Ojai City Council meeting focused on financial controls and transparency tied to the city’s supportive housing work. Commenters, including a budget-committee member, outlined errors and control weaknesses the budget committee has flagged — late or missing bank reconciliations, contract payments exceeding not-to-exceed limits, understaffing and insufficient multi-year forecasting — and warned the council the city is at risk of violating its own balanced-budget policy if midyear adjustments are approved without countervailing actions.

Several speakers pressed for visibility into project spending tied to Dignity Moves, which a speaker said received a deposit (described in public comment as $5.9 million). The commenter argued that the vendor has been making monthly payments to sub-vendors from that deposit and that those payments are not visible on the city’s warrant register; he asked that monthly accounting of the vendor’s expenditures be put on the record rather than forcing public records requests. City staff responded that the city checks in the warrant register list payments made on the city’s warrants but that vendor-held deposits are different; staff agreed to prepare a monthly or quarterly update summarizing expenditures made toward the permanent supportive housing project and said staff could bring prior expenditures forward in an agenda item.

Council and staff agreed that the budget committee should reconvene to consider policy changes and that staff would produce regular transparency reports for the council and public.

What’s next: Staff to prepare a summary agenda item and recurring monthly report on expenditures tied to the permanent supportive housing project, and the budget committee will review reserve policy and longer-term forecasting needs.