Report Cites City’s Increased Value

The city is worth more today than it was last year, according to an annual financial report prepared by staff and presented this week to the City Council.

Revenue is up by $17.4 million or nearly 30% from fiscal year 1998-99, and the city’s assessed value rose to $5.4-billion--up 8.4% from that same period. The report credited those gains to a strong economy and recent commercial and residential development within the city.

Finance director and City Treasurer Susan Hartman said recent accomplishments in 1999-2000, such as the opening of four new businesses at the Savi Ranch Center, have reflected the city’s “excellent” economic outlook. Plans call for more stores to open at the center, for construction of the Imperial Highway widening to continue and for the city’s Black Gold Golf Course to open before the start of the next fiscal year. The city has about $52 million in total cash and investments, slightly more than Yorba Linda’s annual $47-million budget.

But not all that wealth is money in the bank. An independent audit of the city’s finances, contained in the overall report, shows the city will have more than $70.5 million in long-term debt by the end of this fiscal year, an increase of about $7.7 million from last year.

Yorba Linda still owes the city of Brea nearly $300,000 for a shared emergency communications system bought in 1997. The city also financed $4 million in 1991 to buy automated collection barrels and collection trucks for local recycling programs. In 1993, the city’s Redevelopment Agency issued $35.7 million in tax allocation bonds for city projects in 1993, and another $17.1 million in 1998.

In September of this year, Yorba Linda sold $15.7 million in golf course revenue bonds to pay for construction of the 18-hold regulation-length Black Gold Golf Course, which is scheduled to open in May.