Long Beach City Auditor Laura Doud has announced that she is pursuing an audit of all 10 business improvement districts. Doud notified the heads of each BID as well as the mayor, city council and city management in a letter dated April 4.

 

The announcement comes after a recommendation by Councilmembers Al Austin, Suzie Price and Daryl Supernaw that sought such an audit failed by a split vote during a council meeting on December 20. Councilmember Stacy Mungo joined her colleagues in support of the motion, but Councilmembers Lena Gonzalez, Jeannine Pearce, Roberto Uranga and Vice Mayor Rex Richardson voted against it. Sixth District Councilmember Dee Andrews was not present for the vote, resulting in the tie.

 

A representative from the city auditor’s office later told the Business Journal that staff was researching the matter further and would then determine whether to move forward in some way.

 

“After the conclusion of our preliminary research, we decided to initiate this audit due to the importance of BIDs to the economic vitality of the city and the benefit that BIDs provide to the citizens and visitors of Long Beach,” Doud’s April 4 letter stated.

 

The audit is to involve a series of interviews and requires information from city staff as well as the BID associations, according to the letter. Doud indicated that all involved parties would be contacted about the audit’s objectives, scope and associated timetables.

 

When Doud spoke at the December 20 meeting, she reminded the council that she does not work for them but operates independently. “There is approximately $11 million annually coming in from [BID] assessments,” she told them at the time. About $440,000 of that comes from fees assessed on city properties.

 

“In the ten-and-a-half years that I have been a city auditor, there never has been an internal control on the PBIDs or to look at whether or not the businesses and the property owners are receiving the intended benefit, whether or not the city is providing adequate oversight, whether or not . . . they are in compliance with the contract,” Doud had said.

 

At the time, Doud said if her office were to pursue an audit of the BIDs that “we would ensure that business owners and property owners are receiving the intended benefits that their assessments are supposed to give them.”

 

The original motion by Austin, Price and Supernaw asked for a “review of internal controls over how funds are handled and spent by the PBID/PBIA; compliance with the City agreement; and possible benchmarking as to how other cities oversee PBID/PBIA’s, and report back to the City Council with the findings.”

 

The city’s various BIDs assess fees on business and/or property owners, which are in turn used to provide services such as marketing, clean teams, special events and more. They are each run by nonprofit associations, including the Belmont Shore Business Association, the Bixby Knolls Business Improvement Association, the Downtown Long Beach Alliance, the East Anaheim Street Business Alliance, the Fourth Street Improvement Association, the Long Beach Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, the Magnolia Industrial Group Inc., the Midtown Property and Business Owners Association, and the Uptown Property and Community Association.