Orange City Council has trouble focusing and staying on the task of making the City financially sound. The City has a structural deficit due to a lack of economic development to bring new businesses to the City. Other cities have grown sales tax and property tax revenues with new businesses and developments while Orange has not. The City has developed a bad reputation among the business development community, referred to as being “blacklisted”. This adds an additional high hurdle to restart economic development efforts
City services have been cut to balance the budget until more revenue starts coming in. Reserves had been used for several years to prop up the budget to prevent service cuts, aka not alerting residents that there is a problem. Reserves are now depleted and can’t be used to hide the problem anymore.
A temporary sales tax measure to provide money to restore service cuts and to rebuild reserves was placed on the 2024 ballot but did not pass. The plan has been to place a temporary sales tax measure on the 2026 ballot to keep the lights lit. City Council has mission critical tasks of bringing in more revenue, building a better business reputation for the City, and rebuilding reserves. These efforts must start now and may not pay off for years to come. The long time to produce results is just the way things are and cannot be an excuse for not doing the work…