Irvine Land Trust To Consider City Request for Transparency & Accountability
The need for more affordable housing is a no brainer.
In Irvine, we have an entity called the Irvine Land Trust. The Land Trust is a nonprofit corporation funded with public assets of land and money. Big money… as in tens of millions of our tax dollars, and growing. It was established and funded by the Irvine City Council to create all types of affordable housing in perpetuity. So is the Irvine Land Trust serving Irvine the way we want it to? We don’t know because as of the last 3 fiscal quarters the Land Trust stopped providing the city with their financial information.
What is the public benefit of this decision? Residents want to know where their affordable housing money is going and potential donors want to know how the dollars are being spent so they can make informed decisions. That’s it.
Today (6/17) the Irvine Land Trust will consider the City’s formal request to provide them with several key financial reports, etc. This data was promised back in October 2018. The city also used to have budget review and project approval rights.
Let’s hope the Land Trust will cooperate with the City’s request. Either way, we should ask the Land Trust how much in public dollars were spent for the Land Trust Board to amend their bylaws, which caused a domino effect that they claim allows them to operate without City oversight.
Thank you to the City for making a formal written request for financial information. As of the writing of this post, the Land Trust is only promising to “consider” the city’s request for full transparency.
1 Comments
Gail Lewis
June 17, 2019 at 10:03 amI do not understand why the city puts in a “request.” Since most of the funds come from the city, why doesn’t the city DEMAND an accounting or refuse to continue funding the Land Trust?
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