Dear Editor,
As reported in the Event-News Enterprise (August 2, 2023, pages 1 & 3), the City of Cypress has been suspended from receiving funding from the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) Measure M/M2 program. Under this program, each city is entitled to receive a share of the revenue generated by the County’s 0.5% transportation sales tax, which was approved by the voters many years ago. One of the requirements for receiving these funds is the expenditure of a certain amount by the city for street maintenance, improvements and related projects, known as “Maintenance of Effort” or MOE. The suspension followed an OCTA audit that revealed about 40% of the MOE expenditures claimed by Cypress were “ineligible or unsupported”. Moreover, even if all the claimed MOE expenditures had been found to be eligible and supported, the City did not spend enough to comply with the clearly stated MOE requirement. Of the 34 cities in Orange County, Cypress was the ONLY city to lose this funding. As a result of the City’s incompetence, Cypress will forfeit about $1.4 million per year in OCTA funding for at least the next three years. This money could have been used for additional street repairs and improvements.
I was a member of the OCTA Taxpayer Oversight Committee (TOC) from 2015-2018. One of our duties was to review the documentation submitted by the 34 cities to verify their eligibility for Measure M/M2 funding. Even before the cities submitted their MOE documentation each year, OCTA staff held a workshop for city employees to explain the process and review any new requirements. Occasionally, the TOC found some questionable or inconsistent information in the submittals from a few cities. Upon further inquiry, however, and with some help from OCTA staff, every city was able to correct its documentation and qualify for funding. As a result of all this outreach and assistance from OCTA, not one city was suspended during my three years on the TOC. How could Cypress mess up so badly this year?
I do not live in Cypress, so I’m not impacted by the City’s incompetence. The citizens of Cypress should demand accountability from City Council and staff concerning the cause of this blunder. Perhaps if the Council spent less time and effort trying to limit citizen participation in Council meetings, censuring their fellow Council member for her alleged “incivility”, and finding new ways to enrich the local trash company, they could spend more time managing City staff to ensure the City receives its full share of County funding.
Alan Dubin
Rossmoor
