Menifee Cityhood Looks Troubling

The financial analysis needed to determine if the Menifee Valley can incorporate as a city is showing that the new city will face budget shortfalls anywhere from 5-10 years.

Gary Thompson, who is conducting the analysis, says that the cost of adding new fire stations will be too much for Menifee Valley to handle on its own...

Under three different proposed boundaries for a city of Menifee Valley, there would be a budgetary shortfall at some point in the first 10 years if the valley had to absorb all operating costs for up to three new fire stations, according to the analysis released earlier this month.

You read more about this in The Californian...
http://www.nctimes.com/..../22_45_507_26_07.txt

But Joe Daugherty, who leads the cityhood effort, says the analysis takes a conservative view of the future city's finances, whereas growth in the valley is accelerating at a fast rate. In other words, he thinks the fast pace of commercial and residential growth will can provide unforseen revenues that the analysis doesn't take into consideration.

I tend to believe he's right. Once the Countryside Marketplace is in place, both commercial and residential development is going to boom in this valley, and bring in plenty of new revenue.

Nonetheless, the purpose of this analysis is to tell cityhood proponents what needs to be done to make cityhood happen, not so much to tell them that its impossible. The challenge of the cityhood incorporation committee is to work with the county in finding a way to make this feasible.