Since July 1, 1977, we have lived, worked, played, and owned businesses in Lemon Grove; we serve Lemon Grove. We were California's 414th city but we may be a city no longer.

Lemon Grove has been teetering on bankruptcy despite the city's attempts to get out of the red. If financial conditions worsen, the city will need to disincorporate, making it the 14th city in California's history to do so.

We believe that it is time for a greater level of transparency about the city's finances. This petition is circulating to demand an Independent Audit of Lemon Grove's finances and operations, with full disclosure of results provided to the public.

"When a business or a household consistently spends more than it earns, it will go bankrupt. This provides an incentive to review costs." Chuck DeVore, Forbes Magazine

Establishing an Independent Audit helps to reduce the risk to citizens and elected officials and ensures oversight of Lemon Grove's financial, compliance and operations responsibilities and effect change in practices and internal control, when necessary.

"The audits of municipal governments in California … are more creative than reality" based, former San Diego City Atty. Michael Aguirre told the LA Times. "They come in and help cover up what has been going on in a city so they can issue a clean financial statement, for which they are charging lots and lots of money."

We are asking for an independent audit from the State Control Board. We cannot ask the city to perform its own audit, as that can result in a variety of issues, including continued cover ups. Read more about isssues with internal audits in Audits of city finances often cover up serious problems, published by the LA Times.

It's a win-win! When third party audit properly oversees management's actions on financial reporting, compliance, and operations the goal of transparency is achieved alongside improved government operations.

We want to avoid bankruptcy and/or disincorporation of the city. Over the next few years, the budget decisions made by city staff and city council will be critical to the success or failure of Lemon Grove. Every year our local government must adopt a balanced budget that indicates what the year looks like financially and where they intend to spend tax dollars from a priority perspective. The budget should rely on sound fiscal practices of the past. Unfortunately, the past budgets of Lemon Grove have been poorly planned, at a deficit, and mismanaged.

We the people have started this petition to demand an Independent Audit of our past and future budgets. The goal of this petition is to show our local leadership we demand fiscal responsibility and accountability. Our city deserves this so we can develop a budget that relies on sound fiscal practices of the past and looks forward creating new guiding principles that are consistent with fiscal sustainability. How can the city move forward if we don't understand where we have been?

A third-party audit can be laborious, detailed, and costly. The city will argue we can't afford an independent audit but at this critical time, we can't afford NOT to. In other words, the fox shouldn't be left alone to count the chickens in the hen house. The budget should not only support current operations, services, & programs but also be sustained over time, given the many variables (forecasts of revenue, economy, etc.) Right now our city is struggling to rub two nickels together, and a third party audit will tell us why.

Save Lemon Grove! We need to go beyond measuring and discussing fiscal sustainability to implementing fiscally sustainable principles. This will require long-term thinking and the ability to recognize that different versions of the future exist and there is room for debate, discussion, and compromise. This will require an unbiased understanding and explanation of Lemon Grove's past and current budgets. We must learn from any past financial mistakes or we are doomed to repeat them. If Lemon Grove fails, what happens to our schools, our citizens and our businesses?