Simi OKs $105,000 to Lure Company : Council: The figure was pared from $130,000 after officials questioned the number of jobs and payroll size involved in the proposed move.

The Simi Valley City Council voted 4 to 0 Monday to give a $105,000 welcome to a major music and videotape firm planning to move its warehouse from Chatsworth to Simi Valley.

City staff members had recommended that the council allocate $130,000 in redevelopment agency funds to the Time Warner Inc. subsidiary seeking the aid, but the figure was pared after council members questioned the value of the company’s impending arrival.

“They are bringing a few jobs, although not as much as we had hoped for,” Councilman Bill Davis said before the meeting. “If you don’t give it to them, some other city will and then you lose it all.”

Warner/Elektra/Atlantic Corp.’s planned relocation will bring about 160 jobs at an average salary of $26,000, company officials estimate. About 120 employees are expected to transfer from the 130,000-square-foot warehouse the company now leases in Chatsworth.

Mayor Greg Stratton compared those numbers with last year’s allocation of $175,000 to Guardian Products Inc., a medical supply house moving to the city from the east San Fernando Valley.

That relocation, Stratton said, will bring the city nearly 500 full- and part-time jobs at an average salary of $34,000. “When you look at the payroll and the like, I would have to say that this is not providing the number of jobs and the payroll that a Guardian did, even though the building is significantly bigger,” Stratton said. “I think that spending $130,000 for 40 new jobs is a little steep.”

The annual payroll of the Warner/Elektra facility is estimated at $4 million, while Guardian Projects estimates a $10-million payroll.

“Guardian seemed to be a good one in the sense that it was relatively high-paying and high-job (producing),” Stratton said before the meeting. “If one has to assume that one only has a certain number of square feet of industrial space (in the city), while all development is good, some are better than others.”

The decision to help offset Warner/Elektra’s relocation expenses came in response to a May 17 letter in which Jac Lee, the company’s national director of facilities, asked the city to defray the cost of building permits, utility connection fees and other relocation costs.

Last month, the Burbank-based company filed plans to build a $6.5-million, 200,000-square-foot warehouse and distribution center on 12.45 acres it recently purchased on Ward Avenue in the city’s west end industrial area.

Warner/Elektra hopes to have the warehouse built and operational by June of next year. City officials estimate the facility will yield $125,250 in annual business tax revenues and $33,573 in redevelopment agency revenues in its first year.

Lee attended the council meeting and, as council members discussed trimming his company’s allocation, made an appeal for more financial help. “I think we’re going to be bringing quite a bit of income to the city,” he said.

Stratton, who had supported an even lower allocation--about $84,000--urged Lee not to get the wrong message. “We do appreciate you,” Stratton said. “Don’t read us wrong.”

After the meeting, Lee said he was unhappy with the reduced incentive and said his company may reconsider the move to Simi Valley. “We’re disappointed that it wasn’t higher, but we’ll deal with that.”