Financial Data From Schools Requested

The City Council has decided not to release the balance of a trust fund to the Simi Valley Unified School District until the district gives council members a clearer understanding of what it plans to do with the money.

School district officials had requested that the council, acting as the board of directors of the city’s Community Development Agency, release $149,734 held in a school district trust fund that is administered by the agency. The fund, intended to provide money for the district’s capital improvement projects, receives money through tax increment revenues.

In a letter to the board, Assistant Supt. David Kanthak said the money would be used to pay for such capital projects as the Royal High School stadium as well as debt service on certificate of participation bonds.

Board members, however, said they wanted to know how much the district had to pay in debt service. They also wanted information on how the district had spent $810,933 from the fund in 1992.

“The question I’d have to ask is, ‘What did you do with the first money?’ ” Mayor Greg Stratton said. “I’d like to see the data.”

The board agreed to delay giving the district the fund’s balance--currently $148,149, according to agency staff members--until board members receive more information from the district.

In a related measure, the board approved, after the fact, the district’s use of $75,000 from the fund for demolition of a swimming pool at Simi Valley High School and construction of a parking lot.

The money, which was disbursed in 1991, had originally been earmarked for repairs to the pool, but district officials decided that such repairs would be too expensive. The pool has already been replaced by a parking lot.