i had the hosting company look at the logs and this is what they sent back to me. they said it isn't the permissions but in the code. i've marked out the folder and url below.
it appears the issue is being caused by the HTTP wrapper being called from the file open statement:
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[20-Mar-2014 04:06:34] PHP Warning: fopen(
http://www.xxx/wp-content/themes/s5_new_vision/cache/bottom_compression_css.php) [<a href='function.fopen'>function.fopen[/url]]: failed to open stream: HTTP wrapper does not support writeable connections in /home/xxx/public_html/wp-content/themes/s5_new_vision/vertex/compression/bottom_css_and_js_compression.php on line 269
[20-Mar-2014 04:06:34] PHP Warning: fwrite(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/xxx/public_html/wp-content/themes/s5_new_vision/vertex/compression/bottom_css_and_js_compression.php on line 275
[20-Mar-2014 04:06:34] PHP Warning: fclose(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/xxx/public_html/wp-content/themes/s5_new_vision/vertex/compression/bottom_css_and_js_compression.php on line 277
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Unfortunately because this request is being called using HTTP rather than opening the local file, you will not be able to write to it. This is not a restriction imposed by hosting company, but rather one by the PHP language itself. You will instead need to specify the local file path when writing the cached/compressed files.