Tax plan headed to January meeting

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City gets good marks in audit
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The Eunice Board of Aldermen announced its intention to introduce two tax proposals at a special meeting on Jan. 17 aimed at improving roads and raising the pay of city workers, include police and firefighters.
One resolution would be a new property tax. At a meeting on Dec. 8, the discussion was on proposing an 11.62-mill tax, which would be added to a current 11.62-mill tax. The millage would be dedicated for street and sewer improvements.
The second resolution is to rededicate a sales tax to allow half of it to be used for pay raises. The other half would remain dedicated to capital improvements.
Aldermen met Tuesday at the Eunice Municipal Complex.
Jack Burson, alderman at-large, said, “I know that the meeting on Jan. 17 is going to be where details will be discussed on both of these measure.”
The city’s annual general budget is about $7.2 million of which 35 percent is for the police department and 18 percent for the fire department, he said.
“I think we have to be realistic if we want the kind of public safety that we’ve had in the past then we are going to have to somewhere or another find some more money to pay these people who put their lives on the line for our public safety every day,” Burson said.
The last raise for other city employees was 3 percent seven years ago, he said. “All of us can look back and think from seven years ago to know what happened to our personal living expenses,” he said.
The city’s street improvement program is to overlay select streets every two years with about a million dollars, he said.
“I’ve been on the council 22 years and I’m telling you when I started we could probably do double the mileage of streets with the money that we do now,” he said.
Burson said the idea for a property millage to fund a more comprehensive street improvement program came from Crowley where voters approved a 15-year bond issue.
Burson said many of Eunice’s older streets are need in repair.
“They are not going to get any better unless we have a big capital outlay bond where we can do them all at once and it will be just a matter of keeping up after that,” he said.
Burson said grants from the state to do the work are unavailable and decision about street repairs will be made by voters.
Burson also said the city cannot raise it sales tax. “So, it is either going to be a property tax or it is going to be more potholes and bringing your car to get it aligned.”
Aldermen also heard a report from Shirley Vige Jr., CPA, about the city’s audit prepared by Vige, Tujague & Noel.
“It is a good audit. The books were in good shape this year,” Vige said.
Vige said there was only one finding in the audit and that involved segregation of duties and it is repeat finding. The audit noted it may not be feasible to achieve complete segregation of duties in the accounting department. The issue is there are not enough people to assign duties to in the office.
The audit found the city with healthy finances as of June 30.
Vige’s presentation was based on the city’s cash. Total assets were $1.3 million in its General Fund, which had $2.9 million in revenues.
General Fund expenditures were $7 million, but supported by $4.2 million in transfers of sales tax revenue. The ending balance was $804,472.
The city’s net position was $6.9 million.
Vige said, “The city is in good shape.”
Burson said the city’s balance sheet prepares it to meet emergencies such as hurricanes and utility system breakdowns.