Auditor shares Town of Mamou is in “good financial shape”

The Mamou Town Council learned Wednesday from its certified public accountant that the town is in “good financial shape.” The remarks came from Burton Kolder as he presented the town’s financial report for the year ending December 31, 2017.
The biggest issue with the report was a gas loss that has gotten worse over the last year. A management letter attached to the report states, “A significant gas loss occurred in the Gas Utility Department. Despite efforts to locate and repair gas leaks, this loss has increased from the prior year. The Town should continue to investigate possible reasons for the significant gas loss and continue efforts to reduce the loss.”
Kolder’s recommendation was to “continue the efforts” such as doing leak studies, replacing and calibrating meters, and walking the lines.
Mayor Ricky Fontenot stated that the town is working on sectioning off the town into four different sections and having a master meter for each section.
“Maybe that can isolate the leak as to where it is and, hopefully, get that thing resolved,” commented Kolder.
Councilman Robin Young asked if things have gotten better since the latest big leak was discovered, and the mayor pointed out that it did. He also pointed out; though, that the numbers that Kolder were presenting at the meeting were last year’s numbers.
“We are making a lot more progress than we have before,” said the mayor. “We know we are on the right track, and we’re doing the right things.”
As the mayor and some members of the council also pointed out, another factor that contributed to the drop off in money from gas is that some of the big farmers switched to propane.
Councilman Charles Reed stated, “They went to propane and found out it wasn’t any cheaper.”
Councilman Young added that he believes, because of that, “some of the farmers are coming back.”
Despite experiencing the loss in gas, the town still made a profit in that department as it did in every other utility department. Kolder told the council, “That’s something you have always done and something you should be commended on because a lot of our cities don’t make money on utilities, especially on the sewer.”
Kolder then went over the towns’ revenues and expenditures for the past year.
Overall, the actual total revenues was $4,260,889.00 which was up from the budgeted amount of $4,219,148.00. This year’s actual numbers were also up from the actual amount of $4,130,708 from 2016.
The actual expenditures, overall, for 2017 were $4,602,922.00. The amount was down from the budgeted $4,777,054.00 but up from $4,203,142.00 from 2016.
Kolder explained that the actual revenue variance from budget is 0.99 percent which is “very close to budget and which is excellent. He added that the actual expenditure variance from budget is 3.65 percent. “That’s good,” he commented.
He then went over the town’s total net position of $8,863,892 after 2017. According to Kolder, $6,848,144.00 of that was reinvested in fixed assets and $2,015,748.00 of that is unrestricted.
“Taken into consideration, that tells me you can operate this town for about half a year,” Kolder stated. “More specifically, it’s 186 days that you can operate without taking in a dollar.”
“You have enough cash available to operate,” he continued. “Generally, governmental regulations require to have at least two months or 60 days, but y’all are more than three times better than that.”
The council also heard complaints from Gerald Fontenot, who was denied being placed on the agenda to announce his candidacy for mayor. “I was refused,” he said, “and I was told that (the mayor) would only accept candidates running for parish, state, or national elections.”
The mayor told Fontenot that his reasons for his decision was that the meeting was not a proper forum “to spend our time discussing who’s running for mayor.” He added, “That’s why we have the newspaper.”
Mayor Fontenot also pointed that the meetings would not end if the council heard from all of the candidates in this year’s election for mayor, chief of police, and council.
Gerald Fontenot replied, “I think you have a legal problem with that, and I will check into it. I think you can’t discriminate, and you are discriminating against the local people.”
In other business, the council voted to approve The Ville Platte Gazette as the town’s official journal.