Just two and a half months after paying off a $1 million loan, Evangeline Parish Sheriff Eddie Soileau adopted a budget that reflects a major financial turn around from last September when the sheriff declared his department was broke. During a public hearing on Thursday, June 15, 2017, the sheriff revealed that his office has ended this fiscal year with a $849,186 surplus. Concerning this surplus, the sheriff stated, “In all of my years I have never seen a number like this before. Since I started, $600,000 was a good number.
This looks good.” However, the budget adopted for the year ending June 2018 shows a lower end of the year surplus of $155,279. The decrease in surplus is due to the fact that the sheriff anticipates bringing in $375,928 less in revenues than in the fiscal year ending June 2017. According to Evangeline Parish Tax Assessor Dirk Deville, whose office entered into an intergovernmental agreement to assist the sheriff last September, the decline in revenues is partly due to the fact that some of the “money collected was from last year.”
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