VP City Council approves amended and proposed budgets

The 2018 amended budget as well as the 2019 proposed budget for the City of Ville Platte were approved during a special meeting of the city council Thursday.
The amended budget that was presented by certified public accountant Dana Quebedeaux showed total revenues in the amount of $11,170,273.00 and total expenditures in the amount of $13,443,445.00. As Quebedeaux pointed out, the reason why expenditures exceeded revenues is because $1,087,465.00 was used to pay off a bond. This results in a net loss in the amended budget of $1,051,911.00. “Had you not paid the bond off, you would have had an income of little over $35,000.00,” said Quebedeaux.
As for as the projected budget, total revenues for the city are forecasted to be $17,154,015.00. The increase from $11,170,273.00 of last year is mostly due to $587,044.00 in intergovernmental sources, which is a 346.3 percent increase from last year’s $131,544.00.
The total projected amount of the city’s expenditures in the next fiscal year is $17,720,043.00. The increase from the amount in the amended budget is mainly due to expenses in the street and drainage department and the culture and recreation department.
In the amended budget, expenditures for street and drainage was $935,615.00. It increased in the projected budget 231.7 percent to $3,103,525.00. Culture and tourism increased 398.3 percent from $463,828.00 in the amended budget to $2,311,459.00 in the projected budget.
According to Quebedeaux, the budget shortfall for the next fiscal year will be made up with other financing sources: $54,000.00 in the sale of capital assets, $50,000.00 in proceeds from loan issuance, and $4,583,619.00 in proceeds from bond issuance. The CPA said that the figures come out to a net profit of $2,027,972.00 for next fiscal year.
A concerned citizen and Councilman Bryant Riggs questioned Quebedeaux about a supposed increase in pay for the mayor and the council. Mayor Jennifer Vidrine replied, “There were no raises. Those amounts include auto allowances and phone allowances. In the audit, it’s broken down by category, but it’s not in the budget.”
Riggs said that the salary figures in the budget “could look deceiving.”
Quebedeaux replied, “The only reason we don’t break it down in the budget is because that’s how it’s coded in the city’s books, but we can certainly break it down.”
In other business, the council:
• adopted new policies and procedures for the city.
• adopted a resolution to apply for a Recreational Trails Grant for sidewalks to connect Martin Luther King Street to Ville Platte High School.