By: TONY MARKS
Editor
During a special meeting of the Mamou Town Council, on Thursday, March 21, certified public accountant Mike Johnson reviewed expenses in comparison to the 2024 police budget.
Johnson explained the main revenue sources for the town’s police department are housing prisoners (which is budgeted at $88 thousand a year) and police fines (which is budgeted at $220 thousand a year). He further explained, in 2023, the department took in $208 thousand in fines and $89 thousand in housing prisoners.
According to Johnson, the rest of the revenues for the police budget comes from other sources the town generates such as gas, water, sewer, property taxes, and sales taxes.
As of the end of February, Johnson said the police department is projected to be short about $70 thousand in revenues. “That’s based on current collections, and that’s going to have to come just to keep their budget at $750 thousand,” he said.
Further, according to Johnson, the department, through February, is projected to be over budget by $53 thousand and over budget by $306 thousand by the end of the year.
“Just for the chief,” Johnson said, “this is grounds for malfeasance unless it’s corrected and bring the budget within 5% by year end.”
Johnson then explained the town has earmarked all money that it collects. This earmarked money is for projects and ongoing operations of the town.
After more than an hour of finger pointing and tossing around ideas, Chief Pat Hall said he came up with an idea of hiring two additional officers and creating a shift of having two officers on duty. Under his proposal, one officer would patrol and the other would be writing tickets.
“Two more officers would bring us back to where we used to be where we had two at night and one during the day,” Chief Hall said.
The chief also said he is currently looking into applying for state and federal grants.
“Let’s hire two more cops, and let’s try,” Councilman Derrell Thomas said. “We got to start somewhere.”
The council took no action on the issue.
June 19, 2026
