The City Council held a Budget Hearing on September 2, 2015. The location of the meeting was planned as the meeting hall at the Braunig Lake RV Resort, however it was changed without warning to a cafeteria approximately 100 yards away.
Related: City Council Holds Illegal Meeting; Violates State Law
The meeting was open for anyone to discuss the budget and ask the Council questions about it.
By Texas law, the chief financial officer of the city is the mayor. However, Jim Clement resigned as Mayor in July of 2015. Earnest Gay, as Mayor Pro Tempore, took on the duties and responsibilities as Mayor.
Gay claimed to have made the budget, however, later in the meeting Gay admitted that he followed the direction of former Mayor Jim Clement as to what to put in the budget.
At the start of the hearing Gay reviewed the budget by reading each line item and explaining why it was on the budget the way it was.
Revenue
Based on the proposed budget presented, total revenue for the city is expected to be $340,000 with $240k coming from property tax, $92k coming from Franchise Fees, and $7.5k coming from sales taxes.
According to Gay, the county told him the value of the city was $97-98 million. He said he based the budget on $80 million to take into consideration exemptions such as being homesteaded or having a disability and based the budget on a 30 cent per $100 property tax.
Some of the discussion centered around the low number for sales tax revenue. While reviewing the city’s revenue, Earnest Gay told the audience
General use sales tax. There’s absolutely no way to figure out what that’s going to be….I don’t know what Valero does, I have no idea what the Dollar General does.
Someone from the audience pointed out to Gay that sales tax is a matter of public record and can be researched. The audience member said
As far as businesses go, I think you should have done a fair amount of research done based on what their gross sales were and that’s public knowledge.
Gay countered that there was no way of knowing what Dollar General would bring in in the future. He added “I grossly underestimated the amount of sales tax coming in.”
Related: City Council Created Illegal Amount of Sales Tax
Budgeted Expenses
After people from the audience began asking why certain items cost what they did, Earnest Gay said he made up numbers, saying
I had to come up with numbers and they had to be on paper, it’s not a perfect budget by any means.
Salaries
Gay told the audience that the salaries listed on the budget were to include Social Security and Medicare. Salary for both the part time City Clerk and the part time City Marshal was listed as $30,000 each.
Multiple people voiced that they wanted the City Marshal to receive more money.
Animal Control
$4,000 was listed on the budget for expenses related to animal control. Gay didn’t give a reason for the number and admitted that he didn’t know what animal control would cost, saying
Animal control. I know I low-balled that one, but I don’t know what you can do for animal control.
Streets
The budget lists $15,000 for expenses related to street maintenance. However, Alderman Gay said the city doesn’t know who the streets belong to and which streets the city is required to maintain. He told the audience
If we own all of them and we have to do maintenance on all of them, then 15000 is not going to cut it.
Frustration From Audience
“Most of the city is not very happy” said one audience member in reference to the City Council.
Many people asked when the maintenance assessment fee of the WPPOA would go away and someone even reminded Council members that they had run on the platform of eliminating the fee.
When someone suggested term limits for the City Council Earnest Gay responded
If you want my opinion, if you want term limits they’re called elections!
At one point Alderman Micki Ball also told the audience
Every one of you could step up and help the neighborhood.
Relating to the budget, someone from the audience pointed out that the budget wasn’t fully prepared and that no work had gone into creating it, saying to the City Council
41% of the expenses for just 3 people. You have no idea what roads are going to cost you, you’ve done no research. You don’t even know what roads you own. After an entire year of being on the city council nobody has done the research yet. You have no idea what animal control is going to cost you because none of you has done the research. You don’t know anything. You just admitted multiple times that you just made this [budget] up.
Earnest Gay replied:
That is exactly right. If you’ve got a better way of doing it then you should have come to me.
“I’m not going to say you’re incompetent” said different audience member, “I’m saying the research should have been a little better.”
Postponement
The City Council ended the meeting without a decision about the budget. They decided to continue the budget hearing at 6:30pm on September 8, 2016.
A member of the audience asked if citizens would be able to see the tweaked budget before the City Council reviews it and/or accepts it. The Council never answered her.
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