Council meets tonight

GONZALES — The Gonzales City Council is scheduled to meet tonight at 6 p.m. at city hall. On agenda are budget amendments to tweak some numbers for last year's city spending.

Due to the special meeting on Sept. 26 to reset the city's rollback tax rate, an amount of $186,909.44 had to be moved from the Governmental Activities Debt Service Fund to the city's General Fund. Those expenses were for the debt of a fire truck, wheel loader, and motor grader. Council needed to move some of the property tax revenue from the Debt Service Fund for Governmental Activities to the General Fund balance in order to balance the General Fund.

After meeting with the city's auditor, council was advised to not make a budget amendment to move the property tax revenues out of the budget for the Debt Services Fund for the Government Activities to the General Fund budget in order to balance the General Fund. Rather, the auditor suggested to leave the General Fund unbalanced. The result would not affect the reimbursement of funds that was listed in the agreed upon temporary injunction order issued last month, the auditor said.

Council will also need to agree to another three fixes on the old budget, amending for the repayment of the fire truck from the Government Activities Debt Service Fund to the General Fund. The second is moving $70,886.48 to the Governmental Activities Debt Service Fund and the third is reformulating the 2018 debt tax rate numbers.