A brief parish meeting Monday evening wrapped up without public comment either in the public hearing prior to the meeting or at the meeting itself.

The public hearing, which opened about 15 minutes before the regular meeting, was to hear from the public concerning an ordinance amending the budget.

The hearing closed after a minute of opening when no one signed up to speak.

During the regular meeting, the council passed, without comment, an ordinance to amend the 2016 operating budget.

After the meeting, the parish’s director of finance, Donna Graham, said the budget amendment was a routine process, brought about in part due to parish-wide sales tax shortages but also due to flooding earlier this year.

Amendments happen when budgets are either above or under projections.

“We only have one fund that’s predominately funded by sales tax and that one is down and we had to do some cuts to that,” she said. “But most of them are funded through ad valorem and sales tax and so we had some stability with those.”

The public again declined to participate in the public portion of the meeting.

During the president’s report, Ned Thomas introduced three resolutions to replace members of various public boards and all were accepted without comment.

The first replacement was for the Washington Parish Hospital Service District No. 1. Council President Pete Thomas nominated Tammy Magruder to replace James W. Knight, who recently died.

The second resolution was to appoint Dr. Eric Payne to the board of commissioners of the Washington Parish Hospital Service District No. 1. The nomination came from the medical staff of Riverside Medical Center and this resolution passed.

Finally, the council passed a resolution to appoint Erroll Soldani to the Board of Commissioners of the Fire Protection District No. 9 of Washington Parish. Soldani replaced Gary Fenner.

After that, transportation manager Donnell Merritt read his usual report and Leo Lucchesi, the transportation director, announced that the new landfill settlement is ready to be used.

The next meeting will be Monday, Nov. 21, at 6 p.m. at the parish courthouse in Franklinton.