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Update: The photo in the the 12-4 edition of the Daily News was from the Bogalusa City Council Finance Committee meeting held on November 26th; one of four meetings on the 2025 budget held prior to the Public Hearing. The Mayor’s Special Called Meeting was a Public Hearing on the 2025 budget, held on November 26th, which started at 05:30 p.m. in the Courtroom.  Both meetings were open to the public.

 

BRANDY FLEMING

SPECIAL TO THE DAILY NEWS

The Bogalusa City Council held a special call finance meeting on Nov. 26th, where they discussed discrepancies in the city budget, salaries, unaccounted for funds and a deficit in the current budget.

Mayor Troung wrote a letter to the city council in which he stated he was not able to attend the meeting due to a scheduling conflict, but that he would be participating in the next scheduled council meeting. Councilwoman Gloria Kates said that for the last three council meetings they have “gone meticulously through the budget”. She said during the close out of the year 2022 their CPA indicated that there was a financial surplus from the last administration, which she said was concerning to them.

There were two surpluses found, the first surplus was $340,768 with a second additional surplus of $331 as a separate fund. These exact amounts were confirmed by the budget during that time. In addition the budget showed the current administration has a deficit in funding.

Another topic of discussion was the taxes on the Council on Aging Building, which have remained unchanged. This was under the section “Special Revenue” in the budget. The taxes for the building was only five percent and were dedicated to them.

Chief Smith of the Bogalusa Police Department and Major Bracey attended the meeting that day and stated that they had some concerns regarding their salaries. “I really thought we could negotiate this with the city, but in another setting,” Smith said. He said that they weren’t able to work it out yet with the city and that they have some concerns in their salary budget. The overtime allocated last year for the Bogalusa Police Department was $100,000 and was supposed to increase to $150,000 for the current year. This increase in funds for overtime did not happen according to Major Bracey. He stated “the amount does not reflect what was proposed” and they ended up losing three police officers due to these types of compensation issues.

Toward the end of the meeting councilwoman Kates stated “we found something in the economic development where there was $144,000 and we had $9,000 for insurance so we need to capture who the actual salaries are going toward.”

The last topic of discussion from the council before the meeting was concluded was there were found no delinquent property taxes found as of yet, but that is subject to change since the taxes from this current year aren’t finalized until around March, 2025 of next year.