At a St. Mary Parish Government special council meeting on Monday, President Sam Jones announced based on information from Finance Officer Paul Governale, the parish would be $2.7 million over their budget later this year.
“The finance officer told me, first time I’d heard it,” Jones said. “And then the CAO said it was the first time he heard it which is not true, but he knew. But that’s the problem and they hid it til the election was over.”
I reached out to the Chief Administrative Officer or “CAO” who declined to comment. Jones said the parish took out a $20 million loan that they began paying off a few years later. He said this is now in the hands of the CAO and the budget officer.
“No we’re not going to go into debt. I’m not doing that and I’m not going to ask people for a tax either. This is a problem they created and they’re gonna have to fix it.”
St. Mary Parish District 1 Councilman Craig A. Mathews who has served on the council since 2007, disagrees with Jones and said there are often times budget projections are inexact.
“To loosely proclaim that we’re gonna fall short $2.7 million by May, it’s just not realistic,” Mathews said.
As for the current state of finances in St. Mary Parish…
“I’m very confident that we’re gonna end our year with a balanced budget if not a fund balance as we’ve done in the past,” Mathews said. “When your cash call projections fall short you make cuts. We may not be able to do as many projects as we had hoped to do.”
St. Mary Parish Government Director of Economic Development Evan Boudreaux said it’s too early to tell if the parish will come up short in May.
“I think that Mr. Jones’ point that he was making was because the cashflow issues the parish is facing and with May being set for a rather large bond payment on top of other expenses the parish, it’s very hard to know what is the cash flow issues gonna be that the parish is facing,” Boudreaux said.
Boudreaux said a solution for the parish could be cutting back and reevaluating where their money goes.
“I do think that there does needs to be a serious long term conversation look at parish finances and the long term trajectory in order to set us up to where we’re not surviving month to month, to where we have long term potential to grow and make meaningful investments for our citizens,” Boudreaux said.
The next St. Mary Parish Government regular council meeting will be Wednesday at 6:00p.m.
