Marksville Mayor wants budget tips from Legislative Auditor

While the city certainly does not want the state to come in and take over operating Marksville from the local officials, the mayor would appreciate some professional assistance in how to cover mandated expenses without additional revenues.

Mayor John Lemoine said that is why he has asked the Legislative Auditor to visit. He said he wants the Legislative Auditor to see what kind of issues the city is facing.

In a recent month, the city had to pay $8,500 to the Avoyelles Sheriff’s Office for housing inmates either awaiting trial or serving sentences imposed by the Ward 2/Marksville City Court, Lemoine said.

“That’s about $5,094 more than it would have been” had the sheriff not recently raised housing costs for municipal inmates from $6 per day to over $24 after 30 days.

Also in a recent month, the city was billed for four autopsies for people who died suddenly in the city limits.

“It’s about $1,875 per autopsy,” Lemoine said.

'BURR UNDER SADDLE'

Councilman Frank Havard brought up the “burr under the saddle” of fines from the Ward/City Court.

Havard said he agrees the city and Police Jury should each pay half. He also believes it would be fair for the city to receive half of the fines.

At this time, almost all cases are prosecuted as a violation of state law, which sends any fines collected for that case to the Police Jury.

This past month, the city received $100 in fines from City Court while the Police Jury received $2,710.50.

The council once again discussed hiring a city prosecutor and taking it out of the hands of the district attorney, who works for the Police Jury and has been instructed to prosecute under state statutes and not city ordinances whenever possible.

“I just want them to look at our finances and see the extra money we are having to spend on such things as housing prisoners,” Lemoine said.

“If we have financial difficulties, it won’t be due to something we are doing incorrectly. It is just things we have to pay that we didn’t have to pay before.”

Lemoine said he wants to know if other municipalities are having the same problems and, if so, if there are steps Marksville can take to address those issues.

“It’s like Councilman Havard said,” he continued.“We spend $1.3 million on the Police Department and are issuing tickets, but out of 120 tickets this past month we received $100. That won’t hardly pay to put gas in the patrol car for a month.”

Lemoine said he doesn’t want the city to run into a financial crisis and “the Legislative Auditor tell us we should have seen it and done something. I want them to see what we are dealing with.”

The mayor said the city is staying within budget at this time due to cost-cutting measures implemented about this time last year.

“Still, we have these additional costs that we didn’t have last year,” he added.

In other business, the council was told this year’s Haunted House was a success, with 546 visitors going through the Halloween site.