MONROE, La. – On Tuesday night the Monroe city council approved to amend the budget. The amendment was made because the city’s revenue increased more than 7.4 million dollars.
The money will go towards many things such as a pension increase for the municipal employee retirement and infrastructure projects. The city’s budget officer says all departments will benefit from the revenue increase.
When you subtract the city’s expenses from the new revenue numbers… the city has 4.3 million dollars to spend.
The new revenue was because of better than expected sales tax revenue and money from the federal cares act.
City budget officer Dan Richards said many cost cutting initiatives played a big roll in keeping the city in the green.
“So we lifted the furlough after two months because we started to see the sales tax wasn’t going to decrease as much. So we ended the furlough. So I reduced their budget by seven months with the furloughs. But we stopped after two months,” said Richards.
Richards said it’s likely there will be a surplus in the budget that could carry over to the next fiscal year. That’s up to Mayor Friday Ellis’ discretion.
