Gautier budget committee reviews budgets; lodging-tax cut tied to special election cost

The Budget Committee met to review the draft city budget and departmental requests, with staff walking council through a set of smaller trust funds and several technical adjustments. Finance Director (speaker 3) told the committee that most of the smaller funds required only verification of transfers to or from surplus and only modest line-item changes.

"The lodging tax expenses went from 63,000 to 33,000 due to the FY '26 having a $30,000 extra in the budget for a special election," Finance Director said, adding that the sales-tax projection was treated as a half year and that staff would circulate a budget amendment on sales-tax estimates. He also said an extra roughly $16,000 in projected sales-tax receipts reduced a planned general-fund transfer installment from about $418,000 to about $402,000.

The packet contained a number of line-item classification corrections; staff said they updated the software and would reissue corrected lines for clearer tracking. Councilors pressed staff for clearer breakout schedules for license-fee and software subscription increases, which staff said reflect a nationwide shift to cloud-based, subscription licensing. The committee set a follow-up timeline: staff will distribute the sales-tax amendment and the capital-improvement package within the next two weeks for additional review.

Council members did not take a final vote on the budget at this session; staff noted the next budget committee meeting is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 10, 05:30 p.m., at New Bancroft.