By ROBIN SHANNON

L’Observateur

CONVENT – A healthy fund balance and tight control over expenses were the key highlights of an audit on St. James Parish’s finances that was released to the parish council Wednesday evening.

Mike LeBlanc, a CPA with the Postlethwaite and Netterville Professional Accounting Firm, offered a brief review of the audit and said the process was conducted with no difficulties, no disagreements with parish management and no significant audit adjustments.

“Fiscal responsibility is taken very seriously in this parish, and this shows it,” LeBlanc said. “That doesn’t appear likely to change even with some new faces here.”

LeBlanc said the parish’s net assets exceeded its liabilities by about $103 million. He said the parish’s total net assets increased by $8.04 million over the previous year, with about $6.3 million coming from governmental activities and about $1.6 million coming from business-type activities.

The parish’s general fund, which is the primary source for operational money, ended the year with a balance of $6.306 million, a roughly $500,000 increase from last year. Property taxes increased by 3.4 percent, closing at $13 million for 2011. LeBlanc said parish property taxes have shown a steady increase over the past 10 years. There was also a $1.7 million increase in revenue from the parish’s Gas and Water Distribution System Fund and the St. James Parish Youth Detention Center, LeBlanc said.

Also at Wednesday’s meeting, state Department of Transportation and Development representative Pam Lightfoot announced to the council that the parish had been upgraded from a Class 8 to a Class 7 community in 2012 when it comes to floodplain management. She said the upgrade comes with a 15 percent reduction in flood insurance premiums for parish homeowners, which equates to an average savings of about $13,000 annually.

“This means a lot to a lot of people,” said Councilman Jimmy Brazan, who represents portions of Vacherie. “Being from a district that frequently floods, many residents have flood insurance, and they will benefit quite a bit from this.”

Parish President Timmy Roussel mentioned in his report to the council that parish mosquito control has recovered five mosquitoes that tested positive for West Nile Virus in the past month. He said parish officials are holding off on spraying larvacide until it has stopped raining for two consecutive days in order to keep the larvacide from washing away.

In other action, the council approved a resolution allowing the parish to seek bids for a mobile command trailer for the Department of Emergency Preparedness. Roussel said the parish wants to purchase a 32-foot mobile command trailer that can be hitched to a parish vehicle and used in emergency response. He said a need for the unit was highlighted in the response to the Rain CII plant fire last month.

“Our response and coordination with the fire units was great, but we really had no place where everyone could gather to plot out moves,” Roussel said. “This would be something the parish owned that could easily be taken out to an incident.”

Parish Emergency Preparedness Director Eric Deroche said the trailer itself would cost about $40,000, and the parish would likely spend another $20,000 to outfit it with radios and other electronics. He said parish has about $30,000 in Homeland Security funds leftover from 2010 that must be spent by October. The difference would come from Homeland Security funds from 2011-2012.