SALADO — A few weeks ago, Salado village officials made a shocking discovery. It was revealed that the village is in a deeper financial hole than projected. During a town hall meeting at on Tuesday, Mayor Bert Henry announced that the village is projected to be in a $1.
2 million budget deficit at the end of the 2023-24 fiscal year on Sept. 30. During Tuesday’s town hall, Henry pointed out that an escrow check for nearly $1 million was put into the general fund.
The check was sent to the village office in January 2023, but was just discovered by city officials three weeks ago. “It was called to my attention that there was a $945,000 check that came into the Village office. It was deposited into our general fund, but now it’s gone,” Henry said during the town hall meeting.
“That money did not belong to us. That was escrow money for development. Escrow funds cannot be combined with general funds.
” According to Henry, this was just one example of how things were prior to him taking office as mayor. He wanted to make the public aware of this. “Our audit findings said that we were in good shape, but we’re not in good shape,” Henry said.
“When you have one individual that everything funnels through, you really have an almost hostile environment. We sat down and had a conversation with our auditor. Our auditor, accountant and financial advisor were given directives not to speak to each other.
That’s not how you do business. There are things that should’ve be.