JEFFERSON — Jefferson city council members on Tuesday held a special meeting to appoint the city’s new police chief and discussed a previous miscalculation in the proposed budget that will now see the city with a surplus.

Jefferson Police Officer Florentino Perez was appointed the city’s new police chief on Tuesday in a unanimous vote from the council.

Perez will replace the city’s previous police chief Jason Carroll who resigned last month after controversial social media posts. Carroll had only been on the job a few months after replacing retiring police chief Gary Amburn at the end of 2019.

Also on Tuesday, city council members discussed an earlier miscalculation in the city’s proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year that had the council expecting the city to be in a deficit.

The miscalculation involved the city’s collection of the economic development tax from the Texas Comptroller’s office which had mistakenly been input twice.

“We collect the economic development tax from the state when the comptroller sends the tax to the city and then we give them a check,” Jefferson Interim Mayor Victor Perot said Tuesday. “That number had been accidentally been input twice.”

So instead of the previously proposed $250,000 deficit budget at the council’s last meeting, the city is now looking at a proposed budget with a surplus of about $250,000.

“We still haven’t gotten our tax rate back from the tax assessor, but we do expect our amount of taxable property is going to go down,” Perot said. “The rate is probably going to be a fraction higher since the taxable value went down but it won’t be a whole lot.”

Though the city hasn’t had a city administrator since Sept. of 2018 when the council voted to oust then controversial city administrator Kevin Huckabee, the council is leaving the about $80,000 salary amount in this year’s proposed budget in the hopes of hiring a new city administrator, Perot said.

The council is set to meet again next Tuesday for another budget workshop meeting and the proposed budget must be adopted by Oct. 1.

Bridget began at the LNJ working in sports, city reporting and then on the education beat before moving to the MNM where she covers education and the cities of Jefferson, Harleton and Hallsville. Bridget has two daughters and loves her family and animals.