By Blake Deshazo | The Selma Times-Journal

The Valley Grande City Council put the final stamp of approval on a budget for the upcoming fiscal year Monday night.

Fiscal year 2016-2017 will have a budget of $701,000, according to Mayor Wayne Labbe, an increase from last year’s $688,000 budget.

“The biggest thing is our increase in capital projects budget,” Labbe said. “Last year, we didn’t have but $25,000 in capital projects, and we probably more than doubled that this year.”

Labbe said the money allocated for capital projects will include work on Valley Grande City Park.

“We’ve got some finishing touches to do on our ball fields with scoreboards, and we’re redoing our walking trail,” Labbe said. “We just put in new swing sets up at the park and repaired the fencing around it. Stuff like that.”

The new budget will also account for increases in insurance, salaries and other day-to-day expenses, Labbe said. He said the increase in budget was due to an increase in revenue over the last year.

“This past year we took in as a city close to $200,000 more than we spent, so that gives you some idea,” Labbe said. “We’ve got more than a yearly budget available to the new mayor to spend on any capital projects they really want to do.”

The city is also out of debt, which will help Matt Dobbs, the newly elected mayor, and new city council members continue to improve the city.

“I kind of feel like they really have more of an opportunity than we did because when myself and my council started we were very limited with funds,” Labbe said. “We just had to work our funds day to day.”

The decision will be left up to the new council, but Labbe said the city has shown interest in adding a code enforcement officer to its staff.

“I feel like they have a real opportunity to really move the city forward,” Labbe said. “We’re looking at getting us an enforcement officer to enforce our ordinances … which really is the start of a police department.”

Dobbs and new council members Lamar Morgan, Tammy Troha and Jimmy Johnson were all part of making the new budget.

“We had the new mayor and the new council members in there really because this is their budget, and we wanted them to have some input,” Labbe said.

“We spent about an hour and a half in a budget planning meeting all together, the whole council, me, the new mayor and new members of the council. We went through every line item and basically hashed it out.”

The new budget will go into effect Oct. 1.