The special session of the Mesquite City Council called for May 15 to finalize the City's FY2012-13 budget was disrupted by a procedural snafu that prevented any action from taking place.

Mesquite Finance Director Debbie Cardenas explained that the tentative budget discussed in last week's hearings require State of Nevada approval before the Council can proceed with its final passage.

"We need to submit the tentative budget to the State for their review," Cardenas said. "Since we didn't have a tentative budget until last Thursday, I was able to get that budget to them early this morning. It's a very complicated, detailed budget and one that you have to prepare in their format, not in ours. They received it this morning and reviewed it. There are some differences in the way the calculations are coming out in their format versus what our tentative budget is. They would like to see those differences taken care of before we adopt the final budget."

Cardenas continued her explanation saying, "the final budget does not need to be adopted until June 1. We

will be working together to get our schedules to match their [State] schedules. However, they have also got some commitments that they need to attend to in the next few days. They won't be able to work on this in time for our May 22 City Council meeting. I'm asking that the Council set another meeting for the final adoption of the budget."

The Council re-scheduled the final budget adoption for May 29, 5:00 pm.

"Actually, this is a good delay," Councilman George Rapson later said. "We just got the revised budget document this morning so this gives us an extra chance to review it one more time."

Mayor Mark Wier also explained after the shortened meeting that Cardenas had been working on the revised budget "all weekend and until three o-clock this morning trying to get it in to the State. She's done a great job. The differences are caused by formatting and not anything that's structurally wrong with our budget. We're in very good shape."

Click here for a copy of the revised FY2012-13 City of Mesquite budget.