Brookshire City council reviews FY2025–26 budget, prioritizes capital projects and accounting fixes

BROOKSHIRE, Texas — The Brookshire City Council met in a special budget workshop Aug. 6 in City Council Chambers to review a proposed FY2025–26 budget, hear a finance presentation on accounting-system issues and consider a prioritized list of capital projects and operating decisions.

Natalie Lyons, the city’s accounting staff member, led a detailed presentation on the city’s current financial statements and the complications that followed a software change from ENCODE to FundView. Lyons said FundView contains many duplicate and inactive line items that made coding invoices difficult and obscured actual spending patterns; she recommended consolidating the FundView accounts back into the simpler ENCODE structure and restoring business processes, including contracting out bank reconciliation. “One department had 27 line items in ENCODE and 86 in FundView,” Lyons said. “It’s easy to mess up; we need to get back to a simpler basic operation.”

The discussion then moved to capital priorities the council may fund from projected FY2026 resources. Lyons presented a packet of projects categorized as desirable, necessary or mandatory and gave preliminary cost estimates. The packet listed projects including: Hobart’s Park soccer reconfiguration (estimated $16,400), resurfacing and reskinning work for the public works building, turf grooming at Hovis Park (about $20,284), lighting repairs at Hobart’s Park (about $12,500), a Hovis Park clubhouse remodel (estimate provided in the packet), a proposed detention/retention feature near Stalnik and Stella to address recurrent…