A new restaurant could soon grace the Camellia City, thanks to a resolution authorizing the City to enter into a real estate purchase agreement for property located near the old Walmart location.

“There’s some confidential information here that we can’t talk about, but it’s something we’ve been working on and will hopefully bring us a new restaurant to our community,” said Greenville mayor Dexter McLendon.

McLendon added that the closing on the property is not in any way a final confirmation of the deal, but rather another step on the road toward securing a potential restaurant.

“I think we’ve dotted all of our i’s and crossed our t’s to get it in place, but remember that this is not closing or anything like that,” McLendon added.

“This is a matter for us to be able to move forward.  You will be notified of what happens and how it goes, and work out the final details when we can find something and put this agreement in place.  Hopefully within the next three or four weeks, we will have a closing on this piece of property.”

The City also received a clean audit, according to Glenn Branum of Branum & Company.

Branum reported a $506,000 deficit in the fund balance but, due to accounting rules for governmental entities that define short-term loans as liabilities and long-term financing as revenue, the deficit would work itself out.

“It’s my understanding that later this year that’s going to be rolled into some long-term financing, and when that’s done, it’ll go to revenue and wipe out this deficit,” Branum said.

“If you have short-term financing while you’ve got some projects going on and then you convert it over, it’ll take care of itself next year.”

McLendon added that the audit seemed standard fare, budget-wise.

“Sales tax actually went up a little bit.  That’s a good sign,” McLendon said.

“And we went over our budget, so we budgeted well, which is one of the things we’ve had a problem with in the years past.  Sometimes we’d budget a little too much and we wouldn’t need it.  But it seems like the economy is turning around, and that looks better, too.”

The council also approved a number of expenditures, including:

• Branum & Company, P.C. – financial audit for fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2014
• Haynes Emergency Lighting – $8,536.81 for lighting, siren, accessory package for two new police vehicles, etc.
• Pipehorn Locating Tech – $1,319 for pipe and cable locator for street department
• Municipal Workers Compensation Fund, Inc. – $126,042 for estimated premiums for 2/1/2015 – 1/31/2016
• Midsouth Paving Inc. – $1,510.08 for 10.56 tons of cold mix asphalt for street patching
• The CWA Group – $5,214 for semi-annual groundwater monitoring of an old landfill on Industrial Parkway
• Middleton Oil – $1,060.91 for filling a diesel tank at landfill