City officials broadcast a piece of false information about Tracy’s car gift-card giveaway at last week’s City Council meeting, and it has been rerun twice and is scheduled to be seen twice more as the meeting re-airs on the city-run cable television station, Channel 26.

The misinformation came during a presentation about the $500 gift cards by the city’s Economic Development Department.

To illustrate the publicity the gift-card giveaway garnered, a Fox 40 news report from May about the gift-card giveaway was shown.

The council, back in the spring, voted to spend $400,000 of city money to give $500 gift cards to the first 800 people who bought new cars in Tracy, and the council passed special findings to get around a law that bars giving government money to the public.

In the roughly two-minute news report, a Fox 40 reporter incorrectly stated that the gift cards could only be used in Tracy, an aim the city strived for when it first proposed the giveaway so the cards would generate sales tax in Tracy.

“If we have could gotten Visa to restrict them, we would have,” economic development head Ursula Luna-Reynosa said Tuesday.

But, in fact, the gift cards were debit cards that could be used anywhere, a point never mentioned at the meeting when the council voted for the gift cards in the spring.

The economic development director said the Fox 40 report was selected for last week’s presentation for technical reasons — it had the best computer resolution, and would be easiest to see for the audience in the council chambers, as well as for those viewing the meeting live on television.

She said the news report was inserted into her report at the last minute, and she didn’t even notice the reporter’s error.

It’s unclear if any council member or administrator noticed the error at the meeting. No one mentioned it after Luna-Reynosa was done with her talk.

The city received $195,000 in sales tax money from car sales during the gift-card giveaway, Luna-Reynosa told the council. The council also voted last week to spend $15,000 to make sure all those who were promised gift cards through July 31 received them.

Luna-Reynosa said Toyota and Honda accounted for 54 percent of the gift cards during the giveaway, and she thinks giving car buyers the $500 cards might have saved Tracy’s Chrysler dealership, since one near Dublin closed during the summer.

She also argued the publicity received by Tracy’s auto mall will lure buyers from the Bay Area once the car-sales slump ends.