Tax votes planned in 4 cities


By KEVIN BLANCHARD
Aug 30, 2006


Lafayette Parish mayors have reached an agreement to each place new sales tax proposals on the November ballot to help fund road and drainage projects across the parish, City-Parish President Joey Durel announced Tuesday.

Under the agreement, voters in Lafayette, Broussard, Carencro, Scott, Youngsville and the unincorporated areas of Lafayette Parish, could each have opportunities to approve a new sales tax to meet public infrastructure needs in their own areas of the parish.

Durel, who made the announcement at Tuesday’s City-Parish Council meeting, said he is still working to see whether Duson would like to participate.

Durel had already proposed a 1-cent sales tax increase just inside the city of Lafayette for road and drainage projects.
That proposal came after Durel and area mayors could not reach agreement on a parishwide sales tax — because the proceeds from that parishwide tax would be controlled solely by the City-Parish Council and not the smaller municipalities.
Councilman Lenwood Broussard had criticized the Durel administration for “starving” the parish, which also has needs for road and drainage projects.

On Friday, Durel said, he began talking again to the other mayors, saying a parishwide measure was “on life support.”
“Let’s give it one last try,” Durel said.

Durel said he found it interesting that the criticism from other areas of the parish wasn’t that a new tax was unnecessary.
“They were saying, ‘Why aren’t we going to be taxed too. We have problems out here too,” Durel said. “People want solutions.”

While the mayors have agreed in principle, Durel said, they will still need to convince their respective councils to call for a sales tax that would be controlled by their respective councils.

Durel is also planning on calling for a new 1-cent sales tax for the unincorporated area of Lafayette Parish, which despite being home to nearly 60,000 residents has no dedicated source of funding for infrastructure projects.

The City-Parish Council is scheduled on Sept. 5 to put the city of Lafayette sales tax proposal on the ballot for the Nov. 7 election, which is a federal election date on a Tuesday.

The other municipalities have until Sept. 22 to ask the Secretary of State’s Office to place their own sales tax measures on the Nov. 7 ballot.

The unincorporated area sales tax proposal would require the City-Parish Council to review, by Sept. 5, a feasibility study listing which projects could be built with a new tax.

The council would also have to set up a separate taxing district made up of the unincorporated area — much the way the sheriff’s office made a special taxing district out of the unincorporated area before getting its half-cent sales tax passed, Chief Administrative Officer Dee Stanley said.  
Stanley credited many of the area mayors with “political courage” for getting behind sales tax proposals in their area.  

Carencro Mayor Glenn Brasseaux, Scott Mayor Hazel Myers and Broussard Mayor Charlie Langlinais all have opposition in the Sept. 30 primary election — just days after their councils would be putting a new sales tax proposal on the Nov. 7 ballot.  Government officials are historically averse to proposing new tax measures during an election year.

With voter approval, each jurisdiction would collect and spend its own pot of money. But the bodies would be free to reach agreements with each other to help build some of the many road and drainage projects which cross into different jurisdictions.

Take University Avenue, for example: Starting at Interstate 10, University Avenue is in the city limits of Lafayette. Farther north, it passes through the unincorporated areas of the parish, then into Carencro.

Officials could reach agreement to each pay for their portion of a widening project on University Avenue, rather than only one jurisdiction having enough funds to widen only its section.

Durel said the package of sales taxes could result in parishwide connections that would allow people from outside the city of Lafayette to more easily make it into town for work, school or business.
 
Story originally published in The Advocate

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