With no votes to spare, the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board on Thursday kept property tax rates at current levels, ensuring that the school system continues receiving as planned an estimated $13 million in increased revenue thanks to a recent parishwide reassessment.
Every four years in Louisiana, including this year, local assessors reassess the value of residential and other property in their parishes. Once that reassessment is complete, local governments decide whether to lower property tax rates (roll back) or keep the rates at their current levels (roll forward) and thereby reap the benefits of higher property values.
Property tax rates are known as millages. To roll forward the millages, the board needed a two-thirds majority, with at least six board members voting yes.
It barely got there. The vote was 6-1, with board member Nathan Rust voting “no.” Board members Dadrius Lanus and Emily Soulé were absent.
The result was in doubt until board member Shashonnie Steward, a “yes” vote, showed up after the meeting started.
Board Vice President Patrick Martin supported a roll forward, saying it preserves the status quo.
“If we didn’t roll forward we would have to make cuts in the budget that we approved two months ago,” Martin said.
Board member Mike Gaudet made a similar point.
“By rolling forward, we are keeping the original rate intact,” Gaudet said. “This is not a new tax.”
Rust, however, argued that the $13 million in added property tax revenue does not justify the cost to residents, and he said district surpluses are sufficient to pay school bills.
“People are still dealing with inflation and the effects of that inflation,” Rust said. “I personally am paying double my property insurance as what I was paying three years ago.”
“We don’t need this money as much as our community,” he concluded.
The current district budget, which was approved June 20, includes $11.4 million for across-the-board employee pay raises, with a $2,200 permanent raise for teachers, their first in 16 years paid for with district funds.
The approved budget assumed that the board would roll forward millages. District administration recommended the roll forward.
The budget predicts that revenue from property taxes will increase by 9.8% when residents pay their tax bills in early 2025. About 6.1% of that is due to the latest reassessment, completed earlier this year by Assessor Brian Wilson. That is $12.9 million more in funding for the parish public school system, home to more than 40,000 students.
If the board had opted for a roll back, property taxes would have decreased $18 in 2024 for a home assessed at $150,000 and $42 for one assessed at $250,000. Under Louisiana’s homestead exemption, the first $75,000 in value remains untaxed.
A property tax reduction of that size could lead to cutbacks in educational services for public schoolchildren in the parish. It, however, would ease the tax burden of property owners in the parish.
Opponents of rolling forward millages tend to paint the move as an undemocratic tax hike, arguing that rates should roll forward only after a vote of the people. Supporters of “roll forwards” say they rightly take advantage of local economic growth and serve as a fiscally responsible way to ensure stable funding for the ever-increasing cost of public services.
The East Baton Rouge Parish School Board has traditionally opted to roll forward. In 2020, the board inadvertently rolled back millages when it delayed a vote to clarify a legal question but consequently missed a key deadline.
In 2022, the board voted to again roll millages forward, returning them to the levels they had been before. Those two years at lower rates resulted in about $18 million less in property tax revenue collected to run district schools.