Mayor Sid Deserves ‘Yes’ on Nov. 15

By Woody Jenkins, Editor St. George Leader

There is a structural problem with City-Parish taxes and spending

Simply put, here is the problem: 

• We have enough tax revenue to pay for the normal operations of the City-Parish government, but tax revenues are not being distributed to agencies where the need is greatest.

• Some agencies are over-funded, while other agencies are underfunded, and some of the agencies that are underfunded are the most important of all.

• These disparities cannot be corrected through the normal budget process, because some of the revenue is produced by dedicated property taxes that can only be used for specific purposes.

• Some property taxes are producing more revenue than is needed for a particular agency, but the surplus funds cannot be used for agencies that are underfunded.

• For example, the East Baton Rouge Library Board is authorized to levy about 11 mills of property taxes.  This generates far more revenue than is needed for library purposes.  By way of comparison, in New Orleans, the library budget is $24 million a year.  In Dallas, the library budget is $35 million a year.  However, in East Baton Rouge Parish, the library budget is over $55 million a year! The library board is spending money at twice the rate of larger cities. Even more shocking, the Library Board has a surplus on hand of over $100 million.

• At the same time that our libraries have “an embarassment of riches,” the Baton Rouge Police 

Department is 150 officers short, and police pay is very low and not competitive with some surrounding communities.

• However, at present, even though the Library Board is overfunded, those excess funds cannot be used to meet other urgent needs of the City-Parish, such as increasing police pay or hiring more police officers.

• The Thrive Initiative alone will not solve this problem, but it is the first of several steps that will have to be taken.

• As to the East Baton Rouge Parish Library Board, Thrive moves $52.4 million out of the Library Board’s $100+ million surplus fund and uses that to pay off $52.4 million in City-Parish debt. This will reduce operating costs of the City-Parish by an estimated $9 million a year.

• The next thing the Thrive Initiative does is dedicate a little over 2 mills of the Library tax to the general fund of the City-Parish, producing about $10 million.

• Those two changes will cut City-Parish expenses and raise City-Parish revenues by a total of about $20 million a year.

• Thrive allows the Library Board to keep the rest of its surplus funds and operate on an annual budget of $45 million a year, still a very generous amount compared to other cities.

• As to the Council on Aging, a tiny part of that agency’s annual property tax collections will go to the City-Parish general fund.

• Likewise, a tiny part of the annual property tax collections of the Mosquito Abatement Commission will go to the City-Parish general fund.

All three agencies — the Library Board, the Council on Aging, and the Mosquito Abatement Board — support the Thrive plan.

Likewise, all 12 members of the Metro Council support the plan, as do Mayor-President Sid Edwards, Central Mayor Wade Evans, Zachary Mayor David McDavid, and St. George Mayor Dustin Yates.

What remains is approval by the voters of East Baton Rouge Parish in an election Nov. 15.

The reason Thrive is on ballot now is because the Library property tax expires December 31, and the Library Board needed to ask the voters to renew the tax for a 10-year period.  In order to reform how this tax is levied and distributed, it was now or wait 10 years.

The Thrive Initiative is the first of several steps that will have to be taken to straighten out City-Parish finances.  It does not solve this problem, but it is the beginning of a solution. 

Coach Sid is off to a great start and he is making many needed changes in City-Parish government. Thrive is something we can do to help him help us, and we recommend voting Yes on all three propositions.