Besides increased values for some that for many are accentuated by an eight-year lag in tax assessments, Bossier Parish property owners also may face property tax rate increases from at least the Police Jury and Port of Caddo-Bossier.
During quadrennial presidential election years, in Louisiana parishes reappraise property values. That didn’t occur across the board in 2020 due to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, so for some 2024 will present their first adjustment since 2016. While some properties may lose value, others may gain, and likely in Bossier Parish when made final – the process is in its preliminary stage where assessments made can be challenged – in the aggregate property values will have risen.
That means more paid in taxes, but the Constitution permits a safety valve potentially to ease this. Under normal circumstances, the total amount for all properties substantially the same with the same owners collected for a jurisdiction must equal that total from the previous assessment. To accomplish this, millage rates are “rolled back” automatically, so the higher aggregate value times a lower rate equals the same aggregate amount of taxation as previous, with the rate adjusted precisely to match the previous total collected.
However, governments can subvert this as they are allowed to “roll forward” rates, up to the previous year’s maximum (which is a function of the maximum allowed rate by the ordinance and/or election that established the tax plus any adjustments made through this process previously by the governing authority). This requires a public meeting, notice of it, and a minimum two-thirds majority vote.
While at a meeting there is no requirement to bring to a vote, or if brought to a vote that the necessary majority for passage would be realized, a tax rate increase, calling such a meeting hints that the government in question has at least some of its authority’s members (those with single executives have this officer determine this on their own) desire a tax increase. Bossier Parish’s Police Jury has called for such a meeting on Oct. 2, and the Port has one called for Sep. 23.
Jurors seem willing to hike taxes because of the deteriorating condition of parish finances. The 2024 budget report (posted on the web months after the December meeting where it was approved, a meeting which mysteriously failed to broadcast thus wasn’t archived in an incident that was described as a “transmission error”) illustrates deficit spending that requires tapping into reserve funds. General fund expenditures are forecast to exceed revenues by about $1.6 million or around 20 percent, while the deficit for special funds would be about $2 million or around 4 percent, although reserves for capital projects remained about the same. Overall, the Jury for its $201 million budget projects expenses exceeding revenues by $20 million, siphoning 21 percent of existing reserves sending these down to $78 million.
As for the Port, its commissioners probably are thinking about doing this because they can. Unelected and accountable to no one but the governments that appointed them, operating quietly except for congratulating themselves whenever they land a client, they’ve been crafty in the past in milking revenue from others; for example, the Port conned Bossier City into giving it essentially a free water plant if the city ever dares use it.
Last year it continued to have revenues outstrip expenditures, and its net position – the value of all its assets including immovable less liabilities including long-term debt – jumped $47 million or around 18 percent. However, while operating income remained about the same at just under $2 million, the vagaries of investments and royalties have a significant impact on this as these changed by millions of dollars from 2022 to 2023. Further, expenses doubled for fire station operation and personnel costs increased by about $1 million while an increase in operations income couldn’t offset a loss in lease payments, the justification for its existence.
Despite that sluggish performance, the Port jacked up its debt from $61 million to $101 million as a consequence of that water plant that for now it must finance and for warehouse space. With payments on that largely commencing this year, it may extend tendrils into taxpayer pockets to pay for this aggrandizement.
Property taxes comprised $7.3 million in Port revenues in 2023, or about two-fifths of the total, but next year it hopes that zooms to over $9 million without a roll forward, which would cost Bossier taxpayers an estimated $220,405 at the maximum. The Parish got about a tenth of its revenues from the tax but hopes that increases to $21.7 million without rolling forward, which it predicts would net at the maximum over $1.1 million more.
A quick review of both entities’ financial statements cast doubt that they need to squeeze taxpayers further. Is it really cost effective for the Port to build its own water plant compared to its current arrangement with Shreveport (or even the future possibility of contracting with Bossier City, after a pipeline has been completed between the two)? Shouldn’t it concentrate on its core business to offset rising expenses? And if the Parish also is having problems with water – its rapidly expanding water district that for years chronically undercharged and now is facing expenses of bringing in smaller systems with infrastructure needs – it needs to turn to ratepayers first rather than taxpayers to deal with this.
Taxpayers need to make themselves heard at the meetings over these roll forward possibilities, especially at the Port’s as commissioners are insulated from the consequences of their taxing decisions. The public can’t sit down and take this quietly until and unless they get adequate answers to hard questions that may make jurors and commissioners uncomfortable.
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