▸The gist: The City-Parish Council voted Tuesday to put a new fire protection tax on ballots this fall, the fourth tax added to upcoming elections. The tax joins propositions to create separate city and parish councils and levy a half-cent sales tax to fund the sheriff’s office.
▸ $32.9 million in estimated revenue would be raised annually if the tax propositions succeed. The lion’s share of that figure comes from the sheriff’s tax, which is expected to generate $24 million from tax rolls parishwide. A pair of new parish property taxes, funding the district courts and the Lafayette Parish Correctional Center, would generate $11.3 million. The fire protection tax, assessed only in the unincorporated portions of the parish, will generate roughly $3.9 million each year.
“I want to see someone put a price tag on a child’s head,” Councilman Jay Castille growled at fellow Councilman William Theriot, one of the measure’s two no votes and Castille’s frequent sparring partner.
Theriot, acknowledging the need to provide fire services, nonetheless questioned budgeting priorities. “Everybody’s knows there are needs,” Theriot said. “I know we have to have fire protection. But we’ve had people whose homes have flooded several times. We have roads that are turning into gravel roads.”
▸ What to watch for: Collateral damage on the split council proposition. A hot tax season will certainly complicate the push to create separate city and parish councils. Tax-averse conservatives, spearheaded by Facebook page Lafayette Citizens Against Taxes, have opposed the charter amendments and openly questioned the motives behind the substantial change in governance.
Should LCAT successfully mobilize anti-tax sentiment on the Dec. 8 ballot, that could prove troublesome for the split council movement, which recently organized its own political action committee to rally support. Whether conservative groups actively campaign against the charter amendments is yet to be seen, but history shows they don’t have to single the proposition out to tank it. Consider the group’s 2017 fight against a schools sales tax, which took down two millage renewals with it.