The Lafayette Parish School Board hasn’t quite decided yet how to ask voters to approve a new property tax this fall for school maintenance and its facilities master plan, and now board members may be asking for another property tax on the same ballot to fund a universal Pre-K program.
According to The Advocate, Wednesday’s board meeting ended with no action and no date set for the property tax vote, but the board has two propositions its considering: One would place a 2-mill property tax on the ballot to fund 20 years of school maintenance. The other would ask for the same millage for school maintenance, but also include an additional 5.4 mills that would raise $8.1 million a year for 20 years and fund a districtwide Pre-K4 program:
The board did not make any decisions related to the propositions or the timing to bring the issue to voters. But members were presented with two options: Oct. 22 and Nov. 19. If the board opts for an Oct. 22 ballot, it must approve a proposition by June 29.
The new property tax, which could be a near impossible sell for voters with a no new tax sentiment and a board that in the past used maintenance money to fund everything except maintenance, would pay for the first phase of a $1.1 billion facilities master plan adopted by the board last year. As part of the facilities master plan, the board created a Citizen Oversight Committee make suggestions on how to fund the massive facilities repair project.
The oversight committee was clear in its request that the tax verbiage specifically direct the tax money to the master plan and facilities maintenance. Oversight committee members also want to ensure they are still a part of the process when its time to implement said plan. But as committee chairwoman Sarah Walker pointed out Wednesday night, the propositions up for discussion leave out those two key components.
The board’s bond attorney Jerry Osborne says the prop on the ballot would be too wordy if it includes a clause that bars any new tax revenue from being funneled elsewhere in the system. After all, such provision would exceed the 400-word limit for the ballot.
Read more here.
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
Most Read
in case you missed it
Subscribe to this comment's feed