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July 25, 2012Lafourche Parish’s internal auditor said the parish has the means to construct a jail costing between $20 and $25 million without raising taxes.
Tommy Lasseigne presented his findings before the New Jail Committee last week. His proposal is structured around annual increases in property values, which result in more property tax revenue. It also calls for the rededication of property tax millages from two entities into a jail fund and the absorption of debt-service funds from the parish’s mortgage authority.
“I know we can get better numbers than this,” Lasseigne said, “but I wanted to be conservative to show it can work, to show that we can get the money, and every number in here is conservative. The prison can work.”
Lasseigne’s presentation is preliminary, as the parish hasn’t set a formal budgeted amount or chosen an architect. And any rededicated millages would need to be approved by the council and parish voters.
Still, it was the first serious and public discussion regarding financing a new jail since the committee formed last year, and it includes no new taxes. As such, it serves as a likely foundation for future financial talks and jail-construction decisions.
Lasseigne said the Lafourche Parish Library Board is amenable to rededicating 0.97 of its 6.37 parishwide mills toward the jail fund. His presentation did not target the library board’s reserve fund, which library officials said would total $5.3 million at the end of this year and Lasseigne said would offset lost tax revenues.
In return for the millages, library officials want a lending library incorporated into the new facility, for which the library system would pay for operations, Lasseigne said.
One parishwide mill collects approximately $750,000 a year.
The auditor went on to say he would recommend rededicating 0.6 mills from the Council on Aging’s 2 mills parishwide. Even if COA lost that amount, it would still collect more money than it spends each year, Lasseigne said.
The Council on Aging has grown its fund balance by about $1.9 million over the last three fiscal years, the auditor said. Without the 0.6 mills, the COA would have received roughly $740,000 in “excess funds” over the same time, he said. Lasseigne has not approached the Council on Aging about this proposal.
“These millages (parishwide) have gotten pretty large lately, and that’s why the entities’ fund balances have grown,” Lasseigne said.
Charlene Rodriguez, executive director of Lafourche’s Council on Aging, said she is willing to work with parish leaders regarding her tax collection, but added that it is too early to know for certain future expenses, considering increased services and recurring state budget woes.
“I would like to go another year, so I could see (the impact) a little more,” Rodriguez said. “But I’d gladly work with them because I’m a taxpayer myself and I don’t believe in having too much more than we need.”
The COA has increased its services over the last few years. Homemaker services nearly doubled from 10,880 in 2010 to 15,239 today, and homemaker routes increased from 13 in 2011 to 18 this year, Rodriguez said.
The third prong of Lasseigne’s report is retaining approximately $1.4 million from the Lafourche Home Mortgage Authority that can be used toward debt service.
The presentation was tied together with a projection that millages’ values will continue to increase.
Most conservatively, that increase will be 4 percent a year, Lasseigne projected, and that – combined with the rededications and mortgage authority money – can sustain a monthly note of $122,300 that would attach to a $22 million bond agreement over 25 years with a 4.5 percent interest rate.
Lasseigne’s cost projections – between $20 and $25 million – are based solely on the estimations of MWL Architects. He included in his presentation two letters from contractors who based their costs on design plans submitted by MWL, a private company that operates private and public facilities in Louisiana and Texas and has emerged as Committee Chairman Lindel Toups’ first choice to design a new facility.
MWL, however, has yet to land the contract. A vote on a resolution endorsing MWL as the committee’s choice failed, deadlocked at three votes.
Toups presented the same resolution before the full council last night; the results were not known at press time.
Toups said MWL is the best choice because its president, Michael LeBlanc, is willing to work for a down payment of $10,000 and has said he can design a 600-bed facility for a cost not to exceed $25 million, a price Toups said can’t be beat.
That retainer fee falls well below the state’s bid law threshold of $500,000 for professional services, but Parish President Charlotte Randolph warned that a design contract could cost millions of dollars before it expires. She said the parish will consult with the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office to draft requests for proposals and solicit bids at every step in the building process.
Toups said he did not wait for the administration to draft a Request for Proposals for the architect because he’s not required to. “It’s only a recommendation,” he said. “It’s time to get started.”
Committee members Jerry Jones and Aaron Caillouet supported the resolution, while Randolph, Ryan Friedlander and LPSO Maj. Marty Dufrene opposed it. Committee member Jerry LaFont was absent.
