Lafourche voters OK tax spending for schools

Lafourche voters on Saturday authorized the public-education system to sell a $50 million bond package and to rededicate 2 mills from an existing bond-debt property tax toward retirement costs in separate propositions.

The bond arrangement passed 2,074 to 1,696. It carries with it a property-tax levy of 15.2 mills once the first bonds from the package are sold, which school officials say will be done in phases.

The package is to be used for construction and renovation projects on all of Lafourche’s public schools. Specifically, officials say projects could include a new Raceland Lower Elementary School, a new elementary school in Bayou Blue and a new elementary school in Sixth Ward.

The Lafourche Parish School Board has collected 17.2 mills since 1981 to finance bond sales, the utility of which are similar to loans. Because of the low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve and because parish property assessments have risen, the board no longer needs the full allotment for future debt, board spokesman Floyd Benoit said

“The Raceland Lower (project) will probably get cranked off before all the others because we’re building it on the property behind Raceland Upper,” Benoit said. “In the Bayou Blue case and in the Sixth Ward case, the priority is to start finding land.”

In the other decision, voters approved a 10-year, 2-mill property tax that will be dedicated strictly to offsetting the board’s mandated costs into state retirement systems.

The measure passed 1,983 to 1,782, or with 53 percent of the vote. The 2 mills are projected to collect about $1.5 million per year.

The board has lamented a spike in retirement costs, which they claim is one of the causes for a recurring strain its annual budget.

All public school districts must pay a percentage of retirees’ benefits into two state-run systems, one for teachers and one for school employees. In fiscal year 2010, the districts paid 15.5 percent of teachers’ benefits and 22.1 percent of the employees’ benefits. Those percentages rose to 23.7 percent and 28.6 percent, respectively, in 2012.

The school board budgeted $30 million in benefit costs for the current fiscal year.

The increases have contributed to a strain on the school board’s budget. The board laid off five certified teachers last year and cut 67 teaching positions.

“Any time you put a strain on the general fund, it puts a strain on other things in the school system, like employees’ salaries and the number of employees,” Benoit said. “We’ve been in RIF for the past two years, which is a terrible thing when you have to reduce teachers and increase class sizes.”

For property with a fair market value of $150,000, property owners eligible for the Homestead Exemption will pay $7.50 per mill, or $15 toward retirement costs and about $113 toward debt stemming from the latest bond approval.

Those totals are doubled for owners with similar property value who are not eligible for the Homestead Exemption.

Voter turnout was 6.7 percent, or 3,770 of the parish’s 56,177 registered voters.

“We kind of knew it was going to be close because it was a different ballot than we normally have,” Benoit said. “If we would have just came out and said from the beginning, ‘It’s a renewal,’ we probably wouldn’t have got any backlash, but technically it’s not a renewal, so you can’t use that word.”