As a result of the August flood, property owners in East Baton Rouge Parish won’t be getting their property tax bills until February, according to a letter from East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Sid Gautreaux, whose office is in charge of property tax collections. Tax bills typically go out in early December.
In the letter sent earlier this week to East Baton Rouge Parish residents, Gautreaux says property owners won’t receive their bills until February and parish agencies that receive revenues from property tax collections—BREC, the airport, fire districts and library system, among others—should not expect to see any money before March 10.
That’s potentially a problem for those agencies, which operate on a calendar year budget and have to approve their 2017 operating budgets in December. Without income from dedicated millages for at least the first two months of the year, it will be difficult to approve a balanced budget.
BREC Superintendent Carolyn McKnight says she thinks her agency has enough money in its cash reserves to make it through the first few weeks of the year. If not, she says BREC can take out a revenue anticipation note, which is a low-interest, short-term borrowing tool, but she is hoping that won’t be necessary.
“I think we’ll be OK,” she says. “We’re working on this right now so we still don’t have all the answers yet.”
East Baton Rouge Assessor Brian Wilson believes the sheriff’s timeline is a worst-case scenario. Reassessments of the flood-damaged properties in the parish are almost complete, and Wilson hopes to have them done sometime next week, which would enable him to send out reassessment notices on the first of November. Under that scenario, property tax bills would still go out several weeks later than usual, but not as late as February.
“We’re hoping they can go out in January rather than February,” he says. “But that’s really the sheriff’s department. We’re just in charge of getting the assessments done and we’re trying to wrap that up as quickly as possible.”
—Stephanie Riegel
