By VICKIE JAMBON, Staff Reporter

HAHNVILLE – The St. Charles Parish Council recently held a special meeting to address a proposed ordinance that calls for rolling back home owner millage rates.

The suggested ordinance discussed at the meeting would roll back millage rates for home owners in the parish from all taxing authorities under the jurisdiction of the governing authority.

If passed, it would make 2004 property tax revenue neutral and would include other taxing bodies such as the St. Charles Parish School Board and the St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Department.

Implementing the roll back on these parish bodies would keep the total tax collected at the level of the 2003 tax year and would avoid a potential windfall for the 2004 tax year.

St. Charles Parish Tax Assessor Clyde “Rock” Gisclair recently presented a report to the parish council that showed the council could afford to roll back parish government taxes, due to an increase of nearly $43 million in new taxable property gained through recent assessments.

Information provided by Gisclair listed 2003 taxable property at $717,494,658. The same report issued by Gisclair revealed 2004 taxable property will be $760,593,243.

Gisclair’s calculations related that new property assessments would add an additional $43,098,585 to taxable properties within the parish.

The assessor’s figures show that taxes due last year were $82,966,517. This year’s figures show that the parish will glean $87,878,943 in taxes. Gisclair illustrated that the 2004 tax added to the $43,098,585 in new taxable property assessments would equal an additional $130,977,528 in taxes due the parish.

According to Gisclair’s evaluations, the St. Charles Parish School Board receives 53 percent of all millage collected, while the parish receives 26 percent and law enforcement receives 16 percent.

Hospitals were shown by Gisclair as only receiving 4 percent of assessed millage and the assessor received 1 percent. The levee districts received under 1 percent of the parish millage rates.

These percentages depicted by the assessors’s office showed that the school board received over $42,000,000 in millage taxes. The same figures revealed that the parish got some $20,649,495 in millage taxes.

Councilman Ganesier “Ram” Ramchandran said, “Most school systems glean 19 mills to 29 mills. St. Charles Parish has 59 mills. Where is the extra money going? We are collecting and wasting too much money at the taxpayers expense. It is time to give it back to the taxpayer. We need to have a fair tax base.”

Gisclair’s report disclosed that 10-year tax exemptions are given to 48.5 percent of all large industrial properties in the parish.

Some 31.4 percent of all public utilities, such as airlines, barge lines, electric companies, pipelines, railroads and telephone companies, are exempt from paying taxes, according to Gisclair.

Commercial properties, which include retail stores, rental property, small commercial businesses, total 12.2 percent in tax exemptions. While only 7.9 percent of all exemptions are held by residential property owners.

Gisclair’s information posed whether or not big industry and public utilities should be taxed along with residential homeowners.

Councilman Richard “Dickie” Duhe said he would like to invite State Rep. Gary Smith and State Senator Joel Chaisson II to meet with Gisclair.

“We’ll (the council will) invite all three of them to a special meeting held by the finance committee to discuss the problem and to come up with a viable solution,” said Duhe.

Councilmen Desmond J. Hilaire and Derryl Walls along with Councilwoman April Black did not respond when asked to comment on the special millage meeting.

Councilmen Lance Marino and Barry Minnich did not return phone calls while Councilmen Clayton “Snookie” Faucheux and Brian A. Fabre could not be reached for comment.