Lessening the sticker shock

The biggest property taxer in Lincoln Parish has chosen to slightly reduce many of its tax rates in an attempt to offset the sticker shock many locals experienced from their recent property reassessments.

That means despite the sizable property value increases many owners have seen, the Lincoln Parish School Board will only collect the same amount of tax dollars as it did last year under most of its millages, but not all of them.

“Most people in our parish saw an increase in their property values,” school board President Gregg Phillips said at Tuesday’s board meeting. “And now they’re very concerned about paying more property taxes. What we’re doing as a school board is we’re going to keep the amount of money you paid in property taxes last year the same as this year, for as many people as possible.”

While the board’s actions Tuesday go partways toward accomplishing that, it’s not that simple.

In short, seven of the 12 property tax rates the school board levies across the parish will be reduced — by a range of 0.18 to 0.46 mills — in order to offset the rise in property values and keep total collections constant.

One of the other rates — levied in the Simsboro district to pay for maintenance at Simsboro School — had to instead be raised to keep collections the same because property values went down, mainly among oil and gas wells.

Four other taxes, including the three largest, aren’t eligible for this kind of reduction.

Where do property taxes come from?

Individual local government bodies, like the school board, levy property taxes by taking them to voters for approval at an election. The taxes usually face renewal votes at the polls every 10 years to stay on the books.

Every property tax the school board levies was either directly approved by voters or indirectly approved when voters supported a bond issue.

Some pay for maintenance and operating expenses of school buildings. Others pay part of the salaries of teachers and other employees. Some pay for specific construction projects.

These taxes each have their own rate, called a millage. One mill equals $1 in taxes owed for every $1,000 of a property’s assessed value.

Property assessments

The parish assessor, currently Billy McBride, and his office update the assessed value of property every four years.

In Louisiana, the assessed value of land and residential structures is 10% of fair market value, and it’s 15% for commercial structures.

The assessor determines fair market value by examining how market conditions have changed since the last assessment and considering factors like location and comparative sales that have taken place in that time.

This year is a reassessment year, and owners around the parish recently received notice of their new valuations, with many reporting significant increases.

McBride has said that’s because the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted what was supposed to be the 2020 reassessment, so this year’s update is actually the first in eight years.

How do reassessments affect taxes?

After a reassessment, by state law the assessor then adjusts all the local governments’ tax rates across the parish so that they bring in the same amount of money as before — so if property values go up in a tax zone, rates would go down to keep the dollars collected even.

That’s called “rolling back” a tax. But the bodies who levy the taxes, like the school board, have the option to immediately raise their tax rates back to the maximum that was last approved by voters — meaning citizens whose property values rose would pay more.

That’s called “rolling forward” a tax, and that’s what the school board decided not to do this time around.

School board taxes

The board allowed all eight of its property taxes that could be rolled back to do so.

For seven of them, that meant a reduction in the millage rate. For the tax that funds Simsboro School’s maintenance and operation, it meant an increase.

Here’s the full list:

• Constitutional tax: 3.73 mills (0.18 mills reduction)

• Special maintenance & operation (M&O): 4.69 mills (0.23 mills reduction)

• Special repair & equipment: 4.69 mills (0.23 mills reduction)

• Parishwide M&O (1993): 9.54 mills (0.46 mills reduction)

• Parishwide M&O: 8.09 mills (0.39 mills reduction)

• Simsboro School Distict #3 M&O: 3.33 mills (0.34 mills increase)

• Dubach School District #5 M&O: 2.85 mills (0.25 mills reduction)

• Choudrant School District #6 M&O: 2.69 mills (0.3 mills reduction) However, the M&O millage for the Ruston school district could not be rolled back. Voters passed its 10-year renewal in a 2022 election, and this is the first year of that renewal period.

In the first year, it has to be levied at the maximum rate voters approved: 2.53 mills. That’s an increase from the 2.33 mills it was at before the renewal.

Finally, the board also has three millages on the books dedicated to paying back bond issues for construction projects: 16.75 mills in Ruston, 11.5 mills in Simsboro, and 14 mills in Choudrant.

Those bond millages don’t get rolled back by the assessor like normal ones — they’re levied at whatever level is needed to pay off the bond obligation.

For this year, that’ll be the full 16.75, 11.5 and 14 mills with no change.

The bottom line

It’s not simple to determine exactly how each of these tax changes will affect how much property taxes each owner will owe.

Allowing many of its millages to be rolled back means the school board decided to collect less overall property taxes than it legally could have.

“That should give a big sigh of relief to most of the property owners of Lincoln Parish,” Phillips said.

But that doesn’t mean each individual property owner won’t see an increase from those taxes. If a certain property rose in value more than the average in its district, the roll-back may not be enough to offset the difference in every case.

Meanwhile, because the bond millages remain at the same rates as last year, any owners whose properties rose in value at all will owe more under those levies.

Plus, while the school board is the biggest property taxer in the parish, it collects about 57% of the total. The rest goes to other bodies, many of which have yet to take action on rolling their taxes back or forward.