Residents pay wrong taxes

ADVOCATE PHOTO BY CASEY ANDERSON Chris Williams, right, owner of Chris’s Pharmacy and Gifts on Head of Island, fills a prescription for A.J. Johnson on Friday. Residents and business owners in the area have been assessed incorrectly for property taxes, Livingston Parish officials say.

2theadvocate.com

By FAIMON A. ROBERTS

LIVINGSTON — Some residents and businesses in the Head of Island area in southern Livingston Parish have been paying the wrong school property taxes for years, according to the parish Assessor’s Office.

The properties, which lie near the intersection of La. 16 and La. 22, have been assessed in the Maurepas school taxing district for at least a quarter-century, though children from the area attend French Settlement schools, parish officials said.

Head of Island is in the French Settlement school district, but taxpayers have been paying property taxes to the Maurepas school district.

Livingston Parish public schools have separate bonding districts to fund school construction projects within those districts, unlike in other parishes, where millages are applied parishwide.

French Settlement’s school millage was about 31 mills and Maurepas’ was about 17 mills in 2009, according to the Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s website.

Using those millages, the difference would be about $300 per year on a $150,000 commercial property. Using those same millages, the difference would be $160 on a $200,000 residential property with the state’s homestead exemption.

Deputy Assessor Wayne Mack said the Assessor’s Office could not estimate how much had been lost by the error, because the assessor would have to go back and pull all the assessments in the affected area. The office will not try to send out new tax bills for this year, he said.

Businesses in the area include Weedy’s Sports Bar and Grill, Plaza 22 shopping center, Professional Auto Services, Canal Bank Bar and others.

Residences on Avants Road, Vicknair Road and River Highland Road, along with those in the Waterfront development would also be affected.

School property taxes form only a portion of overall property taxes for residents and businesses in Livingston Parish, which has 42 taxing districts.

Businesses and residences in Head of Island were considered part of Ward 5, which encompasses the southern tip of the parish and includes Maurepas, Mack and fellow Deputy Assessor Patty Harrison said.

Harrison said that properties in Ward 5 were always put into school district 33, because assessor’s staff had always been taught that the two areas covered the same territory.

“As long as I have been here, which is 27 years, that’s the way we have done it,” Harrison said. “If something was in Ward 5, we put it in school district 33 (Maurepas).”

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