They're up to something

Not clear exactly what yet but if you were listening to the press conference on Monday, there were some interesting quotes. 

Cantrell said the move ending the furloughs was the “first step on the city’s road to recovery.” She also indicated that it was also the first step in a larger plan to restructure the city’s workforce.

“We are making this move as a part of a much broader effort to restructure how we use our public servants, our public employees, in the city of New Orleans,” she said. “Everyone needs to have that shared sacrifice and do what it takes to move this city forward. … In the weeks ahead, we will come before you with specifics as it relates to emergency response, business response, community response and organizational changes as it relates to the City of New Orleans.”

They have some idea of how they want to "restructure" and it appears they may be using the emergency response and selective decisions about furloughs to get that implemented.  Kind of an ad-hoc budgeting process depending on how "optimistic" they get from month to month. 

Cantrell said the city was ending some furloughs with additional funds the city is projecting in a more optimistic outlook. If those funds don’t materialize, however, the move could cause layoffs later in the year, she said. 

The additional funds optimistically projected there refer to a possible new round of federal stimulus (which, yes, is exactly what we need but don't hold your breath) also stepped up sales tax collection if we get enough people vaccinated in time for that to help, and property tax collection which... it turns out... is now delayed by... wait for it... to much "optimism."

Waiting on your property tax bill in New Orleans? So is the rest of the city. Blame paperwork problems and overly optimistic city officials for holding up the annual notices telling property owners how much they need to pay.

Tax bills typically go out during the last weeks of December. But because of problems that prevented the certification of the tax rolls, the earliest they could now be sent is this week. None of the issues will change the taxes owed by residents. But City Hall said it will adjust the deadline for payments once the bills are sent out.

According to this, at least part of the problem comes from the way the bills were itemized. Apparently they were prepared in the expectation that the December millage reconfiguration would pass. It did not and so now things need to be revised. Of course the overall revenue doesn't change. So one would think there isn't much optimism/pessimism that comes into play.  Unless you were optimistically hoping to restructure your "emergency response, business response, community response and organizational changes as it relates to the City of New Orleans," and now you have to find an alternative means of accomplishing that.... perhaps through emergency measures. 

But we'll just have to wait and see as far as that goes.  There is one other matter in the story about the tax bills, though, and I'm not sure I understand it exactly.  

One potentially more substantive issue also is holding up the process: a disagreement between the assessor’s office and the Tax Commission about the value of “public service” property in the city, a category that largely encompasses property owned by utilities.

Under state law, those property values are set by the Tax Commission and passed along to local assessors, commission Chairman Lawrence Chehardy said. But in the final version of the tax rolls, the assessed value that the commission put on the total value of those properties is about $65,300 higher than what the assessor’s office estimated, Chehardy said. A meeting is set Wednesday to discuss the discrepancy and try to correct the problem, he said.

One way to read that is the city proposed to charge "public service" property... perhaps belonging to Entergy or maybe Cox or some such... less money than the state Tax Commission expected they should. I don't know if I'm reading that correctly but if I am then, given the assessor's recent tendency to give out tax breaks to large corporations, it's something to watch.