This new S&WB substation has gone on quite a journey. First, Entergy was going to pay for it outright. We thought that sounded suspicious. And lo and behold, it was. After that fell through, the plan was to pay for it out of the city's American Rescue Plan allocation. But that also sounded suspicious to us because it was already clear the mayor wanted to spend that money on cops and discretionary nonsense. Those suspicions also turned out to be well founded and now here we are back where we always thought we would be.
Mayor LaToya Cantrell and the City Council responded in unison last July when Assessor Errol Williams announced that citywide property assessments had jumped by more than 20%.
They said City Hall would not “roll forward” property tax rates under its control, meaning property owners would not face additional liability for a little more than half of all citywide millages.
But the Sewerage & Water Board’s executive director, Ghassan Korban, has different ideas than his elected overseers when it comes to the utility’s tax rates. At the board’s Sept. 20 meeting, he said that he will argue for a roll forward, as the S&WB is in full tree-shaking mode to pay for a critical drainage power upgrade and a citywide meter replacement project.
Eventually the burden finds its way downstream to where the least important people are. And that's who has to bear it.
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