Will the 23% higher assessments on homes fulfill the promise of lower property tax rates?

By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Columnist

Assessor Erroll Williams has urged the New Orleans City Council to sustain roll backed millages in order to keep tax payments affordable, even as property values jump by almost a quarter. Hope exists that the Orleans Parish government will accept his challenge and lower tax rates, after an open letter last week to the city promised just that. However, even if the City Council and the mayor agree, will the Sewerage & Water Board and the boards of the levee, library, and Orleans Parish schools follow suit?

Williams won the sweepstakes of the single parish assessorship (after the post-Katrina merger) on the dual promise of fair assessments leading to lower property tax rates. In both aspects, Williams has attempted to keep his word.

Williams’ nearly successful constitutional amendment, which would have limited assessment increases to no more than 50 percent per four years, proves a definite example of his defense of homeowners’ pocketbooks. (Not surprisingly, Broussard was the measure’s only open supporter, amidst other state assessors worried that they would lose tax windfalls. Their opposition to the Orleans-only measure killed it in North Louisiana)

Fairer assessments in Orleans have forced expensive Uptown mansion-owners to pay their fair share, absent the political chicanery that historically kept the houses undervalued for tax purposes. That change alone should have lowered property tax rates for all. The recent slew of $1 million home sales should have provided a base of wealthy ratepayers such that the property tax payments of middle-income homeowners in Orleans would fall to levels equivalent to neighboring Jefferson Parish – even as their home values have increased.

But that is not what has happened, which recently led Erroll Williams to plead with local government authorities to let taxes lower organically. When property assessments rise, Louisiana state law requires that property rates “roll back” in order to collect an equivalent sum of monies as the year prior. Nevertheless, by a supermajority of any ruling body, the millages can be “rolled forward,” back to their old rates. These politicians possess the power to execute an effective tax increase without a public vote.

In-migration, gentrification and general housing scarcity has translated into countless longtime homeowners seeing their assessments and their taxes equally skyrocket, even though in most cases they have lived in the same house – unchanged – for decades. Williams begged the City Council not to take the bait and execute yet another stealth tax increase, and the Council seemed to agree with his argument. In a subsequent letter authored by all seven members, Councilmembers urged leaders of the Orleans Parish School Board, Sheriff’s Office, Sewerage & Water Board and other agencies not to claim any windfall from the higher assessments.

“Residents are already burdened with skyrocketing insurance rates, higher utility costs and increased costs for goods and services,” last week’s letter maintained. “Residents need our help.” The letter equally contends that the council has committed to “not rolling the millages fully forward,” requesting that other agencies “not roll your respective millages forward either.”

Councilman Joe Giarrusso went so far as to say that the phrasing should not be interpreted as wiggle room to allow partial tax increases. If any of the several millages under the council’s control are rolled partially forward, the council will roll others back even further, thereby ensuring that the city collects the same amount of property tax in total. Equally importantly, it seems the Cantrell administration has agreed. “This is ground zero,” Gilbert Montano, CAO of the City of New Orleans, told Fox8. “We will not be building the budget based on any tax increases, and I know sometimes they are going through a whole assessment process right now. Typically, you’ll build the budget based on a potential roll forward by the City Council, and the administration is not going to build the budget with any kind of tax increase. “I think that’s an important factor that (Cantrell) has passed on to her financial team and myself, so that we can – along with other New Orleans residents – not have another cost increase relative to our taxes.”

Williams worries, with justification, that the school system and other taxing bodies will hungrily seek the easy tax money, and he is right to worry. The Orleans Parish School Board constitutes the largest taxing body in the city. If the board votes to “roll forward” tax rates, the hike will erase any reductions for which the Council voted. Add that to increased tax rates from the S&WB, flood protection authorities on either side of the Mississippi River as well as the public library system, and middle class homeowners could drastically pay more in taxes than they did last year. Moreover, in almost every instance post-Katrina with only a handful of exceptions, all four non-city government agencies have opted for rate increases.

Confidence is not high that this year will be any different. Olin Parker, president of the School Board, said that board would “carefully consider” the council’s request, but he also observed that Orleans Parish schools now pay an average of $280 per student per year for property insurance – a $100 increase from just a year ago.

Perhaps Parker should consult English teachers in his schools about the meaning of “Dramatic Irony,” as many New Orleans residents are also grappling with increased insurance costs. A property tax increase could not come at a worse time for most families. Williams did his part, assessing the expensive homes of the politically connected honestly, so that the rest of us could pay less. Rewarding his probity with a tax increase on families – most of them African-American – struggling to hold on to their long-time family homes, betrays that legacy.

This article originally published in the July 31, 2023 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.