By T. Scott Boatright
The big news around Lincoln Parish in recent weeks has concerned the fact that around 9,000 residential and commercial property owners have received notice from the parish tax assessor’s office that the assessed value of their holdings has increased by more than 15%.
Property owners disagreeing with their increased assessments can contest those findings by calling the assessor’s office at 251-5140 or go to the assessor’s office located at 307 North Homer Street by Aug. 29.
And after trying that, anyone still dissatisfied with the assessed value of their property still has one last resort to try to reduce that figure, and the Lincoln Parish Police Jury set up that process during Tuesday night’s monthly LPPJ meeting by setting a public hearing date at 7 pm. Sept. 10 for a Board of Review meeting.
Property owners still dissatisfied with their assessments can appeal to the Board of Review, which is composed of all 12 members of the LPPJ, by Sept. 3.
“The assessment list will be open to the public for inspection for 15 days, from Aug. 15 to Aug. 29,” Parish Administrator Courtney Hall said. “During this period taxpayers can check the value on their property.
“If there’s a disagreement and the taxpayer wish to protest the value, the taxpayer must fill out a form to file an appeal request with the Board of Review and schedule a request to appear before the Board of Review during hearings that will be held for this purpose.”
Hall said the Board of Review will determine if any changes to the assessment value should be made and that if the assessor or the taxpayer is not satisfied with the determination of the Board of Review, either can appeal to the Louisiana Tax Commission.
“The Louisiana Tax Commission will consider any and all appeals that are timely filed in hearings that are open to the public,” Hall said.
During Tuesday’s meeting Juror Logan Hunt did clarify that in the appeal process, the first step should be the property talking to the tax assessor’s office first.
“So, they can go to the assessor first, and if they’re unsatisfied, then they come to the Board of Review,” Hunt said. “And then if they are unsatisfied with that, they can go to the state (tax commission).
Hall said that a request to the Board of Review must be filed by 4:30 p.m. on Sept. 3. Request forms will be available at the Lincoln Parish Tax Assessor’s website as well as the LPPJ website.
Lincoln Parish property (also known as ad valorem) taxes generate revenue that is divided between the police jury, school board, sheriff’s office, library, municipalities and the assessor’s office based on the individual millage rates set for each entity.
More than half of that revenue goes to the school board, which has the most voter-approved millages on the books.
State law mandates the tax collected in the year following a reassessment is adjusted so that it is equal to the tax collected the previous year on the same property tax base, meaning that in reassessment years like this one, taxing entities must review their millages, and lower (also known as rolling back) those rates to offset increases in revenue caused by increase assessed values.
But the taxing entities can then immediately raise — called “rolling forward” — the millage back to a legally approved maximum.
Both the Lincoln Parish School Board and the LPPJ this month have already creatively worked their millage rates in an attempt to reduce any negative impacts on taxpayers.
The school board rolled back most of its millages to counter the increases in revenue caused by increased assessed values during its monthly meeting held last week while the LPPJ rolled back the library operations millage from 4.49 to 3.80 to offset rolling forward the 2024 general alimony rate to the max of 1.68 and the road construction and maintenance rates to 4.41.
In other words, the LPPJ moved to collect less property tax revenue for library operations to balance out what they felt was a needed increased revenue for general alimony, road construction and road maintenance.
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