By T. Scott Boatright
It took all of two minutes for the Ruston City Council to complete Thursday’s special-called meeting held in the courtroom at City Hall.
That’s all the time it took for the Board of Alderman to introduce an ordinance to adopt the budget of revenue and expenditures for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, 2024, and ending Sept. 30, 2025, for the city of Ruston and also introduce an ordinance levying and imposing taxes on all property subject to taxation in the city of Ruston.
There were no matters discussed. Those two ordinances will be discussed and voted on during the City Council’s next meeting on Sept. 9. That meeting will be held on the second Monday of Sept. 9 because of the Sept. 2 Labor Day holiday.
Because it’s yet to be discussed it’s unclear what the Ruston City Council will decide to do with that second ordinance that will set millage rates that affect property taxes charged to home and business owners.
In recent weeks around 9,000 Lincoln Parish residential and commercial property owners received reassessment notices from the parish assessor’s office indicating they will see a 15% or more increase in assessed value received notices.
That presents the potential of increased property tax charges at the end of the year.
But earlier this month, in the midst of economically turbulent times, the Lincoln Parish School Board rolled back most of its millages to counter increases in revenue caused by increased assessed values.
The Lincoln Parish Police Jury made a similar move a week later, voting to collect less property tax revenue for library operations in order to balance out what the jurors felt was needed increased revenue for general alimony, road construction and road maintenance millages.
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