Green building fate delayed to 2016

The Iberia Parish Council’s Ad Hoc Millage Committee will meet tonight to hear the parish’s legal counsel lay out the legal and financial responsibilities that the parish government is required to meet by state law.

Legal Counsel Andy Shealy had mentioned in previous meetings that many of the responsibilities people assume are core roles of the parish government are not actually required by statute. Drainage maintenance, road maintenance, parks, recreation — all of those are additional duties beyond the scope of state law.

“Under state law, the parish government is required to provide for a jail, a sheriff, the assessor, the clerk of court — basically all of the offices and officers associated with the parish courthouse and government to protect the quality of life in the parish,” Shealy said. “All of those other things have come about to further enhance that quality of life, but they are not mandated under state law.” 

Shealy is scheduled to give a PowerPoint presentation to give the committee members a better view of what the various millages will fund and what minimum funding will be required to keep the mandated services in operation for the coming year.

The committee has been meeting every other week for the past few months. Each meeting focused on one or more of the parish’s millages and the purposes of the monies collected. The committee will make recommendations to the council for setting the various millages based on those discussions, although the recommendations are not binding.

Although the parish is seeing an uptick in sales tax revenues according to its financial report at the Iberia Parish Council’s meeting on March 13, the drop in mineral royalties and the ongoing slump in the energy sector has left the parish coffers bare. The goal of the ad hoc millage committee is to identify the best practices for balancing the needs of the parish with the ability of residents to handle the tax burden for services.

The committee will meet at 6 p.m. this evening in the parish council meeting room of the Iberia Parish Courthouse, 300 Iberia St.