Road tax on ballot

Published 8:00 am Sunday, November 4, 2018

Besides a handful of Iberia Parish School Board seats to be decided, the only local ballot item that Iberia Parish residents will be voting on Tuesday has to do with roads. 

Local residents living in unincorporated parts of the parish will vote for or against a new tax that would go strictly to road and road maintenance. 

The tax would be a ¾-cent sales tax dedicated to rural road improvements and related drainage only. The funding would be immediate and that tax would be voted for a renewal after 10 years in effect. 

If passed, the tax is expected to draw in $3.5 million annually from sales taxes around the parish. New Iberia, Jeanerette, Delcambre and Loreauville businesses would not be affected by the sales tax.

“What we’re trying to do right now is build our infrastructure to have better roads,” Richard said at an Oct. 10 town hall meeting about the tax. “As we travel around and talk to businesses, we get them here but we don’t have everything they need. What we’re looking to have right now is better roads.”

The Iberia Parish Council voted to create the ballot item in May as a way to come up with funds to repair roads for the parish. Iberia Parish Government is in charge of taking care of most roads in unincorporated areas of Iberia, and parish leaders have said for years that more money is needed to fix many of the roads. 

Iberia Parish Government currently has no dedicated tax for roads and road maintenance. Before the most recent economic recession, IPG would normally pay for road repairs through the parish Royalty Fund. 

However, several Parish Council members have since said that with the economic downturn, most of those funds started to dry up. Without that money, there has been no way to address the more than $30 million in needed road repairs. 

The proposition for a tax comes after the Iberia Parish Council voted to allow Iberia Parish President Larry Richard to contract a firm for an independent study to determine how severe the road problem was in Iberia Parish. 

According to the text of the ballot item, the road tax funds will be used “for the purpose of constructing, improving and maintaining roads and streets within the district, including any improvements associated with said road and street projects.”