Budget Considerations

According to a Together Baton Rouge  Report's ITEP Search Tool , the industrial tax exemptions in St Bernard Parish could afford us to keep our fire stations open. Our budgets might change such that we could also give our school board employees and teachers a long awaited pay raise, and continue to fully fund all of our parish pension’s obligations, without being asked for more sales and property taxes.

We could fund drinking water improvements, along with improvements to roads and bridges, pedestrian cross walks, fishing piers, drainage and sewerage improvements, grass cutting and canal maintenance, books for our libraries, art and stem initiatives, recycling and composting, farm to table initiatives, bicycle and walking paths, public transportation, healthcare access, workforce development, free adult lifetime learning courses, senior citizen outreach, parks and recreation programs, criminal justice reforms and re-entry programs, affordable housing, and on and on.

Instead of increasing property tax mileages, those dollars from exemptions could fully fund the intended municipal services. Instead of the Lake Borgne Basin Levee District refusing to do their job because residents voted down a tax increase, the LBBLD property tax mileage could be lowered, while increasing services. https://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2018/07/st_bernard_doesnt_have_to_acce.html

Some of the other tax dollars which we do pay are used to fund projects like the St Bernard Economic Development board which seeks to place a container yard in the N P Trist Middle School neighborhood, and its operator, Port of Orleans, would not pay property taxes.  https://canthecontainers.com/

Come on St Bernard, we can do better than this. Our community would also benefit if more and more parish workers and school board employees returned from the north shore and actually lived in St Bernard Parish and contributed to our economy base. The public sector in St Bernard Parish is said to be the larger employer: fire department, sheriff department, school board and teachers, parish government workers, public works employees, state judicial court, justice of peace, constables, lake borgne basin levee employees, St Bernard Port, St Bernard Parish Hospital, etc. And then there are all the out of parish (sometimes out of state) workers at the large industrialized plants which are the benefactors of all these exemptions. Our community would benefit greatly if the majority of all these jobs were actually domiciled jobs.

Here’s a partial list of St Bernard Parish exemptions according to the report, and the number of actual jobs loss or created by these costly subsidies:

American Sugar Refining Inc. | (St Bernard)

7415 Peters Road
Arabi, LA 70032

# exemptions: 15

# of years with ITEP (of last 20): 19

1st year receiving ITEP (post-1997): 1999

Most recent year receiving ITEP: 2014

COST OF EXEMPTIONS:  $5.7 M

NEW JOBS PROJECTED: 35

ACTUAL JOBS RESULT: -110

SUBSIDY PER JOB: $5,716,632 for a loss of 110 jobs

Year 1 of ITEP, # of jobs: 446

Most recent year, # of jobs: 336

PARISH SUBSIDY RANK: 3

STATE SUBSIDY RANK: 244

TYPE: Company

Rain CII Carbon, LLC | (St Bernard)

700 Coke Plant Rd
Chalmette, LA 70043

# exemptions: 19

# of years with ITEP (of last 20): 18

1st year receiving ITEP (post-1997): 2000

Most recent year receiving ITEP: 2016

COST OF EXEMPTIONS:  $4.8 M

NEW JOBS PROJECTED: 10

ACTUAL JOBS RESULT: 1

SUBSIDY PER JOB: $4,771,185 per job created

Year 1 of ITEP, # of jobs: 36

Most recent year, # of jobs: 37

PARISH SUBSIDY RANK: 4

STATE SUBSIDY RANK: 262

TYPE: Company

PBF Holding Company, LLC | (St Bernard) (dba Chalmette Refining)

500 W Saint Bernard Hwy
Chalmette, LA 70043

# exemptions: 57

# of years with ITEP (of last 20): 19

1st year receiving ITEP (post-1997): 1999

Most recent year receiving ITEP: 2017

COST OF EXEMPTIONS:  $115.3 M

NEW JOBS PROJECTED: 60

ACTUAL JOBS RESULT: -71

SUBSIDY PER JOB: $115,320,991 for a loss of 71 jobs

Year 1 of ITEP, # of jobs: 570

Most recent year, # of jobs: 499

PARISH SUBSIDY RANK: 1

STATE SUBSIDY RANK: 33

TYPE: Company

Valero Refining - Meraux LLC | (St Bernard)

2500 E Saint Bernard Hwy
Meraux, LA 70075

# exemptions: 4

# of years with ITEP (of last 20): 14

1st year receiving ITEP (post-1997): 2004

Most recent year receiving ITEP: 2015

COST OF EXEMPTIONS:  $88.7 M

NEW JOBS PROJECTED: 21

ACTUAL JOBS RESULT: 41

SUBSIDY PER JOB: $2,163,844 per job created

Year 1 of ITEP, # of jobs: 236

Most recent year, # of jobs: 277

PARISH SUBSIDY RANK: 2

STATE SUBSIDY RANK: 42

TYPE: Company

St Bernard: Parish Report

St Bernard Parish, LA

# exemptions: 119

# companies receiving ITEPs: 10

COST OF EXEMPTIONS:  $221.3 M

NEW JOBS PROJECTED: 293

ACTUAL JOBS RESULT: loss of 408 jobs

SUBSIDY PER JOB: $221.3 M for a loss of 408 jobs

TOTAL PROPERTY TAX COLLECTIONS IN 2016:  $45.1 M

LOST REVENUE TO ITEP IN 2017:  $12.8 M

ITEP AS % OF PROPERTY TAXES COLLECTED: 28%

LOST REVENUE FOR –

School district:  $3.7 M

Sheriff:  $2.8 M

Fire:  $2.5 M

Parish & other entities:  $1.2 M

Library Taxes:  $336.2 K

Health:  $783.2 K

Parks & Rec:  $197.2 K

Roads:  $277.1 K

Levee:  $1.0 M

Drainage: 0

TYPE: Parish

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