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Decision day is Saturday for school sales tax

After nearly a year and a half, St. Mary voters will have the last word Saturday on the School Board’s proposed sales tax for teacher and staff pay.
If passed, the proposition would enact a new 0.45% sales tax parishwide.
Polls will be open 7 a.m.-8 p.m. Saturday. Bring your photo ID.
According to the ballot language, the tax would raise $3.85 million a year. The School Board plan is to give certified employees, mostly teachers, a $3,000 annual raise. Other employees would get a $1,500 raise.
The school system has 688 certified employees and 498 noncertified employees for a total of 1,186, Superintendent Teresa Bagwell said Friday.
The debate over the tax, which has grown heated at times since the push for the new levy began in December 2019, has been over whether the tax is needed to attract and keep good staffers or it would hurt the parish’s already struggling economy.
The School Board says the school system has performed well, reaching the 17th ranking among more than 70 public school systems according to the Department of Education’s district performance scores.
Yet, board members say, the average St. Mary teacher makes about $2,000 a year less than the state average.
The most vocal opposition since the proposal resurfaced in November have been Parish President David Hanagriff and the St. Mary Industrial Group, which represents local business interests.
Hanagriff kept his pledge to speak out in opposition at each Parish Council meeting for the last few months.
“Now is the worst time ever to increase any type of tax. Period,” Hanagriff said March 10.
Like other tax opponents, Hanagriff said he doesn’t oppose teacher pay hikes in general. He’s married to a teacher.
But, even aside from the economic pain inflicted by COVID-19 restrictions and the 6-year-old slump in energy prices, St. Mary is in no position to increase sales taxes, Hanagriff says.
The School Board has pointed to St. Mary sales tax rates that are lower than those in surrounding parishes. Hanagriff counters that St. Mary is flanked by larger retail centers.
“We have to be lower than everybody else,” Hanagriff told the council.
The School Board also has been unwilling to compromise on the tax proposal or to reduce administrative costs as enrollment has declined, Hanagriff said.
At a lively School Board meeting March 11, board President Kenneth Alfred said Hanagriff is showing poor leadership and accused SMIG of making unfounded claims about the economic damage that could result from the tax hike.
“The only thing that I can surmise is that these people are what I call ‘CAVE people,’ Citizens Against Virtually Everything,” Alfred said.
In 2019, the School Board first proposed a 0.5% sales tax that would have been dedicated to a technology fund as well as to staff pay. Faced with opposition, especially from state Sen. Bret Allain, who sits on the State Bond Commission, the board dropped the technology fund dedication and trimmed the tax proposal to 0.45%.
The slimmed-down proposal won the required approval by the Bond Commission on the second try, but the School Board withdrew the measure from the ballot last year over concerns about the ballot language developed by the Secretary of State’s Office.
As contentious as the debate has been, the tax issue doesn’t seem to have caught fire among voters.
Seven hundred St Mary people voted early in person March 6-13, and 686 mailed ballots had been received as of Thursday, the Registrar of Voters Office said. That’s about 4.2% of St. Mary’s registered voters.
For the Nov. 3 election, with contested races for president, Congress, judge posts and Morgan City mayor on the ballot, about a third of St. Mary voters cast early ballots.
Elsewhere in the region, Assumption voters will help pick a new U.S. representative in the 2nd Congressional District. Fifteen candidates have qualified to run as a potential successor to U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans, who has accepted an adviser post in the Biden administration.
Another congressional race seeks a replacement for Republican Luke Letlow, who died from COVID-19 complications after winning last year’s race in north Louisiana’s 5th Congressional District. The favorite there is Letlow’s widow, Julia Letlow.

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