Baton rouge eyeing annexing LSU's south campus, and Ben Hur

Oh, maybe this thread will get to 10+ pages!

So yes it's about the money, but not like you think it is.

The main reason more businesses weren't annexed into the city was it would raise taxes in the areas affected. And it didn't really matter to the city since they would just transfer the funds via a service agreement anyway.

So the city was happy and business was happy. And consumers, though they didn't know it, were happy too. Now St. George comes along and says "wait look at all OUR money the city is taking!" Now the city has to scramble to capture it's tax base (as Russian predicted btw) and taxes will go up on businesses (which gets passed onto consumers). All this, by they way, makes our retail centers slightly less competitive with surrounding areas (like Tanger outlet mall).

So the first result of the St. George incorporation effort is...higher taxes!

Yeah!

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Once again, Kip Holden is missing a golden opportunity to unite the city by listening to the folks in St George and doing something about it

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What do you want the Mayor to do? Remember he doesn't control (or have anything to do with) the school system.

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One thing that is certain to come from this, regardless of whether or not it passes: Relations between Baton Rouge and people in St George will be far worse than they were before.

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Agree.

Why would St George organizers want the casino to be in their tax district so badly?

Do school children live in the casino?

eta: I told you guys early on that many businesses will want to protect themselves against St George taxation by joining BR as a mitigation plan.

I've been telling you SG proponents from the very beginning of our 'thread wars' on St George that Baton Rouge was not going to sit by and let millions of dollars of tax revenue just be taken away.

I've posted repeatedly that the currently unincorporated areas which produce significant amounts of tax revenues, including sales taxes, will be incorporated into BR long before those areas can be included into SG.

Why do you seem surprised at this latest news? Do you believe me now?

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The mayor is the boss. He can get people in the room. He exudes a tremendous amount of influence over the metro council. How different would this situation be if Kip was going on TV saying "We need to do whatever it takes to keep this city together. The school board must listen to these folks, as they are an essential part of our city."

The mayor can most certainly affect how this situation will go down.

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So he should do more from a rhetorical/leadership perspective? I can see that. He has chastised some of the metro council members when they went a little too far (the only city residents can be city employees nonsense). But I agree he could do more.

On the other hand, I see no willingness to accept any kind of compromise from the St. George supporters. But maybe it is too early for that anyway.

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On the other hand, I see no willingness to accept any kind of compromise from the St. George supporters.

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Where has BR offered any compromises? The only thing that has come from BR over this issue is they claim that SG is racist, unorganized, and don't know what they are doing. BR officials have ONLY antagonized the SG proponents. Nothing has been offered, nothing has been negotiated, nothing has been done, other than try to demean, and smear the people of St. George.

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Where has BR offered any compromises?

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Where have the SG supporters offered any compromise?

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Nothing has been offered, nothing has been negotiated, nothing has been done, other than try to demean, and smear the people of St. George.

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That is a gross exaggeration. The SG area has been the area of the parish where the most infrastructure money from the Green Light program has been spent over the last 5 years.

Three of the seven new schools in the EBRSS district which have been built over the past 5 years have been in St George.

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That is a gross exaggeration. The SG area has been the area of the parish where the most infrastructure money from the Green Light program has been spent over the last 5 years.

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This is a serious question and I have too little understanding to have a "side"...but,


1) If an area is unincorporated presently, and

2) Said area votes to become an incorporated "city", and

3) Said vote is constitutional and not corrupt


Is there something "wrong" with it? Must this group "offer compromises"?


I really want to know.

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Where have the SG supporters offered any compromise?

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This whole thing could have been avoided had the legislature allowed us to start our own school district.

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Is there something "wrong" with it?

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From a legal standpoint, no. It's perfectly legal.

From a governmental and logistical standpoint, I believe it is terribly wrong to add another layer of local government which would duplicate or complicate such things as economic development efforts, building permitting processes, court administration processes (the new city would have to establish its own city court since it would no longer be eligible to use the BR city court system) and law enforcement coordination just to list a few.

Look at it this way, it would be legal for every neighborhood to vote on incorporating as its own city. But what a nightmare that would be!

Just look at the "foot print" of the proposed new city. It's not even considered to be a community currently. It's a gerrymandered (for tax revenue purposes) jigsaw puzzle which would actually be larger in area than BR is.