and the SG 'controversy" which clears up a lot of the misinformation posted previously by SG opponents.

For instance the MoL does not generate 38 million in parish taxes that SG you would "lose" is the Mall was annexed into the city.

quote:
The city-parish general fund is reliant on a 2 percent sales tax that funds vital governmental functions. The Mall of Louisiana generated about $9.2 million last year in those sales taxes, according to city-parish finance documents

quote:
Jim Richardson, an economist who led a study of what financial impact St. George would have on the parish, said the 2012 sales tax dollars generated from the mall were $7 million. His number is based on sales taxes drawn from 70836, because the mall has its own ZIP code. That number would exclude some of the perimeter stores

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The article also points out that the MoL as most of of think of the Mall is not one big property instead there are something like 200 properties so it's way more complicated than just annexing "the Mall". So that would impact the numbers, but at worst case an annexation of the MoL with all surrounding properties would be 14 percent of the proposed SG budget.

quote:
So, if the city were to annex the Mall of Louisiana, it could mean a 14 percent decrease in total sales tax revenue to the proposed city of St. George or a hit of 11 percent to its overall revenues.

However, that number is the most ambitious annexation scenario because it includes about 200 stores and restaurants both within the mall and surrounding the perimeter, including Best Buy and J. Alexander’s.

It’s unclear what a mall annexation would include. It could leave out the stores on the perimeter of the mall campus, which would change the sales tax numbers.

The point is the annexation strategy being used by the city is more complicated than just negotiating with one entity. To annex the mall quite a few other property owners would have to be on board too.

The Advocate also points out that the biggest tax revenue producer for the SG area is not the Mall of La. but is the 70809 zip code areas which includes all the Siegen Lane properites. Some of the 70809 area is inside the city but most of it is outside the city. This area totals 28 million in tax revenue to the city/parish of which only 5 million goes to the city with the balance going to the parish fund.

quote:
The 70809 ZIP code, which includes the shopping center with the Siegen Lane Super Target, is the region with the most sales taxes generated in the area, Richardson said. The ZIP code includes some of the city of Baton Rouge and parts of the proposed city of St. George. It generates about $28 million in sales taxes, $5.5 million of which are already within the city of Baton Rouge.

“That’s a much more lucrative market to go after, but it’s much more complicated because there are residents that live there, so they’d have to vote (to be annexed),” Richardson said.

The Advocate clearly points out that the loss of the Mall of La. though significant is not 38 million dollars as some have claimed. Furthermore, based on the MoL numbers I seriously doubt that the loss of L'auberge if annexed will be 7 million dollars in sales taxes or that if Perkins-Rowe is annexed another 4 million dollars as has been previously reported.

It seems some people are inflating numbers to scare people off the SG side. First with the overall sales tax rate jumping to 11% and now with grossly overstating the value of the Mall and other SG properties.

Here is a link to the entire article: LINK

This post was edited on 4/28/14 at 9:18 am