Parish President Chester Cedars said last week that the city of Youngsville is considering a move to annex an area inside St. Martin Parish.
As described by Cedars at the Dec. 18 Parish Council meeting, the area being considered lies along both sides of U.S. 90/Evangeline Thruway just south of Broussard. The annexation has not been proposed yet and the probability of it moving forward is uncertain, but Youngsville Mayor Ken Ritter notified Cedars that the city is now weighing its options.
No residences are within the commercially-developed area. It contains several dozen businesses with a total assessed value of about $13.5 million and taxable inventories of about $47 million. Three of the top ten sales tax paying businesses in St. Martin Parish are within the area. Annexation into Youngsville would add an additional 2.5 cents sales tax for those businesses.
Ritter told Cedars that the main reasons for considering the annexation is that Youngsville government believes police and fire response to the area would be improved with the annexation. The area is within Lisa Nelson’s District 2 and she said “St. Martin Parish has always provided quick emergency response times to that area. I would be completely opposed to this.”
Neither Cedars nor any of the other council members expressed optimism about the prospect. Cedars said the proposal fails to meet the usual requirements for annexation. “It does not strike me as a cogent proposition,” he said.
Issues normally considered in annexation requests include benefit to residents and that it involve a compact and contiguous area. “None of those conditions seem to apply to this situation,” Cedars suggested. Economic benefit to the annexing city is not considered a sufficient motivation to annex.
Dist. 5 councilman Chris Tauzin said “We want to be a business-friendly parish. This will place an undue burden on those businesses.”
Ritter told Cedars that one-half cent of the sales tax collected in the annexed area would be shared with the parish, but that did not appear to sway opinion much. The parish council appears inclined to refuse the plan if Youngsville decides to move forward with the attempt.
