Sales tax collection procedure questioned

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The Eunice Board of Aldermen is asking city attorney Vernon McManus to give notice to the St. Landry Parish School Board about its failure to live up to an agreement for sales and use tax collections.
Jack Burson, alderman at-large, said the School Board for the past five years has failed to hire a qualified Eunice resident part-time to enforce sales tax collections in Eunice.
Burson said the School Board’s sales tax office is supposed to provide the city on a monthly basis a list of who is paying sales taxes.
“If you don’t know who is paying and who is not paying there is no way for you to require people who are not paying to pay,” Burson said.
Burson said the reporting of those paying sales taxes is part of a 1991 agreement with the School Board, which also includes the city paying 1 percent of the collections as a fee to the School Board.
Levoy Dupre was the part-time School Board employee in Eunice that helped enforce tax collections, he said.
“I didn’t realize this until I made the inquiry, which I should have made a long time ago, we have not been receiving that monthly report telling us who is paying the taxes and that’s a big omission in any sales tax collection system,” he said.
“We need to send an immediate notice to the School Board that they should comply with this agreement,” he said.
“If not taken care of we would have to do our duty as city officials to look for another sales tax collector,” he said.
Burson said the city could look to the St. Landry Parish Sheriff or the Acadia Parish School Board as its tax collector.
In other business, the Board:
— Agreed to begin annexation of the 4.7-acre Saf-Tech Inc. site at St. Mary and Fruge. Mayor Scott Fontenot said the company is requesting the annexation and wants to tap into the city sewer system. The site is about 100 feet away from the city line. The company makes fire retardant material, he said.
— Approved restricting traffic on Fairground Avenue between South 9th and 10th streets to school buses between 2:45 and 3:45 p.m. when St. Landry Parish schools are in session.
— Banned habitation of properties at 120 and 130 W. Bacciochi St.
— Began the process to condemn properties at 200 E. Oak Ave. and 251 E. Magnolia Ave.
— Set Halloween Trick or Treat hours at 6 to 8 p.m. Oct. 31.
— Heard from Sanford Wood about the Eunice Farmers Market.
“We used to have a vibrant farmers market in Eunice,” Wood said. “We would meet twice a week on Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings with eight or 10 vendors each time. now, we only meet once a week and usually have two or three vendors. Sometimes I’m there by myself.”
If the market and vendors are certified by the state, senior citizens may get vouchers to buy produce and honey, he said.
The mayor agreed to put notice of the market sessions on the city’s Facebook page and said a notice runs regularly in the “News notes” section of The Eunice News.
— The mayor announced that playground equipment at Circle Park is being removed because of its condition.