The Senate Local and Municipal Affairs Committee will consider Sen. Jonathan Perry's SB238 when it meets today after the full Senate adjourns from its morning session.
The bill would allow the town of Duson to place an additional one percent sales tax on sales in the town. The town could not impose the tax without voter approval.
The bill would allow Duson to exceed the current state-set limit of 2.5 percent municipal sales taxes. Duson currently has a two-percent sales tax.
Duson Mayor Johnny Thibodeaux says the town will seek to pass a one percent sales tax in the fall if SB238 becomes law.
"We plan to ask voter approval this fall to add another one-percent to our municipal sales tax and dedicate that exclusively to improving our roads," Thibodeaux tells The Independent. "We have 3.22 miles of gravel road inside our town and we need to get rid of those."
In a Thursday morning telephone interview, Thibodeaux lamented the condition of the town's infrastructure.
"Our infrastructure here is terrible," he says. "We only get help from others when they need our votes for something and we don't have that many votes here, so we don't get much help."
Thibodeaux says that if Sen. Perry succeeds in winning passage of SB238, he will propose that the council place the dedicated sales tax issue on the October ballot alongside the special election to fill the remaining two years on the term of former state Treasurer John Kennedy, who was elected to the U.S. Senate last fall.
Thibodeaux says he will ask the council to put a 10-year limit on the tax. Duson straddles the Lafayette and Acadia parish line between Scott and Rayne.
Perry is a member of the committee considering the bill which suggests that it will win approval and move on to a Senate floor vote at some point next week.