BATON ROUGE - District Attorney Hillar Moore held a public hearing Monday evening to formally announce his planned property tax proposal as he prepares for budget cuts to the office's budget.

He announced that the next meeting will be December 18, when an actual plan will be proposed. Moore told WBRZ that it has been a struggle to retain employees due to not being able to pay them a competitive wage. 

"We just found out that the budget is going to be cut by $500,000 to $750,000. We've been holding off on replacing people that have left to try to keep that in part of the budget," he said.

The proposed millage will be for East Baton Rouge Parish. The proposal amount is still being determined. Moore says he shouldn't have to ask taxpayers to put money towards public safety. Therefore, he is being mindful of the cost.

"I want to make sure that I'm being fair to the public on what we ask for. This is extremely distasteful to stand here and ask the people for another tax to fund public safety. To me, public safety is the number one obligation of the government and this should be in the forefront of everything. It's obviously not," he said.