Tax break for Exxon Mobil passes 7-2 Thursday
UPDATE: The vote for Exxon Mobil's tax break passed 7-2. The sheriff still needs to approve for the measure to go into effect.
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BATON ROUGE - Exxon Mobil is looking for another tax break to build new facilities in Baton Rouge.
The proposed $250 million "Innovation Suite" would bring a state-of-the-art factory to produce microchips and an advanced recycling plant.
"The benefits of the proposed Exxon Innovation Suite are numerous. New opportunity for business—we get to expand certain sectors that we generally didn't have before, so that's pretty exciting and has a chance to be transformative for our economy," Joshua Combs with BRAC said.
Exxon currently has nearly 30 tax-exempt properties in the parish, but still manages to be its biggest tax payer, accounting for roughly 8 percent of all property taxes paid.
To be eligible for the City-Parish's industrial tax exemption program, the Metro Council, school board and sheriff have to approve it.
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Thursday, the request goes to school board members. At least one group, Together Baton Rouge, is asking them to deny it.
"Who's benefiting from this exemption, especially from the school board perspective? It's not the students who have long bus rides on un-air conditioned buses. It's not the teachers who are well below the southern average pay scale. It's not the parents who have to take off of work to make sure their kids get on the bus or take them to school or in a lot of cases buy resources for their child's education in the classroom," Edgar Cage with Together Baton Rouge said.
If approved, the East Baton Rouge Parish School System would lose out on about $4 million in property taxes. But, Exxon says the school system will benefit long term, getting about $3 million over the next 20 years or about $150,000 a year.
The school board meeting is Thursday at 5 p.m.