Insurance topic at Habitat meeting

The Department of Insurance Office of Consumer Advocacy will participate in a meeting sponsored by the East St. Tammany Habitat for Humanity.

The East St. Tammany Homeowners Association meeting will be held Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at Genesis Hall of Aldersgate United Methodist Church, 360 Robert Blvd. in Slidell. A representative with the Office of Consumer Advocacy will speak to the Habitat Homeowners and Habitat Family Support Committee on insurance-related topics including the importance of having insurance; gaining a basic understanding of homeowners insurance, flood insurance, wind and hail insurance and why consumers should have enough insurance to cover the cost to rebuild in the event of a fire or hurricane.

For more information about the meeting, contact Heidi Crouch with the East St. Tammany Habitat for Humanity at 639-0656 or controller@esthfh.org.

PR officials vote on video bingo

The town of Pearl River will host a workshop and special town hall meeting Tuesday on a proposed ordinance to ban video bingo and electronic gambling.

The workshop will be held at 6:30 p.m., followed by a special meeting of the Board of Aldermen to vote on the issue.

The town hall is located at 39460 Willis Alley. For more information call 863-5800.

Library seeks public input

The St. Tammany Parish Library Board of Control and Administration will host a public meeting as part of the Madisonville Branch Library building project at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Maritime Museum.

The library, with the assistance of Sizeler Thompson Brown Architects and their partnership with REK & Associates of Covington, is engaged in a collaborative building project to address the preliminary design details of the new library. The meeting seeks to generate and prioritize concepts for future building and consider key questions from residents about the project.

The public input received during the meeting will be helpful in the creation of a development strategy for this building project.

The museum is located at 133 Mabel Drive in Madisonville. For more information call 893-6280, ext. 100.

Bus hotline

opens soon

A St. Tammany Transportation Hot Line will be in place before school starts to help parents get information about school bus routes for the 2009-2010 school year. The hotline will be open from 1-6 p.m. Aug. 2 and from 8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Aug. 3-7. The telephone number for the Hot Line is 898-3373. 

Parents can call the Hot Line to get the name and contact information for their children’s bus drivers, which will allow them to call drivers to find out bus stop locations and pick-up and drop-off times. 

Parents can also go to the school system Web site, www.stpsb.org, and click on the Bus Transportation link to find bus routes, bus driver contact information and pick-up points.

State tax holiday coming in August

For all you penny-pinchers, shoppers and people just needing a break from the recession, the Louisiana State Department of Revenue has some good news.

Starting at 12:01 a.m. Aug. 7 until midnight Aug. 8 the LSDR will have its annual Louisiana Sales Tax Holiday, where most retail purchases will be exempt from the 4 percent sales tax.

The tax holiday is mandated by law and has to take place once each year on the first consecutive Friday and Saturday in August.

The tax exemption applies to the first $2,500 of the purchase price of most individual items of tangible personal property for non-business use. State sales tax is to paid on the portion of the price that exceeds $2,500.

Only the states sales tax is exempt during the tax holiday, and does not apply to sales taxes collected by parishes, towns, school boards and other taxing authorities. All retailers must participate in the tax holiday.

Retailers can take advantage of a special provision of the tax holiday and get a $25 credit to offset the cost of reprogramming their cash registers. Information on the credit is available in Revenue Information Bulletin 03-009 that can be found on the LSDR Web site, revenue.louisiana.gov. The same Web site can give shoppers more information on the Louisiana Sales Tax Holiday.

FD 1 to hold

millage meeting

The St. Tammany Fire District 1 will hold a public hearing of the Board of Commissioners at 5:30 p.m. Aug. 18 at the Fire District Training Academy at 34780 South Range Road in Slidell. The commission will consider levying additional or increased millage rates without further voter approval or adopting the adjusted millage rate and rolling forward to a millage rate not to exceed the prior year’s maximum rate.

Harbor Board to consider millage

There will be a public hearing of the Northshore Harbor Center District Board of Commissioners at 9 a.m. Aug. 11 at the Northshore Harbor Center at 100 Harbor Center Blvd. in Slidell.

The board will consider levying additional or increased millage rates without further voter approval or adopting the adjusted millage rate and rolling forward to a millage rate not to exceed the prior year’s maximum rate.

Parish online

permits search

Citizens may now search the St. Tammany Parish permits database using an online search. The online permits search is found at www.stpgov.org. Go to the Departments page, and scroll over Permits and Regulatory.

The permits database may be searched by permits number. 

If this information is not known, drop down calendars may be used to search all permits within a certain date range.  

Pertinent information about each permit may be viewed and printed.  An entire search may be downloaded as an excel document as well.

 Information on both residential and commercial permits is available.  For more information about permits, call the St. Tammany Parish Department of Permits at 898-2574.