§3455. Local or special assessments

Upon the receipt of the certified statement or report of the engineer as provided for in the preceding section, the governing authority shall adopt an ordinance levying a local or special assessment on each lot or parcel of real estate abutting the streets, sidewalks, or neutral grounds, or any portion thereof, to be improved, including such lots or parcels of real estate as may be located wholly or partly outside of the municipal limits or boundaries, in proportion that its frontage bears to all the abutting lots or parcels of real estate to be improved in accordance with the contract awarded or in accord with the cost of improvements, when undertaken by the municipality. The total of all such local or special assessments shall represent the total cost of the improvement, including street intersections, engineers and attorneys fees, and all other costs incidental to the work, after deduction therefrom of the amount of participation, if any, made by the municipality as hereinafter provided. The amount assessed in the ordinance shall be due and collectible immediately on its passage, and if not paid within thirty days from the date of the adoption of the ordinance, it will be conclusively presumed that any property owner whose property is affected thereby, exercises the right and option, which is hereby authorized, to pay the amount due in equal annual installments bearing interest at a rate not exceeding six per centum per annum, payable annually, and extending over a period not exceeding ten years, as provided for in the ordinance levying the local or special assessments. The first installment shall become due on June 30 or December 31, as the governing authority shall elect, of the then current year and annually thereafter. The local or special assessments may be carried on the tax roll of the municipality and collected at the same time as taxes. The failure to pay any installments or the interest thereon when due, shall ipso facto cause all other installments and the interest thereon to become due and payable and the municipality shall within thirty days from the date of such default, proceed against the property for the collection of the total amount due thereon, including interest, plus ten percent additional on principal and interest, unpaid as attorneys fees. A certified copy of the ordinance, levying the local or special assessments on the real estate shall be filed with the clerk of court in the parish in which the municipality is situated, who shall forthwith record the same in the mortgage records of the parish, and when so filed and recorded, shall operate as a lien and privilege against all real estate therein assessed. The payments made in cash shall be expended for no other purpose than for the payment of the cost of the improvement or improvements. Any errors in description or amounts in any assessment ordinance adopted pursuant to this section may be corrected by the adoption of an amendatory ordinance which need set forth only the corrected descriptions or amounts and which amendatory ordinance shall be recorded in the same manner as the original ordinance levying the assessments. The adoption of any such corrective ordinance shall serve only to postpone the thirty days' period for cash payment in full of the assessment actually affected and corrected by such amendatory ordinance, and the due dates of the installments of such assessments so corrected as are not paid in full in cash within thirty days from the date of adoption of the amendatory ordinance, shall be the same as the due dates of the installments of the assessments levied in the original ordinance and not affected or corrected by any such amendatory ordinance or ordinances.

Added by Acts 1970, No. 21, §1, emerg. eff. June 11, 1970, at 12:00 Noon.