Despite lawsuit claiming project is overpriced
St. Charles Parish Council met for what was supposed to be their last time on Dec. 17, but if Judge Robert Chaisson throws out the west bank pump lawsuit on Jan. 2 as sources say is a possibility, Laque will make a last-ditch effort get the nearly $30 million bond issue passed before the new administration takes over.
Councilman-elect Terry Authement is discouraged and hopes that there won’t be a second council meeting and the lawsuit will block the pump project.
“Why are they (current council) trying so hard to get the project pushed through when they know we can save the residents in St. Charles Parish millions of dollars?” he said. “I did the research and provided the outgoing council with all of my documentation. I’m not referring to all of the council I think a couple of members agreed the project was overpriced.”
Authement says the business of St. Charles Parish should be left to the incoming administration and no special meeting is necessary.
“We don’t need them (the current council) to have a special meeting to take care of the pump issue. We can handle it,” he said.
Authement says he felt all along that this would be the move the council would probably make if the lawsuit gets thrown out by Chaisson.
Although all of the discussion about the bond issues have been postponed until the Jan. 14 council meeting, parish administrator Tim Vial and public information officer Steve Sirmon, agree that the council could meet one last time to approve the measures.
“It’s a possibility,” Sirmon said. “If the lawsuit gets dropped or is not upheld for some reason, the council could meet, but it wouldn’t be a closed meeting or anything like that, it would definitely be publicized.”
Councilwoman-elect Carolyn Schexnaydre and Jara Roux filed a lawsuit against the parish claiming the west bank pump project is overpriced.
“The case will be heard on Jan. 2, and then we’ll look at timing, depending on what happens once the judge hears the case, if he waits a couple of days or makes a decision the same day the council could call a special meeting if it means we could get everything approved before we leave office,” Parish President Albert Laque said.
Vial says according to the parish’s charter, at least five members of the council or the council chairperson can call a special meeting as long as there is a 24 hour notice.
In other council news:
Councilman Desmond Hilaire’s ordinance to charge a 20 percent fee on video bingo hall owners got cast aside quickly, when he learned that the fee imposed could be double charging the charities and the hall’s owners.
“You can’t impose a fee like that,” Laque said. “They (the charities and the hall’s owners) are already paying for the hall being policed by the Sheriff’s Office and to impose another fee would be like paying double.”
Laque says he was all for Hilaire’s idea to use the money to go towards parish recreation, but it wasn’t correct the way he was trying to impose the fee.
“I was agreeing with Desmond,” he said. “But the law doesn’t allow that. Now what was done in some other parish or city, is different from what’s done here.”
A measure to build a new subdivision in Montz was voted down by the council. Residents of Country Cottage Estates said the proposed development would clog neighborhood roads and funnel cars through streets not designed to handle excessive traffic flow.
The new administration takes office Jan. 14.
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