Pump pushed back

Parish sends letter asking for pump to be redesigned

Opening the Magnolia Ridge pump station back up to bidding will result in at least a six month delay to the project, pushing the completion date from June or July of this year to the end of 2009.

However, that later completion date will more closely coincide with the finish time of the first phase of the West Bank Hurricane Protection Levee.

Rick Shread, president of Shread-Kuyrkendall engineers, spent over an hour in front of the Operation, Maintenance and Construction Management Committee going over the entire pump project, which included a $27 million bond issue. Of that money, $20 million was to be used for the pump, with the remaining money going towards equalization and control structures.

Shread said that Parish President V.J. St. Pierre has sent a letter requesting that his firm redesign the project. As soon as he gets that letter, his intention is to come back with a schedule and timetable for the redesign.

Councilwoman Carolyn Schexnaydre said that while she understands the importance of the pump, she wondered why there was such a rush on the project since former Public Works Director Greg Bush told her that it wouldn’t be needed for five more years. Schexnaydre said she would rather see the money spent on completing the levee, which currently has several gaps.

“Why are we spending all this money on pumps when we have these openings in the levee,” she said. “I’m more worried about not having the levee.”

Shread said that he didn’t know why Bush would say that since the first phase of the project should be completed by 2009.

However, Councilman Terry Authement said that without the completion of phases two and three of the project, water can still come in from several different directions and make the pump ineffective.

The council’s Legislative Committee also received information about a proposed 20 percent tax on video bingo machines. Parish Attorney Sonny Vial said that he found so much information on the issue over the previous weekend that he needs more time to do research.

Edward Dufresne, a part owner of Luling’s Video Bingo Palace, the only video bingo parlor in St. Charles Parish, says that the whole ordinance should be reviewed. He told the committee that the state has revised its bingo ordinance three times, while the parish’s has stayed the same.

“The whole thing needs to be reviewed and we need to have an ordinance that is more up to date with current state law,” Dufresne said.

Dufresne also said that he felt it was unfair to tax video bingo halls while not levying taxes on traditional bingo halls.

Committee chairman Marcus Lambert agreed that the ordinance should be reviewed and said the video bingo is a “much more complicated matter” than he originally thought.