A former parish president showed up at Monday night’s council meeting to protest an attempt to restructure the Quality Based Selection Board, a panel made up of university professors that decides what engineering firms get contracts for parish projects.
Chris Tregre says the proposal introduced by Councilmen Shelley Tastet, Marcus Lambert, Dennis Nuss, Terry Authement and Billy Raymond that lets council members pick engineering firms to complete parish projects, and then allows them to vote on the same firms they’ve selected, is a bad idea.
“It leaves the possibility open for favoritism,” Tregre said. “The old method of selecting firms to work on projects in the parish has worked well and shouldn’t be changed.”
Tregre asked council members if they tried to use the old method before creating a new one.
“Have any of you tried to convene the board?” he said. “When Jim Letten, U. S. attorney, came to speak to the new parish administration, he cautioned all of you about even the possibility of the appearance that things are not being done ethically in the parish and he cited many examples of this.”
The council voted to table the ordinance for now after several flaws in the proposal were pointed out by Councilman Paul Hogan.
Hogan, who originally came up with the idea to change the structure of the QBS Board, says he was excluded from a meeting on the final edit of the ordinance and the idea to have council members select firms wasn’t his.
“I wasn’t included in meetings where these changes were made,” he said. “I got an email of the final edit of the ordinance right before it was placed on the agenda.”
Councilwoman Carolyn Schexynadre said she was present at the meeting when the ordinance was being discussed without Hogan and had inquired if Hogan was notified about the meeting.
Nuss refuted Hogan’s and Schexnaydre’s statements saying the parish council is notified equitably on everything that’s going on, including all meetings and the results of meetings, when all members aren’t present.
“It’s frustrating to hear people making allegations like this,” he said. “Every version of this ordinance was emailed to everyone on the council.”
Nuss says there is no secrecy, no corruption and there’s nothing going on under the table or behind closed doors.
Hogan pointed out several errors in the ordinance and called for the motion to table it until Parish Attorney Sunny Vial has a chance to review it and correct some of the mistakes.
“There could be a separations of power issue,” Vial said. “I haven‘t looked at the ordinance that closely yet.”
Parish President V.J. St. Pierre wants the process to move forward so that the parish can began to do some much needed work.
“We need to get this decision made,” St. Pierre told the council. “Not having this board in place is holding up parish projects.”
St. Pierre says at this point he’s fine with the parish president having the final say on what engineering firm to use.
“At this point my hands are tied on trying to get work done in the parish,” he said. “We just need to get something in place.”
The new plan requires a review panel to be formed for each parish project. A company is then selected to perform the work based on a ranking system enforced by the parish council. After the ranking, a parish council member in whose district the project is located, in addition to the two at-large council members, would choose a firm.
The administration would negotiate a contract with the firm and submit it for council approval.
The old system of selection was done by a panel of university engineering professors from across the state. With that system, the council had final approval based on the top firms selected by the five member panel’s top three recommendations.
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