In October 2011 the Lafayette City-Parish Council played election year politics, ignoring a warning by Lafayette City-Parish Attorney Mike Hebert that the legal liability of revoking a valid permit to build a waste transfer facility in unincorporated north Lafayette Parish “could extend into the millions of dollars.”
Hebert’s was an opinion shared by most legal minds. However, faced with an angry constituency in the Sunbeam Lane neighborhood, which is in City-Parish Councilman Brandon Shelvin’s District 3, and an election just days away, the council voted unanimously to revoke Waste Facilities of Lafayette’s permit. At the time, the company had already made a substantial monetary investment: It had puchased the land and was in the middle of constructing the waste transfer station.
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| When the Lafayette council voted to revoke Waste Facilities' legally obtained permit in late 2011, the company had already purchased the Sunbeam Lane property and construction was well under way. |
The result of the October 2011 vote is that the council will soon pull from your tax dollars to pay for its mistake — in much the same fashion it paid for repealing a zoning change that blocked Greyhound Bus Lines’ move to Moss Street in 2008 (the settlement with Greyhound was finalized a month before the Sunbeam Lane project was blocked). But this time around, according to one source familiar with the negotiations, the price tag is upwards of $3 million. And that’s only a partial settlement. Progressive Waste Solutions, which had a contract to lease the facility from Waste Facilities, still has a federal suit pending.
Waste Facilities maintained throughout the process that it followed all guidelines when applying for a local permit to build the facility on a 16-acre site. The property is located on a small island of unincorporated land.
The facility was to be a daily stopping point for truckloads of garbage being hauled from surrounding areas so that the waste could then be trucked to a landfill outside of the parish. Just as the company was receiving its final approval from Lafayette Consolidated Government’s Planning, Zoning and Codes Department, nearly 10 months after the permitting process had begun, someone on Sunbeam Lane caught wind of the plans. Neighbors who feared the high volume of large trucks coming in and out of narrow roads leading to the Sunbeam Lane facility, noise from those trucks, the stinch of garbage and trash blowing into their yards complained to council members.
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| Councilman Brandon Shelvin led a neighborhood protest against the waste transfer facility on Oct. 14, 2011. |
Sunbeam Lane residents also were livid that they were never notified by the project’s developers or anyone else with a hand in the project — including LCG’s permitting office — that a facility of this type was moving in. Regulations governing unincorporated Lafayette Parish do not require public hearings or notifications for projects of this type.
Read more on the Sunbeam Lane saga and unfounded conspiracy theories surrounding it here.
While the council voted Tuesday to approve the partial settlement, it has not been finalized, and no one will publicly disclose the amount. The council must approve the final settlement, at which time the dollar figure is likely to be made public. Had the case gone to trial, the damages could have been substantially higher.
The Sunbeam Lane debacle is a fitting example of the need for a comprehensive plan that addresses land-use throughout the entire the parish. It’s the only way to protect everyone’s interests — and avoid another flawed vote that costs taxpayers millions of dollars.
MAY 20 This post by blogger CB Forgotston draws parallels between Gov. Bobby Jindal and two individuals he probably doesn't want to be aligned with: President Obama and former governor Edwin Edwards. CB says Jindal's trying to jack up the debt ceiling (an Obama play, according to CB) and buy votes from GOP leges who normally wouldn't go for that (an Edwards play, CB says).
MAY 20 Here's a post in the Baptist Message from an alumnus of Louisiana College. The author, Larry Burgess, calls on the leadership of the private school to take care of some pressing problems. Physical plant issues are critical and unaddressed, some faculty make so little they need government health care, and there is an atmosphere that does not encourage honest discussion, he writes. It's time to get things back in order, he says.
MAY 20 This post in Gambit tells of a benefit concert scheduled to raise money for the 19 people shot during a Mother's Day second line on Frenchmen Street in NOLA. Among them was Gambit blogger Deb Cotton, who spoke frequently about violence in the city and reported on the city's second line culture. Gambit's foundation, along with other NOLA non-profits, also is selling t-shirts to raise money for the victims.
MAY 20 Blogger Robert Mann is critical of the personal interest some legislators take in their work here, sharing the comments one NOLA solon made in explaining his decision to vote against a bill that would require people to stop discriminating against female workers. His wife might lose some salary, so he was going to have to vote against the equal pay bill, Conrad Appel said. Appel and everyone who heard him should have been ashamed, but they weren't, and that's what is wrong in that building, Mann argues.
MAY 20 American Press columnist Jim Beam writes about the budget again here, urging kudos for the House and its efforts to try to fix the budget as opposed to passing on a flawed and messy rubber-stamped document as it usually does. The Senate already is poo-pooing the effort, but instead Senators should be trying to find a way to improve it as well, Beam argues. He also has some predictions in here from LABI and CABL.
MAY 20 Here's a link to the photo gallery from Tulane's graduation this past weekend. Dr. John and Allen Toussaint played together and received honorary degrees. The Dalai Lama was so entranced by their performance he got up from his seat and walked across the stage to stand next to them. He even participated in a second line with his own personal, saffron-colored umbrella. To the graduates, he urged them to think about creating a peaceful, hopeful life and society.
MAY 20 This Picayune story questions the rhetoric of NOLA officials who say the city, aside from having a "murder problem," is safe. The talking points generally are that the criminals are killing each other, but everything else is OK. The police chief there says that even Lafayette is more dangerous than NOLA. But crime experts interviewed here say that NOLA's numbers indicate one of two things: either people are so used to violence they don't report it, or somebody's "fudging the numbers."
MAY 20 The Advocate's Mark Ballard writes about some of the background maneuvering that took place during the development of budget alternatives in the Legislature. From Rep. Joel Robideaux being called a "tax and spend liberal" to robo-call influence, Ballard lets us in on some of the work that happens behind the scenes but usually doesn't make it into the Advocate's daily coverage of the session.
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