The city of Lafayette is ratcheting up the pressure on the Broussard to drop its lawsuit challenging Lafayette’s annexation of Vieux Chene Golf Course in south Lafayette Parish. City-Parish President Joey Durel unveiled this morning during his weekly “Lafayette Live” segment on KPEL’s “Mornings with Ken and Bernie” program another arrow in Lafayette’s quiver: cutting off fire dispatch services to Broussard, which Durel says will have a considerable impact on fire insurance rates for residents and businesses in Broussard.
Following is a transcript of Durel’s comments regarding the issue:
Broussard’s government, as you know, has decided to sue Lafayette over an annexation — something that did no harm to Broussard. So we made it clear a year or so ago that we would, you know, if that’s the kind of relationship we had, the city of Lafayette would no longer provide services for the city government of Broussard.
So, their fire department has been notified — a long time ago, but again a couple of months ago — that April 30th would be the last day that we would provide that dispatch. In other words, when somebody calls right now one of our firemen actually handles the dispatch; that’s every critical to the fire rating of a community.
So, the consequences of that is going to be that very likely insurance rates in the city of Broussard will double on all businesses and homes. It’s unfortunate; we surely don’t want to do that but, again, we can’t maintain a relationship with a government that’s hostile to the city of Lafayette government.
And so, we have begged, have asked, have pleaded with the government of Broussard to make the decision as to what do they think is most important: is the lawsuit more important than the services we provide? And it’s been clear that their decision is they would rather sue the city of Lafayette over annexing its own golf course over the services the city provides. So, it’s a decision that the city government of Broussard has made, not us.
We’ve given them the choice: you can either have the services by just letting us have our annexation without us all spending ridiculous legal fees, or you can continue the lawsuit and lose the services, and they have chosen to give up the services.
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
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MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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