The INDsider has just learned that Melanie Lewis Edwards, director of Lafayette Consolidated Government's Community Development Department, announced her resignation, in French and English, to a group of co-workers in a tersely worded e-mail Friday. Edwards, who did not indicate why she resigned or where she is heading, did not immediately respond to an e-mail inquiry from The INDsider. Her e-mail reads:
Je vous écris pour vous announcer ma démission en tant que diréctrice de dévéloppement communitaire. Ma dernière journée de travail est 19 février. Merci à tous pour votre soutiens et assistance durant mon temps ici. Meilleurs v*ux.
I am writing to announce my resignation as Director of Community Development effective February 19th. Thank you for your support and assistance during my time here.
The INDsider was also unable to reach LCG officials for comment. At 5:33 p.m. Monday, City-Parish President Joey Durel's office issued a media advisory concerning a 10 a.m. news conference Tuesday to announce a management change within an LCG department. The news conference will be held in the Executive Conference Room on the 2nd floor of City Hall.
An LCG director since 2004, Edwards earned the lowest grade, D, on The Independent Weekly's October 2009 department head job performance assessment. Though the Northside High grad came to the position with an impressive résumé, including a master of international affairs from Columbia University in New York and work for the U.S. State Department in various position in D.C. and overseas, she never found her footing as community development chief. Read the department head grading story, "Stacking Them Up," here.
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.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
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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