Following a well-established theme in her first year, M-P Monique Boulet outlined a period of “rightsizing” in the budget proposed for the next fiscal year. Short on splashy projects, the budget, introduced to the councils this week, focuses instead on LCG’s financial plumbing.
Appropriations total $750 million, including the LUS budget, a roughly $40 million increase over the current fiscal year. View the proposed budget here.
Raising pay for low-wage workers figures prominently in the budget increase. The pay plan, intended to shore up a 12% vacancy rate across LCG’s workforce, will cost $8.9 million. The bulwark of the plan is setting a $12/hour minimum wage and increasing pay strategically in divisions hardest hit by the tight labor market.
Boulet has already reset several major Guillory-era initiatives since taking office, and some of those changes are enshrined in the budget. C
Cutting back on litigation to save on legal costs, which grew 40% over his predecessor, is a piece of that pie. As is a compromise, of sorts, in LCG’s bid to shift employees to a new retirement system. Recent state legislation gave LCG 10 more years to pay its way out of the old system, spreading out the multi-million dollar hit on what was sold as a major cost savings plan.
Zeroed out are big outlays for the super parks planned by the Guillory administration and additional funding for the Bayou Vermilion Flood Control project, which includes the incomplete Homewood detention pond.
More from the current
Later this month Lafayette Consolidated Government will host a housing workshop in Spanish, intended to arm attendees with understanding and skills to plan for eventual homeownership.
Beacon Community Connections, a nonprofit addressing social determinants of health, is working on a program to break the cycle of re-incarceration.
LCG will kick off the annual budget cycle. Council members will weigh the veto of a proposed gas station.
Homewood, beset with cost overruns, litigation and $11.5 million land settlement, became a cautionary tale for Guillory’s “new pace of government.” LCG has repositioned itself in litigation and regulatory entanglements stemming from Homewood and other projects that attracted state and federal scrutiny.
“The value of doing things right the first time should not be taken for granted,” Boulet wrote in her tone-setting budget message. “It is almost always more cost effective, more productive and leads to greater success.”
LCG’s financial picture is very different, now that federal COVID relief has dried up and cost inflation has caught up with record-breaking sales tax revenues that had buoyed the city’s general fund.
The city general fund, effectively LCG’s operating account, will run a $5 million deficit, albeit with a healthy $50 million reserve. Meanwhile, the parish projects a manageable loss of just $300,000 and a $4.6 million balance.
Long-term projections show LCG eating into the city’s cash balance year over year, albeit with room to spare, with the parish building a reserve in the next five years, a striking reversal of fortune for the typically cash-strapped parish government.
Boulet has pulled back from the heady capital spending of the last few years, fueled by $84.5 million American Rescue Plan dollars distributed to LCG.
Among the projects in the trimmed down capital plan is a $5 million plan to gussy up Johnston Street, a vision that had been backburnered for years. Boulet is trying to balance a new financial reality — no more Covid money to spend — while keeping some quality of life projects in the pipeline. Some new notable outlays:
- $885,000 for Heymann Center repairs
- $500,000 each for Heymann Park, OJ Mouton Pool
- $1 million each for Bertrand Drive, 12th Street
- $1 million for the I-49 Connector
What to watch for: Cost sharing. As proposed, the budget doesn’t change the status quo on splitting costs between city and parish funds, and that could lead to some dispute between the councils. The public just got a taste of that this week with the councils sparring over footing the bill for a new emergency operations director.