Here is a selection of items on the agendas for this week’s meetings of the City and Parish councils. To see the full agendas, check out the links below:
Lafayette 101
Community Development & Planning
Community Development & Planning shapes how Lafayette grows. What gets built and where is guided by the PlanLafayette and the Lafayette Development Code and governed by several appointed bodies, including the city and parish planning commissions. The department has been restructured several times and most recently folded in housing programs managed by the dissolved Community Development Department.
Parish Council
Final Adoption
Adult drug court. The fourth floor of the parish government building at 1010 Lafayette St. is vacant. This ordinance approves leasing that space to the Adult Drug Court run by the 15th Judicial District Court.
Public defenders. The 15th JDC will lease more than 6,000 square feet of the same parish government building for the Lafayette branch of the Louisiana Public Defenders Program.
Introduction
Emergency Preparedness second attempt. The original plan to fund two positions for four months for the newly created Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness Division was rejected by the Parish Council last month. The mayor-president’s new proposal funds only the director position for the last two months of the fiscal year. This ordinance will cost the parish roughly $36,000, compared to the original $73,000 proposal. The ordinance would be up for final approval Aug 20. Plans for a two-position department are in the next FY budget proposal by M-P Boulet.
Lafayette has long lacked a comprehensive emergency plan, but the Boulet administration aims to change that.
City Council
Final Adoption
First steps in notification software. The city proposes to move $70,000 currently budgeted for the Convention and Visitors Commission toward funding an acquisition of mass notification software. The transfer is the first step to getting the city an effective emergency notification system.
Introduction
Utilities budget adjustments. LUS wants to move $4.8 million in combined reserves to other expenditures. The budget amendment adds another $1.86 million to the system’s in-lieu-of-tax (ILOT) contribution to the city’s general fund bringing it to $27.3 million, and the rest would pay for capital and maintenance expenses, with $500,000 for generator transformers.
Joint Items
Final Adoption
Rescue plan money. This ordinance allocates the majority of $2.25 million in federal housing funds distributed to Lafayette in 2021 through the American Rescue Plan Act. The Acadiana Outreach Center, Catholic Charities of Acadiana and the Acadiana Regional Coalition on Homelessness and Housing will receive funding, leaving $871,581 uncommitted. Local social service groups have pushed for the remaining dollars to help fund Catholic Charities’ shelter operations after Gov. Jeff Landry cut $1 million from its budget. Currently, Catholic Charities is receiving $290,000 of the HOME ARP funds specifically provided for those experiencing homelessness.
Catholic Charities HOME Funds. Catholic Charities is receiving $150,000 in HOME funds for its home repairs program Rebuilding Together Acadania. The program provides critical home repairs.
Gov. Jeff Landry’s veto of funds for Catholic Charities of Acadiana put into sharp focus the lack of emergency shelter in Lafayette and the funding needed to sustain it long term.
Introduction
True Friends building donation. LCG will donate two parcels of land at 409 Lamar St. to the True Friends Society of Lafayette. The plots are empty, but True Friends’ proposed plan is to make the land donated by the ordinance into a memorial park and garden.
Gethsemane granted adjudicated properties. LCG will donate two adjudicated properties to Gethsemane Church of God in Christ. The church plans to use both plots, 319 Eleventh St. and 712 Peach St., to expand the church campus.