The gist: Mayor-President Josh Guillory’s plan to allocate $850,000 to a small business grant program in partnership with LEDA is on hold as it awaits approval from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Originally, the goal was for LCG and LEDA to start accepting applications by June 1, but that timeline has been […]
The gist: April sales numbers released by LEDA highlight the economic fallout from the state’s coronavirus lockdown. Total retail sales in the parish in March and April fell $112 million in 2020 when compared to the same months in 2019.
Before we break out the tar and feathers, we need to appreciate the context of Guillory’s budget cuts. Given the dire straits of the city’s financials, these cuts—and more—are arguably inevitable.
The gist: The city, parish and joint council meetings are relatively uneventful this week, though some moves are in the works on the city budget, bond sales and spending CREATE funds on parish parks.
The gist: A new economic forecast projects that the Lafayette metro area will lead the state in jobs lost from the first quarter of this year to the second. Modeling by economist Gary Wagner of UL Lafayette’s B.I. Moody III College of Business Administration shows the area recovering less than 10% of those jobs over […]
Regardless of the merit’s of Mayor-President Josh Guillory small business forgivable loan program, the process he’s used doesn’t lead to good policymaking while ignoring our community’s looming housing crisis.
Lafayette’s city general fund is facing such large deficits that even zeroing out what critics call government waste won’t be enough to close the gap.
City Council members and the administration will go into executive session Tuesday to discuss the administration’s “legal strategy” for backing away from a lawsuit filed to stop several special taxing districts. The mayor-president and some council members are at odds over the issue. Less controversial decisions will be made on applying for millions in grants and continuing the process of splitting control of boards between the city and parish councils.
Even if the coronavirus wasn’t causing a global depression, Lafayette’s city and parish general funds would be in rough shape. But now shortfalls in revenue are going to force some painful cuts.
At a time of incredible economic and financial uncertainty, the parish council can’t afford to rededicate CREATE’s millage to any other dedicated fund. Instead what’s needed is flexibility to navigate an uncertain future, which is why this millage should be redirected to the parish general fund.
Lafayette’s city and parish councils are back in session Tuesday with jam-packed agendas that include refinancing hundreds of millions in bonds, reorganizing more than a dozen boards and commissions, rededicating the CREATE millage, and more.
Projections by the St Louis Federal Reserve Bank rank the Lafayette metro area as having the 20th highest percentage of jobs at high risk of unemployment due to the coronavirus out of the 150 largest metro areas in the country.
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