The gist: The City-Parish Council voted unanimously Tuesday to move forward a $3.8 million police union backed pay plan, which would allocate the money from the city’s general fund if passed at final adoption next month. The vote and the sprawling discussion around it exposed increasing pressure on the city’s finances.
In total, the one mayor-president, five city council members, five parish council members and nine school board members we’re electing will decide how $5 billion will be spent in our community over the next four years.
Years of kicking the infrastructure can down the road has finally caught up with us.
The gist: Economist Loren Scott projects that the Lafayette economy will add 7,200 jobs over the next two years, according to his annual outlook presented Wednesday at an event hosted by One Acadiana. Scott’s rosy forecast rests on what he calls “heroic assumptions” about the growth of the U.S. economy and the prospect of more […]
Spending millions of city dollars to build a road through a cane field isn’t a new idea. We can’t afford to keep making the same mistakes.
The gist: As expected, Mayor-President Joel Robideaux vetoed a council budget amendment that would have kept $7 million in a project to complete Louisiana Avenue. Instead the money will go into a stormwater diversion fund he proposed at budget introduction. The council could override the veto with a six-member majority, an unlikely outcome.
The gist: Last week, the City-Parish Council restored $7 million in funding to extend Louisiana Avenue, narrowly passing an amendment to next year’s budget that blocked the mayor-president’s proposal to move that money to undetermined drainage projects. Mayor-President Joel Robideaux is expected to veto the amendment and send the issue back to the council where […]
Political discourse in Lafayette has veered so far off the rails that we can’t even agree on the basics. And now we have a whole host of thorny issues that we have to unpack while splitting one council into two.
The gist: Lafayette General Health announced the launch of a new $10 million innovation fund with investments from Acadian Companies, LHC Group, Ochsner and the Schumacher Family Foundation. The goal of this fund is to make investments in health care startups that can deliver good return and improve services for the system and its partners.
Lafayette’s real estate market is ice cold, and it may get worse before it gets better.
The gist: Recent employment numbers from the state workforce commission show an increase in jobs in the Lafayette area. But those same numbers show continued job losses in Lafayette’s oil and gas industry. It doesn’t appear to have bottomed out yet.
The gist: On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission voted to change the way franchise fees work, threatening to eliminate up to two-thirds of AOC Community Media’s annual funding.
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