LCG’s budgetmaking process can be complicated in a normal year, and this is far from a normal year. Newly split councils, a mayor-president deadset on slashing budgets, and an uncertain economy has created a perfect storm for a tense budgetmaking process. As the councils round the corner on amending this budget, these are some of the top issues still to be resolved.
LPSS’s reopening assumes, as usual, that overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, and disrespected teachers — many of whom are at high risk for COVID-19 themselves — will pick up all the slack.
A district court judge today issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Lafayette Police Department’s effort to discipline a veteran K-9 officer for social media activity the officer claims was done in his capacity as president of the local police union.
In order to be economically competitive as a city, Lafayette needs to offer quality of life amenities. In the rush to cut budgets, Mayor-President Guillory is putting the city’s quality of life at risk, reducing its ability to retain and attract people, especially young families.
Even with the school year pushing the start date back to Sept. 8, parents are backed into a difficult corner: Send your child back to school and risk getting sick or keep them at home for online learning and face an entirely different host of challenges. Local performing arts organization Wonderland Performing Arts has developed a potential solution: learning pods.
Moving slowly means the program could fall well short of its ambitions, while housing needs, another use of the source funding, continue to worsen.
Reaching conclusions already voiced by the Guillory administration and its predecessor, a long-awaited forensic investigative report on suspect transactions between LUS and Fiber accuses former Director Terry Huval of flouting state law to inflate Fiber’s revenue by millions of dollars.
The decline in property values could reduce LCG’s revenues by millions. That drop will force the City and Parish councils to either raise millage rates or cut their budgets further.
Parish government has been on life support for years now. With the city’s finances now strained, it’s time for the parish to get serious about living within its means.
In interviews with Cajun elders, UL archivists explore the experience and expression of the pandemic in Louisiana French.
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