▸ The gist: Next year’s budget was balanced assuming the parish would successfully sell a Downtown parking garage to the city for $770,000. On Tuesday, the City-Parish Council voted down the mayor-president’s proposal. Opponents argued it was a bad deal for the city that amounted to a bailout for the cash-strapped parish.
▸ The gist: Come Dec. 31, 2020, the old federal courthouse on Jefferson Street will be the site of a 68-unit apartment complex and 25,500 square feet of commercial space, along with a pool, clubhouse and common areas.
▸ The gist: Both the current budget and the proposed budget were balanced assuming that the parish has sold a Downtown parking garage to the city for $770,000. That sale hasn’t happened yet.
▸ The gist: Following a rocky roll out and a series of sometimes tense town halls, council members have tweaked the details of a proposition to create separate city and parish councils. Most notably, updated amendments would prohibit termed-out incumbents from sitting on either new council, clarify protocols that govern the privatization of LUS and […]
Seventy percent of Americans continue to trust their local government, a level that has held relatively steady for over four decades and across party lines.
Not every argument against separate councils holds water, but some are compelling and worth exploring
Over the course of five town halls, we’ve talked through just about everything but the merits of creating separate city and parish councils. Here’s the case for the split.
While there are more questions than answers about selling LUS, one thing we know for sure is that it’s a perfect example of the unfairness baked into the structure of Lafayette’s consolidated government.
Much of the City-Parish Council, already disillusioned that it was left in the dark during negotiations, appears unified in opposition to LUS’s electrical division changing hands.
▸ The gist: Lewis reportedly flipped to a “no” on an amendment to create separate city and parish councils when he saw the way his district was redrawn in preliminary maps. As late as minutes before Tuesday’s council meeting, Lewis was shown a map that would give him a safely black voting district, potentially allaying concerns about […]
Lafayette needs less uncertainty from local government not more. But that’s not the direction we’re going.
How does Lafayette’s experiment with consolidation stack up with the successes and failures of other consolidated governments across the country?