Here’s a selection of items on the agendas for this week’s meetings of the city and parish councils.
Economy
COLUMN: How Lafayette can pivot from oil and gas with what it already has
A generational challenge has no easy solutions. But there are opportunities to pivot using what we already have at our disposal.
7 min read
COLUMN: Replacing lost oil jobs is a generational challenge for Lafayette
Few will admit it out loud: What has been Lafayette’s most important economic sector will likely never recover the ground it lost.
7 min read
Conversation: Can Lafayette thrive beyond oil?
A generational shift that raises an important question: How can we replace the jobs we’ve already lost and those we stand to lose in the future?
1 min read
LETTER: Lafayette Parish library and economics
A strong library system is essential to the growth of Lafayette. So rather than shrink library services, the city-parish government and the library board need to sit down with industry, education, tourism, the arts, and law enforcement, and explain what the library does for each of them.
5 min read
Analysis: Lafayette wages trail cost of living
This is problematic for two reasons. One, it suggests that people in our community really are having trouble making ends meet. Two, it harms our economic competitiveness as it relates to being able to retain our best and brightest.
3 min read
COLUMN: 2021 could be a make-or-break year for Lafayette’s economy
The elephant in the room is how much longer this damn pandemic will last and who will be left standing when it finally ends. But that’s not the only aspect of our local economy with an uncertain fate.
10 min read
Lafayette residents have lost more income than they did in the 1980s
You often hear that as bad as the economy is now, at least it’s not as bad as the 1980s. But in terms of impact on personal income, new data shows that it’s actually worse.
6 min read
COLUMN: Cutting quality of life services will backfire, hurting Lafayette’s economy for years to come
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.
10 min read
Column: Lafayette’s economy needs a mask mandate now
Lafayette’s economy can’t get healthy if its people aren’t healthy. The only way to slow the spread of this coronavirus is to get 80-90% of people to wear masks or to shut the everything back down again. Faced with those options, Lafayette needs to do everything in its power to get people to wear masks, not just to save lives but to save our economy.
6 min read
COLUMN: It’s time for Lafayette to take its housing crisis seriously
Lafayette is facing a severe housing crisis, with thousands of people at risk of losing their homes. This crisis started before the pandemic, but the coronavirus and its impact on our economy has just added fuel to a fire that’s now threatening to rage through our community.
6 min read
Retail sales fall $112 million in Lafayette
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.
3 min read