Amik Robertson re-opens recruitment
January 4, 2017
Terrebonne rings in 2017 with restoration work
January 4, 2017
The past year came with many headlines in the realm of local news. This past week, we recapped the top stories from the past week, and they are listed below.
1. Local economic slump continues
More than 10,000 jobs have been eliminated at local companies since 2014, state records and other sources indicate, as a slump attributed to low oil prices. The effects have spread beyond oilfield supply companies, and have left stark evidence of hard times on downtown Houma.
The original Samurai Dragon, a popular Japanese restaurant on Main Street went away after 13 years in business. It has since re-opened. Bar Roussell, an upscale bar owned by State Sen. Norby Chabert, also closed its doors.
Despite some other businesses opening in place of those that have folded, the local economy is still slow to recover from a spiral that has yet to end.
Terrebonne tax revenues through July 2016 were down 12 percent compared to revenue through July last year.
A lack of spending due to less overall prosperity and waning consumer confidence has also harmed the local real estate business.
For those local companies and workers directly servicing oil extraction, there is no mistaking the connection between the overall oilfield downturn and local fortunes.
Businesses have forced employees to retire early, laid off employees and some have implemented furloughs, where employees may be paid for only three weeks out of four. Others have reduced workforce through attrition, where those who leave, whether via retirement, layoff or quitting, are not replaced.
2. Houma blog stirs passions and lawsuits
Postings on a blog called ExposeDat – shared from the Facebook page of a fictitious person named John Turner – alleged a web of corruption among Terrebonne Parish officials. It did not draw significant attention beyond folks in public life originally.
Houma insurance broker Tony Alford, accused on the blog of favorable treatment by Terrebonne Parish President Gordon Dove because of their various business relationships, cried foul and made a criminal defamation complaint, resulting in a warrant for seizure of electronic devices traced to Houma cop Wayne Anderson’s home as part of the investigation into alleged violation of Louisiana’s criminal defamation law. Executed by Sheriff Jerry Larpenter’s deputies, the raid drew attention because the sheriff’s wife, Priscilla, works for Alford, and Alford’s firm handles insurance for the Sheriff’s Office employees.
The warrant was later declared invalid and the property belonging to Wayne Anderson and his wife, Jennifer, was returned. But the action resulted in headlines right through the end of this year.
The Andersons are now suing Terrebonne Parish President Gordon Dove and the parish government, Alford and the Terrebonne Levee and Conservation District board over which he presides, as well as Larpenter and his office. The claim is that all defendants in the civil case conspired to deprive the Andersons of their constitutionally protected free speech rights.
Relationships brought into question by the ExposeDat blog, meanwhile, were in large part declared legal by the Louisiana Board of Ethics and Attorney General Jeff Landry. Dove has branded the lawsuit frivolous and without merit, as has Larpenter. A federal judge will ultimately decide.
3. Lafourche Parish President under official fire
Lafourche Parish President Jimmy Cantrelle behaved badly – though not with criminality – when he squeezed staffers to make some personnel transfers and engineer some raises for key employees, in return for his support of an employee insurance plan they favored. Cantrelle himself favored a different plan, which he said was a better deal for the parish. District Attorney Cam Morvant made that determination after being asked to look into the matter by the Parish Council. Also ill-advised but not criminally actionable, according to Morvant, was the decision to target a parish employee for testing under a “random” drug testing program.
Cantrelle himself has not commented on Morvant’s findings, and in 2017 more controversy is expected during appeals of firings by Cantrelle of some other employees.
Morvant’s report does not mean the end of official review for Cantrelle. Several of the matters studied by Morvant are expected to be looked at by the Louisiana Board of Ethics, which can make determinations as to whether the state’s ethics code was violated.
4. Local school ratings rise
School systems in both Terrebonne and Lafourche made big strides last year, with state evaluations tagging Lafourche with the highest letter grade possible and Terrebonne with more work left to do. Nonetheless, school district ratings from the Louisiana Department of Education for the 2015-16 school year took big jumps from the previous year.
Lafourche Parish School District made the leap to an “A” grade from the Louisiana Department of Education. The school district’s score increased from 95.8 in 2014-15 to 102.2 in 2015-16, passing the 100-point threshold to receive the state’s highest letter grade. The Terrebonne Parish School District made an almost five-point increase from 90.5 to 95.1 this past year, earning a “B” both years but moving the district considerably closer to an A.
The state’s grades for schools and school districts are based on state exam performance, graduation rates in high schools, ACT scores and performance levels among minority students, students with disabilities and those deemed economically disadvantaged.
Lafourche had 39 percent of third through eighth grade students score at Mastery or higher on their state exams, compared with a 33 percent mark statewide. Terrebonne was slightly better than the state with a 34 percent mark.
Superintendents in both school districts praised their students and staffs for the accomplishments.
5. Lafourche would dedicate existing tax to turf
The Lafourche Parish School Board plans to use an existing millage now up for renewal to build turf fields for school athletics. The grass fields currently in use, coaches and other officials say, are under too much continuous use, to a point where a safety hazard exists.
The millage, in place since 1979, was originally enacted to provide air conditioning for area schools and to pay for Larose Elementary’s construction. It has been continually renewed by taxpayers.
The replacements would be done at Thibodaux, Central Lafourche and South Lafourche high schools.
The need for new fields has been a major talking point in recent years, especially when wet summers dampen the fields throughout the fall.
While the renewal of the millage for bonds the school district has routinely issued since 1979 will not cost taxpayers any more than they already fork out, another school board proposal would raise the sales tax that everyone in the parish pays.
A proposed one-cent tax would be used to raise teacher pay in Lafourche. Terrebonne Parish voters approved a half-cent sales tax in 2014 to cover teacher raises.
The continuance of the millage and the new sales tax would independently have to be approved by voters as two separate issues. So far opposition to the plans appears minimal.
Terrebonne’s sales tax increase had to be put to voters twice. The first time, in 2013, voters rejected the plan, which was not supported by the parish’s Chamber of Commerce. The organization worked with school officials to help pass a revised version of the sales tax plan that won passage.
6. TRMC Wellness Center opens
One of the Bayou Region’s biggest hospitals finally overcame delays that lasted years and opened its 242,000 square foot wellness center, bringing a comprehensive facility geared toward illness prevention.
The Thibodaux Regional Medical Center’s Wellness Center, CEO Greg Stock said, marked a major milestone in local health care when it opened in November.
The facility includes an Imaging Center, a Sports Medicine Center, a Pain Center, a full-sized pool and a basketball gym.
Trainers work on-site and individual patients can create exercise and lifestyle plans tailored to their specific needs.
The site also uses energy innovations, including elevators that generate power through their movement.
7. Triple-killer sentenced to die
A Lafourche Parish jury sentenced a Houma killer to death Nov. 1 for taking the live of a woman her two little girls in 2012.
David Brown, 38, was convicted of murdering 29-year-old Jacquelin Nieves, her 7-year-old daughter and her daughters, 7-year-old Gabriela and 1-year-old Izabela.
Brown sexually assaulted the mother and the 7-year-old; all three were stabbed to death and Brown then set the family’s Lockport apartment afire.
“Justice was done,” said District Attorney Cam Morvant, who prosecuted the case.
New Orleans attorney Kerry Cuccia, who mounted a vigorous defense during the fact-finding portion of Brown’s trial, expressed disappointment with the outcome. During the penalty phase of the trial, Brown opted to represent himself.
Long-standing law has required that juries must first decide whether first-degree murder has been committed before separately deciding the question of whether a defendant should live or die.
The Brown case marke the first time in four decades that a death penalty has been imposed in Lafourche Parish.
8. KKK recruitment draws sneers from cops
Local law enforcement agencies said thanks but no thanks to white supremacists who staged a July recruitment drive in a Houma subdivision during which they expressed a desire to aid cops by being anti-crime eyes and ears in local communities.
Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Jerry Larpenter scoffed at the suggestions made by members of the Patriotic Brigade Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, who distributed fliers overnight in the Mulberry subdivision encouraging residents to join them in fighting crime and what they deem to be evil. The flier distribution was part of a multi-state blitz by Klan-related groups.
The recruitment effort was part of a multi-state blitz by Klan groups.
The fliers included criticism of the Black Lives Matter movement, which was garnering headlines during protests against allegedly excessive use of force by police in various cities.
Klan leaders said in interviews that they are part of a kinder, gentler white heritage movement that does not burn crosses or terrorize people. Local officials scoffed at that contention as well, as did leaders of organizations like the Anti Defamation League of B’Nai Brith and the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, both of which monitor extremist activity nationwide.
9. Central Houma street violence draws words and concern
The murder of a Houma teen, found dead in a park near the Bayou Towers senior housing complex, drew expressions of concern from local political leaders and renewed calls for aggressive mentoring of youth at risk from street violence.
The body of Roderick “R.J.” Davis, pierced by multiple gunshot wounds, was found at around 5 a.m. July 11, on the well-tended grass of Scott Lane Park, a multi-purpose field in Central Houma used for sports leagues and children’s Easter egg hunts. The shooting, city police determined, occurred around 11:15 p.m. the night before, when they responded to reports of shots fired in the vicinity.
No guns were found, but a small quantity of illegal drugs was recovered at the scene.
Within 24 hours, police had three teens in custody but released one for lack of evidence. Criminal proceedings are still pending against a 16-year-old cousin of the victim and a 14-year-old.
Times coverage of the case spotlighted a distressing subculture of violence in some neighborhoods reflected by hip-hop videos that include rampant displays of semi-automatic weapons. Police have tied the Davis death and other murders stretching back to 2015 to an out-of-control culture of young drug entrepreneurs.
Terrebonne Parish Councilman John Navy introduced several ordinances to help police keep a closer watch on neighborhoods and continued encouragement has been given to neighborhood watch groups, as police work on better relations with community members to aid them in investigations.
10. Locals boost cop morale and aid flood victims
Throughout the summer of 2016 community reactions to questionable police shootings of civilians throughout the US drew bitter protest. In some cases – as in Baton Rouge and Dallas – police officers became targets of gunmen in ambush attacks.
Protests did not emerge in the Bayou Region, nor did anti-police violence.
But recognizing the emotional toll slayings of officers in other places could take on local law enforcers, churches, community groups and individuals acting on their own bestowed pizzas, sweets of all types and various gifts.
Officers said they were overwhelmed by the show of support from their neighbors.
Local hearts, minds and hands – along with dollars – found their way to Baton Rouge and surrounding communities as well for flood relief. Local residents scrambled to offer help ranging from fund-raising to muscle, as was the case with local boatmen who joined the efforts of the so-called “Cajun Navy” drawn from all areas in Louisiana to help with aid and rescue.
Churches prepared gift baskets and traveled to stricken areas to cook onsite, seeing that volunteers, first-responders and victims were fed and kept comfortable.
“We have to help,” said Kimberly Chauvin, a shrimp dealer and boat owner in Chauvin who was among locals preparing aid packages from her church.
She and others said that locals know too well the devastation that attacks from Mother Nature can cause.
“We don’t know how to not help,” Chauvin said.. •
No. 1 Local economic slump continues
More than 10,000 jobs have been eliminated at local companies since 2014, state records and other sources indicate, as a slump attributed to low oil prices. The effects have spread beyond oilfield supply companies, and have left stark evidence of hard times on downtown Houma.
The original Samurai Dragon, a popular Japanese restaurant on Main Street went away after 13 years in business. It has since re-opened. Bar Roussell, an upscale bar owned by State Sen. Norby Chabert, also closed its doors.
Despite some other businesses opening in place of those that have folded, the local economy is still slow to recover from a spiral that has yet to end.
Terrebonne tax revenues through July 2016 were down 12 percent compared to revenue through July last year.
A lack of spending due to less overall prosperity and waning consumer confidence has also harmed the local real estate business.
For those local companies and workers directly servicing oil extraction, there is no mistaking the connection between the overall oilfield downturn and local fortunes.
Businesses have forced employees to retire early, laid off employees and some have implemented furloughs, where employees may be paid for only three weeks out of four. Others have reduced workforce through attrition, where those who leave, whether via retirement, layoff or quitting, are not replaced.
