Esma Orgeron
July 2, 2007
NSU business college dean elected to state CPA board
July 4, 2007The Terrebonne-Lafourche Boundary Committee met Thursday with Bayou Blue residents to discuss establishing the middle of Bayou Blue as the fixed border between Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes.
The informal committee is comprised of councilpersons and officials from both parishes. The meeting was held at the Bayou Blue Fire Station.
Though area residents have long recognized the bayou as the dividing line between the two parishes, Louisiana State Land Office maps place the border northeast of Gray along a line running up to one-third of a mile east of the bayou.
A Tobin Survey Map from the early 1960s, which used property records obtained from the parishes’ courthouses, set the border along Bayou Blue in the area.
Shifting the boundary to align with the Tobin Survey map would transfer the slice of land near Gray currently in Terrebonne Parish to Lafourche.
The need to affix the border along Bayou Blue arose around three years ago when, according to Gray-area Councliwoman Teri Cavalier, a woman was barred from running for a seat on a parish board because Land Office maps showed her living in the wrong parish.
Both Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes would need to pass ordinances setting the new boundary. The Louisiana Legislature would then have to pass a law affixing the border.
State Sen. Reggie Dupre, and state Rep. Gordon Dove have stated that they will sponsor the legislation.
“This committee has to determine where the boundary is,” said committee co-chair Mark Atzenhoffer, a Lafourche Parish councilman who represents Bayou Blue.
Atzenhoffer asked the audience, “How many of you think you live in Lafourche, that Bayou Blue is the boundary?”
“Most think” the bayou is the border, he said. “But the state doesn’t say that. We want to tell the state to move the boundary to Bayou Blue.
“The state map line is recognized, not Bayou Blue,” he said.
Since next year is a fiscal-only session for the Louisiana Legislature, any border change would have to wait at least two years.
Grand Bois residents are also facing a similar boundary issue.
As at the Terrebonne-Lafourche Boundary Committee meeting held in Bourg for Grand Bois residents June 4, the largest issue concerning speakers at the meetings is the possibility that a boundary shift would require residents in the disputed area who send their children to schools in Terrebonne Parish to enroll their children in the Lafourche school system.
Terrebonne Parish School Board member Rickie Pitre said that students living in the disputed area attending Terrebonne Parish schools are not allowed to play sports in grades seven through 12.
He said that participating in sports programs should not be denied to any student in the public school system.
“We’re not going to interrupt a child’s education,” Pitre said.
Lafourche Parish resident Janet Naquin said she had a friend who lived in the disputed area “whose child was denied everything” in Terrebonne Parish schools.
Speakers at the meeting were close to evenly split between supporters of the two school systems.
Bayou Blue-Lafourche resident James Cobb called the center of the bayou the dividing line between the two parishes.
“I had three sons who went to Thibodaux High,” he said. “Lafourche Parish is a good parish.”
Ronica Day, a secretary at Central Lafourche High School, said that people moving into the disputed area ask her, “If I want to go to Lafourche schools, where do I live?”
However, Nolon LeBouef, a Gibson resident who owns property in Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes, said he moved his family to Gibson because “we wanted our kids to go to Terrebonne Parish schools.”
Terrebonne Parish resident Debbie Stein said she does not “want to go to Lafourche. I want my son going to Terrebonne schools because they’re closer.”
Another speaker, citing discipline problems at the school, said that he was scared to send his two girls to Raceland Junior High School.
Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph, at the Grand Bois meeting, said, “Schools in Terrebonne are not necessarily better than ones in Lafourche.”
At the Bayou Blue meeting, Randolph said, “We want Lafourche people to stay in Lafourche. We’re not going to do this to the point where we will discriminate against people.”
