Lafourche council to consider nominees for prison’s 5-star committee

At its Aug. 12 meeting, the Lafourche Parish Council is set to approve the remaining members of the newly appointed jail improvement committee and schedule its first official meeting.

The Five-Star Committee, spearheaded by District 7 Councilman L. Philip Gouaux, will research the parish’s funding sources and examine where existing millages can be consolidated, rededicated or eliminated to funnel funds into improvements to the parish jail.

Each councilman was asked to select a representative to form the 15-member committee.

The recently appointed members include Ronnie Winston of District 1; Sharleen Hotard, District 2; Rick Bouterie, District 3; Scott Silverii, District 4; Charlene Rodriguez, District 5; Danny Eschete; District 6; Mark Atzenhoffer, District 7; Kris Gaudet, District 8; and Kenneth Doucet, District 9.

Parish President Charlotte Randolph selected Shelly Toups and Barry Uzee as her representatives, and District Attorney Cam Morvant appointed Alfred Delaune.

Dr. Stephen Hulbert, president of Nicholls State University, Sheriff Craig Webre and the Chamber of Lafourche have yet to make their appointments.

Gouaux said the final members could be named at the Aug. 12 meeting.

With the majority of the committee appointed, Gouaux said he was satisfied with the caliber of representatives that were nominated, but he was not pleased with the overall progress of the committee formation.

“The people that have been selected to serve on the committee are key people in the community, and that’s what we wanted. But the time it is taking to actually form the committee is going at a very slow pace,” he said. “We have enough members on the board to begin having meetings and I am going to suggest that they get the ball rolling.”

Gouaux will ask the council to approve an official committee meeting date of Aug. 19 in the council chambers of the Barrios Center in Raceland. He said the meeting will be to elect a chairman, co-chair and secretary.

The Lafourche Parish Council first began talking about forming the Five Star Committee at its April 8 meeting. Gouaux presented the council with a copy of a similar study done by the Blue Ribbon Committee in 2001. The committee disbanded shortly after the 2005 storms.

“Developing a committee like this will allow us to gain data on where we can consolidate some of our boards in the parish and rededicate some of the millages and reduce the parish’s millage obligations,” Gouaux said.

“The finding will help us support the building of a jail and make Lafourche Parish a more efficient and business-oriented parish,” he added

In 2004, the council requested that the Blue Ribbon Committee research the makeup of all the taxing boards in the parish and give a recommendation on whether the boards could be consolidated or eliminated.

The Blue Ribbon report stated that the parish taxing structure was segmented in a way that would be difficult to properly manage as is. The committee recommended that the parish government be reorganized and a master strategic plan be created.

A year later, Nicholls State University’s economic and finance department tackled the parish’s taxing structure as a class project. The students examined the property and sales taxes for Lafourche Parish based on sufficiency, growth, fairness, stability, competitive rate, visibility, efficiency and inflation.

They also reported to the council that both the sales and property taxes were sufficient, yet new and never-funded mandates from the state and federal government may raise a problem for the parish in the future.

The group’s recommendation was that the parish does a better job of ensuring that its citizens are not exploited by the local government, and that the government provide services of greater value than the taxes levied.

The group believed that, in the long run, the parish could encourage businesses and potential citizens to relocate to Lafourche Parish, increasing the tax base instead of the tax rate.

Gouaux has requested that the new committee spend at least one year reviewing the parish’s current financial status, which includes reports from the Blue Ribbon Committee and the Nicholls students.

“I definitely want the group to review what the Nicholls students and the Blue Ribbon Committee unveiled about the parish several years ago. I think it will be of some assistance to them,” he said. “We need to get something done quickly. The parish jail is not going to last another three years.”