Parish salary review gets SCPDC support

South Central Planning and Development Commission CEO Kevin Belanger told the Terrebonne Parish Council at its meeting last Wednesday that he supports Parish President Michel Claudet’s plan to hire an outside consulting firm to restructure parish employee salaries.

Claudet wants the parish council to retain the Dallas firm Waters Consulting Group to do the restructuring as part of a push to make parish employee salaries more competitive with the private sector. Waters would receive $69,800 for its services.

“I believe the parish needs to evaluate its pay range,” Belanger said. “The cost itself is unreal.”

He said the probable cost for South Central Planning to do the restructuring would be between $75,000 and $100,000.

The parish hired Waters in 1997 to do similar work. Belanger said the firm’s work from that year offers built-in savings if a new restructuring is performed.

Belanger said, “Lots of data they have, no one else has.”

Also at last Wednesday’s meeting, the council passed a resolution inviting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to attend a council meeting later in March or April to discuss the Corps’ re-evaluation of the Morganza-to-the-Gulf project.

Morganza is a federal-state project, which will pay for hurricane protection levees in Terrebonne Parish and locks on the Houma Navigation Canal.

Money for the billion-dollar project was authorized in last year’s federal Water Resources Development Act, but the Corps is asserting the cost of the project was underestimated and needs to be evaluated again.

No money for the project was allocated by Congress.

In a March 7 letter addressed to Col. Alvin Lee with the Corps’ New Orleans District, Council Chairman Clayton Voisin and Claudet wrote that they are frequently asked by parish residents about hurricane protection and that the Morganza-to-the-Gulf project re-evaluation is a source of frustration.

U.S. Sen. David Vitter asked the Corps in a March 11 news release to start constructing at least parts of Morganza while the agency performs the re-evaluation, instead of delaying the entire project.

“The Corps has saddled this worthy project with extraordinary delay, and it is time for them to step up and explain themselves,” Vitter wrote.

“We need to move forward on the Morganza to the Gulf project and improve protection for the residents of Terrebonne and Lafourche,” he added.