Terrebonne’s District 6 voters to decide parish council seat Saturday

One thing both Steve Robichaux and Kevin Voisin – candidates in the runoff for the Terrebonne Parish Council’s District 6 seat-agree on is that voter turnout will be low in the Dec. 6 election.

“There’s a lot less awareness of the election,” Voisin said. “There’s not an election for president. I’m hoping for a 20 percent (turnout), but realistically it will be 12 to 16 percent.”

“We’ll be lucky to get 150, 160 early voters,” said Robichaux, who works as a sales representative. “It’ll be interesting to see who gets the vote out the most.”

Robichaux’s prediction is pretty much on the mark. According to the Clerk of Court’s Office, 147 early voters cast ballots last week and 34 mail-in votes were received.

The seat became vacant earlier this year following the death of incumbent Leland Robichaux.

Steve Robichaux, who received 42 percent of the primary vote in a three-candidate field, said he is doing the usual candidate’s routine: making phone calls, advertising and talking to voters in the district.

The biggest issue he wants to address is the high rates charged to Houma residents for electricity by the City of Houma Electric Utility System.

He said he wants to conduct a full survey to find out why the parish charges a high price for electricity.

Not only that, he wants the revenue surplus generated by Houma’s utility system to be spent on residents in Houma, not deposited in the parish’s general fund.

As for the placing of billboards along the extension of Valhi Boulevard past Hollywood Road, Robichaux’s against it. The Terrebonne Parish Council is voting on the issue this week.

“It’s more of a residential area,” he said. “They should not be allowed. It’s just my opinion.”

Robichaux, 46, feels zoning in the district and in the parish needs to be more proactive. Uncertainty about the status of a piece of land is detrimental to economic progress.

“Whether it’s residences or businesses, if it’s up in the air, it’s a gamble for the person buying the land,” he said.

Like Voisin, he would like to see more parks and green spaces in Terrebonne.

Robichaux, a member of the Terrebonne Beautification Project Committee, said the parish needs to improve on the battle against littering.

“We need to take more pride in the areas where we live, to have more clean areas. We need to educate each other,” he said.

Robichaux graduated from H.L. Bourgeois High School and attended Mississippi College and Nicholls State University.

Voisin’s solution to the problem of funding the creation of green spaces is simple: put the pathways on top of the levees.

Developing parks and natural spaces in Terrebonne is one of Voisin’s main themes in his campaign. He is a graduate of the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts and attended Brigham Young University.

“While the kids play, parents need recreation,” he said. “We need to improve our quality of life. You can’t have economic development without quality of life.”

Another plank in his campaign is pushing for the construction of locks on the Houma Navigation Canal.

“They should have put up locks when it was dug,” he said.

He feels levee-building in Terrebonne should come at the expense of almost anything else.

As an example, Voisin, vice president of marketing for Motivatit Seafoods in Houma, said that Terrebonne spends $550,000 a year subsidizing its transit system, amounting to a subsidy of $5 for an individual rider each trip.

For Voisin, 32, that is money not spent on levees.

On other matters, he agrees with Robichaux about billboards not being permitted on Valhi Boulevard.

“No one wants their neighborhood to be one long billboard,” he said. “You can’t let developers dictate.”

But perhaps his biggest peeve is with the way the Terrebonne Parish Council allows add-on items to be placed on its agenda, even awarding large contracts. Voisin addressed the parish council about the issue at its last meeting.

“I won’t stand for it, unless it’s for the day after a storm. That makes sense,” said Voisin, who received 32 percent of the primary vote.

“The public doesn’t have time to see how their dollars are spent,” he said. “The whole idea is to let the public see. Add-ons give too much latitude to the council.”