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Buschel, Hollier chair committees
Wants references before local board
appointments made
Where the new St. Landry Parish Council voted for new blood at the top, selecting newly-elected District 4 Councilman Kenneth Vidrine as its chairman, it voted Monday for continuity at the committee level.
District 5 Councilman Ronald Buschel, who is one of the longest serving council members, was elected to head the Parish Public Works Committee and returning District 7 Councilman Albert Hollier was elected to head the Administrative and Finance Committee.
"I appreciate the opportunity you have given me to serve," Buschel said. "I hope I can live up to your expectations.""I promise to give it all I've got," echoed Hollier.
The board also asked that future appointments made to boards, such as water districts and road commissions, have references submitted before selections are made.
Much of the rest of the meeting was taking up with housekeeping matters.
In addition to Buschel, council members Fekisha Miller, Hurlin Dupre, Jay Guidry, Glenn Stout and Jimmy Edwards will make up the public works committee.
Serving with Hollier on the administrative and finance committee will be council members Jerry Red, Dexter Brown, Gary Courville, Leon Robinson and Pam Gautreaux.
As council chairman, Vidrine will serve as an ex officio member of both committees.
The duties of these committees are to debate issues within their area of responsibility and forward their recommendation to the full council for consideration.
In other action, the council voted to place District 3 Councilwoman Miller on the community development and health and human resources committees of the state Police Jury Association. These were posts her father, Pat Miller, had held and the council felt it was only right she should carry on his duties.
Probably the biggest change the council voted to accept was in the area of appointments to the boards of the dozens of different road, drainage, fire and other taxing districts that dot the parish.
Until now, the committees have more or less acted on their own. It has been tradition for years to simply reappoint committee members over and over again whenever their two, three or four year appointment ended.
Working on recommendations from Vidrine and District 9 Councilman Stout, the council now wants to open the appointment process to the public at large.
To do this, it plans to publish notice of up coming vacancies in the newspaper and give interested parties 90 days to apply.
Where in the past the council voted on such appointments with little more than a nominee's name to go by, the council is now preparing a more complicated application form including qualifications and brief resume for each nominee.
"Anyone out there should have the right to apply," Stout said.
District 8 Councilwoman Pam Gautreaux urged the council to also request a minimum of two personal or professional references.
"We don't want any criminals running our drainage boards or our hospitals," Gautreaux said.
Parish President Don Menard praised the idea. "This will allow the public to see that these are not just little political fiefdoms," Menard said