Menard hopes to put infrastructure plan before the voters
By William Johnson    January 1, 2008
wjohnson@dailyworld.com

Parish President Don Menard has many goals for the coming year from economic development to improved efforts to clean up abandoned property. But they all pale when it comes to his number one priority.

"Roads, roads, roads," said Menard, who hopes to put a new roads proposal before the voters this year.

He said exactly what that proposal will be depends on the will of the new parish council that takes office this month.

It may be a modification of Menard's earlier Roads For Our Future plan or it may be something entirely new. Whatever it is, Menard said it must involve two central concepts.

"Consolidation and dedication," Menard said. "We need to make better use of the what we have."

The 13-member parish council, which will feature eight new faces this year, will hold an orientation meeting Jan. 11 and Menard said roads will be a central portion of that meeting.

"I will explain our roads proposal to them and explain why I proposed the Roads For Our Future plan," Menard said. "I will show them the finances and what's not happening in those districts so we can hit the ground running."

Menard's two key components were at the center of his earlier plan, which was rejected by the voters in late 2006.

That plan called for consolidating and expanding the parish's nine existing roads special taxing districts to create a single, parishwide district dedicated solely to road construction.

At its core, Menard's plan argued that the parish is not a poor parish. Instead, it just does a terrible job with the money it already has.

For all but the four council districts in the Eunice area, which currently have no road taxing districts of their own, his plan would have moved current tax revenues from the district to the parish level.

With the new parish council form of government, which took effect in 2004, the six smallest road districts came under the parish's authority.

While the money those districts generate can only be spent in their home district, Menard still considers it a step in the right direction.

The problem is those six districts generate only a small fraction of the parish's total road taxes.

Thanks largely to taxes paid by four industries - The Wal-Mart Distribution Center, Valero Refinery, Roy Martin Lumber and Transco Gas - the three districts that operate completely outside of parish authority last year generated $3.2 million - 70 percent of all the parish's road tax money.

"Only 12 percent of that is dedicated to blacktopping; 88 percent is being used to maintain roads that are beyond the point of maintenance. It is easy to see why nothing is being done," Menard said. "For the most part, (the roads in these three districts) are as bad or worse than the roads in the rest of the parish."

He called consolidation of funding the most important job remaining for the new Home Rule form of government.

"We have consolidated everything but finances. We are still stumbling along with financing like it was done under the police jury form of government. It is just not going to work," Menard said.

He said he believes the new council will be more receptive to the idea of consolidation than its predecessor - most of whose members had started their political careers as police jurors.

"When they were out campaigning, they heard the same thing I've heard - 'What are you going to do for our roads?'" Menard said.