Early voting on tax proposition opens April 15
Early voting for the April 29 election will open April 15 with a single proposition on St. Mary ballots, a proposed Morgan City sales tax to raise police and firefighter pay and to train new hires in those departments.
If passed, the measure would levy a 0.5% sales tax in perpetuity for those purposes. The tax is expected to raise $1.3 million a year.
Morgan City officials say pay in the police and fire departments falls badly short of the average for colleagues from Franklin to Houma.
The result, outgoing Police Chief James F. Blair told the City Council before he retired last year, is that 40 police officers had left the department in the previous three years, a rate he called unsustainable.
In an interview last month, Mayor Lee Dragna said hiring each new employee can cost the city thousands of dollars. The city government must pay officers while they’re trained, pay for the training itself and assign a supervisor for officers who have recently completed training.
The Morgan City Fire Department has its own struggles with low pay and high turnover. Chief Alvin Cockerham told the Review recently that, short of firefighters and without funds for overtime, he has been forced to close a fire station at times because he didn’t have the people to meet state requirements for operating firetrucks.
Dragna said the sales tax is a way to put fire and police pay on a firm footing for the future and to provide for the training of new hires.
In St. Mary, only registered Morgan City voters will take part in the April 29 balloting and its early voting period. In-person voter registration has closed, but you have until Saturday to register using the geauxvote.com app.
Early voting will run April 15-22, excluding Sunday, April 16. Early voting hours are 8:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Registered Morgan City voters may vote at either the Parish Courthouse in Franklin or 301 Third St. in Morgan City.
On April 29, election day, Morgan City voters can cast ballots at their precincts 7 a.m.-8 p.m.