From the Editor: The best time you'll ever have at a City Council meeting

As much as we all admire civic participation, the basic city council meeting isn’t something you could call riveting, let alone entertaining.
Tuesday’s Morgan City Council meeting was different, in a good way, starting with the key to the city awarded to gold- and bronze-medalist Vernon Norwood, fresh from the Tokyo Olympics. Our story on that part of the meeting was published Wednesday and is at StMaryNow.com.
Gerald Thibodeaux presented the 2020 audit and described the city’s finances as “steady.” Courtney Long and Danika Foley Long gave the Recreation Department $1,000 raised through a police officer-firefighter basketball game.
Grace Eisenman received a Positive Image award for creating The Market in an old supermarket building to give arts and crafts people a place to show and sell their work.
But the happiest part of the evening was feeling once more the sense of relief that we were spared a direct hit by a Category 4 hurricane, and the sense of pride in what our neighbors have been doing for those who weren’t.
On Tuesday, Mayor Lee Dragna dished out praise for department heads and city employees for their efforts after the storm.
Hurricane Ida came ashore 73 miles away at Port Fourchon on Aug. 29 as one of the strongest storms ever to hit Louisiana. But power was restored in most of Morgan City by the following day.
The mayor praised utility crews for their quick work.
When the power came on, east St. Mary saw increased traffic as evacuees returned from the west and people from hard-hit areas to the east came here looking for groceries and fuel. Long lines at gas stations were common in the first week.
All that traffic led to extra work for police officers, who still managed to find a way to bring water and other supplies to colleagues in some of the areas with the most severe damage.
Other local police departments faced the same challenges. Patterson Police Chief Garrett Grogan assigned officers to make sure tempers didn’t get out of control at the gasoline lines.
One day during the week after Ida struck, I was making the rounds and found Berwick Assistant Chief JP Henry making sandwiches in a break room. The sandwiches were for officers who were on traffic duty around town.
Back in Morgan City on Tuesday, the council gave one of its Positive Image awards to the Clarion Inn, 520 Roderick St. Dragna praised the hotel for making the extra effort to make sure people the hotel took in were fed and had clean clothing.
General Manager Kristy Gant, who accepted the award, said 200 utility linemen stayed at the hotel.
Port of Morgan City Executive Director Raymond “Mac” Wade was at the meeting to report on port operations. But he also said the port’s facilities housed Coast Guard members who were displaced by damage in the severely damaged areas to the east.
The Emergency Operations Center housed some of them. Another 70 stayed at the port on Youngs Road, where the Coast Guard set up mobile kitchens, showers and other facilities.
Disconnected
Of course, not everything worked as it should after Ida. Cellphone service was spotty at best in the week or so after the storm.
The biggest carrier, AT&T, became the target of criticism from state lawmakers representing the hurricane zone as well as from Sen. John Kennedy, R-La.
Kennedy wrote to CEO John Stankey “condemning AT&T’s failure to maintain its network in Louisiana when Hurricane Ida hit,” according to a press release from the senator’s office.
From the letter:
“I write to you today regarding AT&T’s failure to maintain network operations during Hurricane Ida, including the emergency first responder call systems that so many parishes and cities rely on that AT&T exclusively serves. As you know, on Sunday, August 29th, Hurricane Ida made landfall in southeast Louisiana as a Category 4 storm. When Hurricane Ida hit, AT&T’s network —including the First Responder Network (FirstNet) — failed. Countless Louisianans were left without the ability to complete calls or send texts.
“The failure of AT&T’s network impacted people from all across the state, with at least four parishes reporting 911 systems being down. When Louisianans tried to make calls to 911 the calls couldn’t be completed. When loved ones tried to contact family and friends they couldn’t. Residents even lacked the ability to send and receive life-saving updates. This is unacceptable, especially when contrasted with widespread reports of competitor networks faring better.
“It is my understanding that AT&T is the service provider for all 911 call centers in Louisiana. Further, it is my understanding that AT&T was awarded a 25-year, $6.5 billion contract to build and maintain a nationwide network for public safety — FirstNet. … FirstNet promised to absolutely ensure communications services for first responders during the most serious and unprecedented disasters. Unfortunately, emergency calls didn’t make it to first responders and there is widespread acknowledgment from government officials and emergency responders that much of the call routing technology they rely on is antiquated and in need of replacement or upgrade.”
Kennedy asked AT&T why its network suffered greater outages than its competitors, how much money AT&T invested in deploying and expanding FirstNet coverage in Louisiana over the past five years and what AT&T is doing to improve its network resiliency, among other questions.
Bill Decker is managing editor of The Daily Review.