Human West Nile case: Report it or not?

FRANKLIN – Should the parish or state governments notify the public when West Nile virus cases are discovered?
The St. Mary Parish Council wrestled with that question Wednesday without a resolution. But members did learn about the steps taken to monitor mosquito-borne diseases.
Also at Wednesday’s council meeting, an administration ordinance that would put a cap on parish borrowing was introduced.
Parish President Sam Jones said a cash-strapped transportation program will receive its full allocation for the current year. And the council will have to try again to reject a personnel policy manual that one councilman says could land the parish in legal trouble.
Mosquito
program
The council heard that a woman in western St. Mary Parish has been infected with the West Nile virus. People infected with the mosquito-borne disease most often show no symptoms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A small number will exhibit flu-like symptoms. In an even smaller number of cases, infection can lead to serious neuroinvasive conditions such as encephalitis or meningitis.
Councilman J Ina of Franklin put discussion of reporting policy on the agenda. That brought Jean Paul Bourg of Morgan City to the lectern.
Bourg, a former parish chief administrative officer and public works director, helped start the parish’s in-house mosquito program eight years ago.
The program has 15 mosquito traps around the parish, Bourg said. Each is checked twice a week, and trapped mosquitoes are sent to a lab in Baton Rouge for testing.
On the following Tuesday, the lab sends the results of the test to the parish. Positive tests are also reported to the program in a Department of Health publication.
If West Nile or other target diseases are detected, additional mosquito spraying begins in that area.
People think the program is about spraying, but it’s really about surveillance, Bourg said.
“We want to catch it in the mosquito,” Bourg said. “We don’t want to wait until it’s in a human.”
Ina said the CDC guidelines call for public disclosure of positive tests.
CAO Paul Governale questioned whether reporting would have been appropriate in the single human case when it’s not clear that the disease was transmitted in the parish.
Debt limit
An ordinance introduced at the request of the parish administration
(Continued on Page 11)
would limit bonded debt to 21% of the parish’s anticipated revenue. The ordinance includes an exemption for emergencies such as hurricane recovery.
The parish will need time to pay its way down to that level of debt.
An audit of the parish’s 2024 budget, issued in March 2026, showed revenue of about $27 million. The current level of bonded debt is about $30 million. The biggest share is more than $16 million left to be repaid from two $10 million bond issues in 2019.
Those bonds raised money for parish road improvements. The parish shared some of the proceeds with municipalities for their own road work.
The parish has struggled with tight budgets for the last three years. During his 2023 campaign for president, Jones blamed the financial straits on failure to take advantage of grant opportunities and on parish borrowing.
While Jones has criticized the level of debt, others, including former President David Hanagriff, have defended the bond issues as a way to deal with deteriorating infrastructure.
Twenty days must elapse between an ordinance’s introduction and a public hearing and passage vote.
Transportation
program
One casualty of the parish’s budget troubles has been funding for St. Mary Community Action Agency transportation and nutrition programs.
The parish paid only 75% of nongovernmental agency requests in 2025, including the Community Action Agency’s $69,500 request for transportation and nutrition.
The Community Action Agency’s Jeffery Beverly told the council last month that reduced funding has forced officials to prioritize transportation requests, including those from seniors seeking a way to get to medical treatment.
Beverly and others spoke of patients who have been forced to walk four or five miles to get home after dialysis or miss treatments altogether.
On Wednesday, Jones told the council that the CAA will receive its final quarterly payment in 2026 for a total of $69,500. That includes $45,500 for transportation and $24,000 for nutrition.
Personnel
policy
Last month, the council voted to do away with a 2024 personnel policy manual. Councilman the Rev. Craig Mathews of Jeanerette warned that inequities in the manual and limited access to grievance procedures could expose parish governments to lawsuits or even bankruptcy.
His motion included a review of three years’ worth of disciplinary action against personnel by the parish government.
On Wednesday, Mathews said advice from legal counsel indicates that overturning the 2024 ordinance requires an ordinance rather than a motion.
But he encouraged the council to look for legal help with the review of past disciplinary action.