Parish Council votes to consolidate Morgan City, Amelia drainage districts

An ordinance consolidating two drainage districts was approved Wednesday by the St. Mary Parish Council.

According to Chief Administrative Officer Henry “Bo” LaGrange, the ordinance to consolidate District 2, Morgan City, with District 6, Amelia, passed in regular session 8-3 after a public hearing. The issue has been discussed in previous council meetings.

“This is going to be a process,” LaGrange said. “The next step is we’re advertising the vacancies for the five positions (on the board) and we anticipate appointing at the May 27 council meeting, then get those folks into an organizational meeting and get them to start working on transitioning operations and maintenance, as well as developing an overall business plan in terms of how they want to structure their operations, if they want to have a supervisor or superintendent to oversee everything.”

LaGrange said that the goal is to have the new board “comfortable enough” by August to call for a unified operation and maintenance millage election for the consolidated district, to be put on the Dec. 5 election.

That would be presented to the parish council in September to adopt the election, as well as seek bond commission approval.

“The idea is that the millage would be equal to or less than what folks are paying now,” LaGrange said. “They (the board) would not be able to levee that millage until the 2021 tax year, so in the interim, the underlying consolidated Districts 2 and 6 will continue to meet and levy their millage. If this case were to fail, the underlying districts would still levy their within their respective districts only.”

LaGrange said the funds held by those districts can only be spent within the boundaries of the districts if not consolidated.

“Once the consolidation is complete, they still must spend the money until it runs out in those districts,” he said. “You can’t combine it and spend it wherever, because there’s different calls from the tax election.

“My main comment to the council and anybody that’s asked me about it is that I’ve been around a long time and I’ve seen many consolidations the parish has done over the years, and at the end of the day, it’s always turned out to be a plus to the taxpayers in terms of reduced millages and maintaining and keeping services up, or improving services.”

Such consolidations are part of a platform Parish President David Hanagriff has supported.

There was some public input prior to the vote: Deborah Price of Morgan City opposed; Deborah Tabor of Amelia, the part-time secretary for Dist. 6 provided the council with information; and Errol Tabor, who opposed as well; and District 2 Chairman Lee Dragna, who spoke in opposition.