Parish council votes down amendments on district changes, pay raise

The St. Mary Parish Council on Wednesday turned back three attempts to put proposed charter amendments before voters.

Two dealt with changing the districts from which council members are elected, and the third could have given council members their first raise since the charter was adopted nearly 40 years ago.

The votes came at a special meeting at which three candidates for the registrar of voters position were interviewed in a closed-door session.

The public portion of the meeting was dominated by the three proposed amendments. All three amendments were introduced by Councilman J Ina of Franklin, two of them as ways to increase minority representation on the council.

The first of those would have changed the system of at-large districts.

Currently, eight council members are elected from geographic districts by voters within those districts in the traditional way. Three more members are elected from three larger districts called at-large districts, each of which includes about a third of the parish’s population.

Each at-large member represents a district, but each of those members is elected by a parishwide vote.

Under Ina’s amendment, the voting in any of those three districts would have been limited to the people who live there. That, he argued, would create a third district, District 9, in which a majority Black population has the opportunity to elect a Black council member.

Ina has noted that two of the council’s 11 members are African American while nearly a third of the parish’s population is African American.

A second proposed amendment would have created 11 single-member districts similar to the system used by the School Board, on which four of 11 members are Black.

Charter amendments require approval by eight council members before going to the voters. The at-large district proposal failed when it drew three yes votes and seven no votes. The proposal for 11 single-member districts, which would have gone into effect in 2028, failed on a 2-8 vote.

Councilman Patrick Hebert was absent.

The third proposed amendment would have raised the pay of at least eight council members. Under the charter adopted in 1983, at-large members received $800 per month and the other eight members receive $450 per month.

The proposed amendment would have raised the monthly pay to the average received by council members in the parish’s five municipalities, currently $800-$900 per month.
That amendment failed on a 2-8 vote.

In the public comment portion of the meeting, residents Jennifer Collins Lancelin of the Community of Friends
and Alfreida Edwards spoke in favor of the two district amendments.

Former Parish Councilman Peter Soprano was decidedly against all three.

“Not one will bring back businesses that we lost,” Soprano said. “Not one is going to stop the stringent
planning and zoning laws and ordinances adopted by the council since [Parish President] David Hanagriff has
been in office.”

The amendments wouldn’t do anything to clean up abandoned houses and mobile homes or to raise the pay of underpaid parish maintenance workers, Soprano said.
“We do not need any charter changes,” Soprano said. “What we need is for the council to stop the parish president from putting you all at odds.”

In a phone interview Thursday, Hanagriff noted that Soprano, who said at the meeting that he served 2000-08, was on the council when planning and zoning codes were adopted.

“If there are any restrictions, blame him,” Hanagriff said.

He also denied any attempt to divide council members.

“I’m the executive branch, and they’re the legislature ...,” Hanagriff said. “The council is a separate body from
me. ...

“[Soprano's] attacks on me are personal and they’ve been going on for decades.”

At the meeting, Soprano called the proposed amendments “self-serving, deceitful and not in the best interest
of the people you were elected to serve.”

He also said that, during an unsuccessful push for amendments during his time on the council, members
went to the five municipalities to get public input in comparison to what he called “secret” deliberations about
the current proposals.

Councilman the Rev. Craig Mathews of Jeanerette objected, saying the three proposals were among the recommendations delivered by an 11-member charter review committee in a March 10, 2020, letter after a series of public meetings in Franklin.

A copy of the letter shows that the committee recommended raising council members’ monthly salary to $800 but did not push for the district changes proposed by Ina.

Soprano said the current at-large districts mean that each parish resident is represented by four council members — one representing the resident’s single-member district and the three at-large members.

He also echoed an argument made by Councilman James Bennett of Morgan City: Any pay raises should first go to underpaid maintenance workers. Bennett said he would never accept a raise in his Parish Council position.

Mathews countered again, saying a higher council salary could open the council to more people.

“The reality is there should be an opportunity for those who don’t live as comfortably as others ...,” Mathews said. “It should be an opportunity for more to serve regardless of their economic status.”

In the decades since the charter was adopted, a movement for justice and equal opportunity has grown across the country and around the world, he said.

“I don’t care how much and how hard some of us want to fight it, it’s going to be overrun,” Mathews said.

In the 3-7 vote against the ordinance changing the at-large districts, Ina, Mathews and Rodney Olander voted yes. Voting no were Bennett, Les Rulf, Scott Ramsey, Gwendolyn Hidalgo, Dean Adams, Dr. Kristi Prejeant Rink and Mark Duhon.

On the proposals for the 11 single-member districts and the council pay raise, Ina and Mathews voted yes. Olander, Bennett, Rulf, Ramsey, Hidalgo, Adams, Prejeant and Duhon voted no.

Two of Ina’s proposed amendments have fared better. A measure that would raise the parish president’s salary from $12,000 a year to the average of mayoral salaries in the parish’s municipalities, currently around $50,000 a year, is headed for the March 25 ballot.

The raise would not take effect until the next council term begins in 2024.

On Dec. 10, another Ina proposal, which would open the council chairmanship and vice chairmanship to any
council member, will go to St. Mary Parish voters.

Currently, the charter limits the leadership posts to members elected from the three at-large districts. Early voting on that amendment, three state constitutional amendments and two Baldwin town races ends Saturday.

ST. MARY NOW

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