School board, coroner candidates appear at forum

Should the St. Mary Parish Coroner’s Office be run like a business?
That was one of the key discussion points Tuesday when the three physicians running for coroner met for a Chamber of Commerce forum at Morgan City Municipal Auditorium.
Tuesday’s forum also brought together four candidates for St. Mary School Board, two each in District 9 and District 10, and the three candidates in a special election to fill the Morgan City Council District 4 seat.
Coverage of the forum for District 4 candidates will appear in Thursday’s Daily Review.
The primary will be Nov 6. The deadline to register to vote in person is Oct. 9 and online at GeauxVote is Oct. 16. Early voting will be 8:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Oct. 23-30 except for Sunday, Oct. 28. You can vote early at either Registrar of Voters Office at the courthouse in Franklin or in Morgan City.
Coroner
The candidates are running to succeed Dr. Chip Metz, who retired as coroner.
Natchez “Trey” Morice, an obstetrics-gynecology physician, began by pointing to his own business credentials. His name appears as an agent or officer in a variety of companies in the secretary of state’s corporate database, mostly in medicine-related fields.
Morice said the Coroner’s Office is running a deficit, a situation he said he would try to eliminate. He said coroner employees sometimes lack basic necessities such as gloves.
Lianter Albert, an internal medicine physician who is serving as interim coroner, argued that the Coroner’s Office should be viewed as a service provider rather than a business. As for the story of the employee who couldn’t find gloves, “she forgot to look in the other closet,” Albert said.
“I never heard of a coroner’s office making money,” said candidate Eric Melancon, also an internal medicine doctor. “If it did, I don’t know what it would be selling.”
—Morice promised not to take a salary as coroner at least until the office’s finances are on sound footing.
“I’m going to be giving my salary to train the investigators, to make the office better,” Morice said.
He wants to install good inventory management. In response to a question, he said autopsies from St. Mary Parish are being performed in other parishes.
“It costs a lot of money to do what we could be doing ourselves,” Morice said.
—Albert said he has worked in emergency rooms and with drug rehabilitation. “They don’t plan to get these illnesses, but we do the best for them,” Albert said.
He pushed back against the idea of running the Coroner’s Office as a business.
“We talk about money, but when we talk about money we talk about it as a business,” Albert said. “I don’t think that’s the right way to go. ...
“When you are in the service of your fellow man, you are in the service of God.”
—Melancon said he wants to streamline office process to save money. And he wants to be an advocate for health care in St. Mary Parish.
“There’s a lot of ways we can improve the quality of care here,” Melancon said.
The candidates made opening and closing statements and took turns answering questions from the public. It fell to Melancon to explain when a coroner investigates a death — after traffic accidents and when deaths occur outside hospital or hospice care, for example.
Melancon said it’s important for physicians to feel comfortable communicating with the coroner about when a death is reportable.
School Board
District 9
—Christie K. Dragna said she and husband Lee, who serves on the Drainage District 2 board, went to Morgan City High School and sent their children there. The Dragnas are business people, and she said business experience is important.
Dragna feels that money they have donated to the schools have been wasted “when it didn’t need to be wasted.”
The keys are to maintain the quality of education in a time of declining revenue and to be ready should the board be called on to select a new superintendent.
Without business experience, she said, “all that education experience doesn’t mean anything.”
—Alaina L. Black said she has 16 years of experience as a teacher. The big challenge is to maintain educational quality as the budget and enrollment are shrinking.
“If there was an easy solution, we’d have found it by now,” she said.
Black wants to communicate with other school districts and communities to look for ideas. She wants a technology upgrade and to re-emphasize technical training for students who aren’t going to college.
“We need to be progressive and innovative about our career and technical training,” Black said.
District 10
—Dwight Barbier said he has been a youth sports coach and, at Morgan City High, serves as “the voice of the Tigers.”
“I’m ready to be your voice,” Barbier said.
Funding is the school district’s biggest challenge, he said. When the current economic downturn began, Barbier said, “the first thing it hit was education.”
He said he has experience in the local public schools as the parent of an honor roll student and of a special needs student.
His priorities would be a pay raise for teachers and improving technology.
—“C.E.” Bourg II is an attorney who noted that the district’s sales tax revenue has declined sharply, making it important to use money wisely.
Bourg believes the board should make a bigger effort to listen to stakeholders. He cited this year’s switch from block scheduling to a traditional seven-period class structure.
“They didn’t ask teachers ...,” Bourg said.
“We need better communication between the administration and teachers,” Bourg said. “The board can make that happen.”