PC grows impatient with Home Rule Charter review

St. Mary Parish Coun-cil’s Home Rule Charter review committee established in 2018 was a subject of discussion at the council’s regular meeting Wednesday
The charter was ap-proved by voters in 1982 and instituted in 1985 after a suit was filed and cleared.
A resolution on the agenda was intended to disband the committee, presented by Councilman J Ina with a second my Councilman Craig Mathews, that was ta-bled.
Council Chairman Dean Adams said Ina had spoken to him about the matter. He said he tried to contact a member and did not receive a call back.
Councilman Patrick Hebert said he spoke to the committee’s attorney Nick Larocca, after hearing from member Jason Bailey. Bailey told Hebert that the committee’s task was close to finalization, “one meeting, we would be done with this.”
Larocca’s office told Hebert that a single meeting would wrap up the work.
Ina noted that “they haven’t been able to find an hour in the last year” to finish the study.
A suggested date was floated for March 25. “I will make the calls to the guys on the board,” Hebert said.
“We need to get it wrapped up and closed,” Ina said. “I don’t have a problem giving them another opportunity” to present their sugges-tions. “If for some reason they can’t make it, we’re just going to have to do it (the rec-ommendations).”
Councilman James Bennett said he would call Larocca, who is his appointment to the committee, to get things moving.
“If these guys don’t show up, we need to find another alternative,” Bennett said. “If we’re that close to finishing this, that charter’s so important, we need to have a backup plan…we need to come up with something else to sal-vage this.”
Mathews asked if, should the committee not follow through, the council can take the existing recommendations and choose to implement them or not. Ina added that the intent of the committee was to pre-sent them to the council at some point.
Legal counsel Eric Duplantis said that there are no recommendations to consider because the committee has not sub-mitted them as yet. “You can’t pick up something that doesn’t exist,” he said. “They met sporadically, some people resigned, some new people got in…it’s news to me that they have these rec-ommendations. Nothing has been formally voted on so the council can’t pick up a recommenda-tion from a committee that hasn’t made any recommendations yet.”
Ina said he’s confident in the individuals of the board and the work they’ve done so far.
He said he hopes to fi-nalize any revisions ear-ly enough that the next elected council will have the updated document during their term. Com-mittee members have also been studying neighboring home rule charters.
Any changes to the charter must be ap-proved by a vote of the people in an election.
“I do not want to be in the position for this term to end and we have not taken the measures to make revisions to be competitive for the fu-ture,” Ina said.
The subject of the parish president’s ability to be an ambassador for the parish in such endeavors as economic development was broached. Parish President David Hangriff said “at the end of the day, the council has to put something out there that the people will vote for. This has been done several times before…if not, it’ll fail again.”
“It’s going to take a concerted effort on our part to properly inform our citizens,” on the charter changes and potential benefits, Mathews said. “Some of these measures…people have a negative disposi-tion about these things.”
Councilman Kristi Prejeant Rink, MD, said public informative meetings should also be held in the council chambers in addition to local-based sessions throughout the parish. “So we get the general public’s input into that too, not just the people the submitted to the committee…the public can be involved and their opinions heard.”
Jeremy Chesteen, a former charter review committee member, was reappointed to the panel. He said there were only four members of the nine remaining. “That com-mittee needs either the input on what you want to see addressed or let it be and go. Now we need to get everybody involved that was put on this committee to actually show up…put them accountable for showing up. Don’t sign up if you don’t want to do nothing.”
In other business, Newton Gaudet and Larry Aucoin were appointed to the Drainage Dist. 6, Amelia area, board.

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