Rep. Jones: Industry is where wealth is created

State Rep. Sam Jones called for St. Mary Parish to rethink how it views its economic infrastructure Tuesday at the weekly Franklin Rotary meeting at the Forest Restaurant.
Jones began his address lamenting the economic tribulations that have become commonplace for the citizens of the parish.
“The world has changed, and I guess what has changed the world the most, is the invention of these things,” said Jones, holding his cell phone.
He told a story he had heard of a person having tried for years to purchase a rare and valuable 150 year old Chinese urn, with no success. Then, along came the advent of the internet and the online marketplace, and the urn was able to be located, purchased and shipped from China within just a few business days.
“The internet has changed much of our retail business, and I know a lot of you have struggled and have done a good job staying in the retail business, but that’s changing, and we need to think that through,” said Jones.
“When I was elected mayor in 1982, after a few months I wanted to understand the cash flow of the parish—how it came, and how it went,” he said. “I was a little bit surprised to learn that 70 percent of it (revenue) came from the east end of the parish, because of course, that was where the industry was and that’s where all the big stuff was going on.”
He went on to say of the sugar industry in the west end of the parish, “We’re not as busy as we were in the early 80’s, before the bust came, but we’re pretty busy.
“I’ve heard people complain about the sugar mills. But, I get so excited when I hear the sugar mill crank up. I’ve grown up three blocks from a sugar mill. I still live there, and I’m going to die there. But, there’s nothing so sweet as to hear the mill crank up.”
Jones said that the current proportions depicting industry in the east end of the parish vs. the west end of the parish, are no longer split at 70 percent to 30 percent, as they were in the days of his mayoral administration in Franklin; but that the proportions are now depicted as 60 percent to 40 percent.
According to Jones, this shows a trend of equalization between the two parts of the parish, but does not necessarily point to any kind of upward tick in overall economic prosperity. In fact, things are as bad as they have ever been since the first of St. Mary Parish’s two downturns from oil industry crashes.
“We’ve seen the oil industry go up and down, two times,” said Jones, “and this time… there’s a fear that this time, that bounce you’re supposed to hear when it hits the floor, sounds now like a dead-cat bounce. There might not be a second life.”
He went on to say, “St. Mary Parish has been here for 200 years as a body politic, and it’s not going anywhere, as well as the city of Franklin, for 200 years, and it has been marked, and it has changed with time.
“In the early 1800s it took almost a third of the population to grow the food that they needed at that time to feed the population of America.
“Today, 3 percent (of the population), at most, can grow what it takes to feed not only America, but most of the world.”
So, according to Jones, as marketplaces shrink and grow, the economic viability of those markets which have sustained St. Mary Parish and Franklin, in the past, will not be adequate to be reliable for the future.
One of Jones’ ideas for revitalization is to focus on Main Street, in Franklin. He is calling for a reinvention with an eye toward technology. He illustrated the possibility of reaching out to neighboring towns and cities in the parish to create a digitally networked retail marketplace.
“It would take a meeting,” said Jones. “It would take a city council or a parish council getting together and creating a committee and saying, ‘Okay, this is where we want it to be tomorrow, this is what we want it to be next week, this is what we want it to be next year, to keep our downtowns alive.’
“Industry is where wealth is created, and if we don’t have wealth creators, then we will be like so many of the little rural towns in north Louisiana, where they have nothing, and every time there’s a funeral, the town is reduced in population by more than one percent.
“But we’ve got two sugar mills here. We have three carbon plants. We still have the remnants of maintenance for off-shore operations, as well as on-shore.
“The casino employs over 900 people. We have a salt mine out here. We have CLECO that’s still committed to building that new plant out there, and word is that there are another two of those to be built.
“So, it’s just a matter of where we go from here.”
However, Jones said he was disappointed in St. Mary Parish’s lack of a full-time parish president.
He said that other parishes have aggressive parish presidents who create economic teams that in turn, create economic opportunity for their parishes.
He pointed to Terrebonne Parish as proof positive of such an economic parish flourishing under the leadership of a “savvy businessman” as president.
Nevertheless, Jones called for proactive conversation between parish citizens, merchants, and governmental bodies in the meantime.
While west St. Mary Parish has successfully pivoted from relying singly on the oil industry for growth outside of retail and agriculture, it has done so only to the tune of ship building.
Albeit a stalwart and successful pivot, Jones called for progressive thinking in considering industrial diversification, using the boat building companies as examples of such thinking.
“You have to be visionary,” Jones said. “What is it they say? ‘Without vision, we shall all perish.’
“You have to think about tomorrow, but you have to be tuned in to the economy and where it’s going through technology. We are probably going to have sugar cane growing for a long, long time. So, you can mark that down on the board. It’s because the sugar lobby is the most effective lobby in American history. Mark it down on the board, ‘Sugar— not going anywhere.’”
“Next, we list the carbon plants and retail,” Jones continued. “So, it’s working your way through and finding the best practices while also remembering the skills you have in the parish.
“But, we have to get out of the box and we have to be honest with ourselves about what can work and what can’t work, and we need to have that conversation.
“I don’t think we’ve had that kind of discussion in St. Mary Parish for years, and I’m open to ideas and I’ll come to any meeting anybody wants to have.”