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Franklin Police Chief Morris Beverly advised Franklinites that on May 17 the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission awarded a grant to the department ment for the “Driver Sober or Get Pulled Over” campaign.
The department will be participating in the campaign from Aug. 16, through Sept. 2.
He said the campaign’s focus is to raise awareness of the dangers of driving impaired, by the use of intoxicating beverages and illegal substances.
Officers with the Franklin Police Department will be strictly enforcing sobriety laws and other traffic violations in the days allotted above.

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Former Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, who became the state's first female elected governor only to see her political career derailed by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, has died.
After struggling for years with cancer, Blanco died Sunday in hospice care in Lafayette. She was 76.
"Our hearts are broken, but we are joyful in knowing that she is rejoicing in her heavenly reunion with Christ. Please pray for God's peace to carry us through the coming days and months of sorrow as we mourn her absence from our lives," Blanco's family said in a statement released by Gov. John Bel Edwards' office.
Blanco had a rare eye cancer that she battled successfully in 2011, but it later returned and spread to her liver. Her death came more than a year after the Democrat who served in state government offices for more than two decades announced in December 2017 that she was being treated for the incurable melanoma. Blanco described being in a "fight for my own life, one that will be difficult to win."
Blanco held Louisiana's top elected job from 2004 to 2008. Until her campaign for governor, she spent much of her political career moving steadily and quietly through state politics, rarely creating waves or controversy. Katrina raised her profile nationally and forever impacted her legacy. The devastating August 2005 hurricane killed more than 1,400 people in Louisiana, displaced hundreds of thousands and inundated 80 percent of New Orleans.
Historians will continue to debate whether any governor could have been prepared for such a catastrophe, but Blanco shouldered much of the blame after images of thousands stranded on rooftops and overpasses were broadcast to the world, and the government was slow to respond. Blanco was criticized as unprepared, overwhelmed and indecisive. The recovery she guided moved ploddingly.
"While she knew that her name would forever be linked with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, it was her dying wish that she be remembered for her faith in God, commitment to family and love of Louisiana," Blanco's family said.
As the devout Catholic asked in the letter announcing her terminal condition for prayers in her final months, she also thanked Louisiana residents for their "abiding love" during her years of service, and described the challenges of responding to Katrina and the follow-up blow of Hurricane Rita a month later. She called it an "honor and blessing" to lead Louisiana at the time.
"Katrina certainly left its mark and Rita left her mark on Louisiana. It made us tougher people though. It made us stronger," the former governor said in July.
In the immediate aftermath of the storms, Blanco said Louisiana's miseries were worsened by a Republican-led White House desperate to blame someone else for its disaster response failures. "I just thought I could shout more loudly than the noise around me, but in the end I couldn't. There was just too much pain," she once said.
Edwards, a Democrat in his first term as governor, called Blanco a mentor to him and a trailblazer to women.
"She led Louisiana through one of our darkest hours, when hurricanes and the failure of the federal levee system devastated much of our state," he said in a statement Sunday. "I hope history will remember Gov. Blanco as a tireless advocate for Louisiana, who fought fiercely for our state to rebuild."
A former high school business education teacher from the small Cajun village of Coteau, Blanco launched into politics as a consultant with her husband Raymond on local redistricting issues before going on to serve 24 years in elective office. Her first, in 1984, was a seat in the state House. Then came positions on the state utility regulatory commission and as lieutenant governor.
Political insiders often dismissed Blanco as a lightweight — honest and hardworking but lacking in substance as a serious gubernatorial contender. She dropped out of the governor's race in 1991, then stunned many political prognosticators in the 2003 election by defeating Republican Bobby Jindal. She successfully attacked Jindal's record as a former state health official and made a memorable final debate appearance when — asked about a defining moment in her life — she tearfully recounted the 1997 death of her 19-year-old son Ben in an industrial accident.
Jindal later succeeded Blanco as governor after Katrina stopped her plans to seek a second term.
"Kathleen loved Louisiana and served the state for decades. She faced every struggle, including her last, with good cheer and a strong will. She will be missed," Jindal said on Twitter.
More than a decade after the storms, views of Blanco are generally more sympathetic. She gets praise for running a corruption-free government and championing education. She helped raise K-12 public school teacher pay and plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into colleges. The nonpartisan Council For A Better Louisiana recently praised Blanco's successful push for a state takeover of failing public schools in New Orleans after Katrina, saying that has improved education for thousands of students.
"It's hard to overstate how politically risky that was," the organization wrote.
But Blanco's tenure also was marked by heightened partisanship at the Louisiana Capitol, party-line disputes that have only intensified since she left office.
Though she stepped out of the spotlight, Blanco never entirely left Louisiana politics. She and her husband assisted Edwards in his campaigns and became close with him. Edwards called the ex-governor "a strong woman of incredible faith, a deep and abiding love of Louisiana and all its people."
As she knew her end was near, Blanco described feeling "blessed by God" and talked of her final months as a "wonderful time for me, even though it is a time of a kind of countdown." She talked of being surrounded by family and friends and old political foes having "a chance to make up."
"My life has been so charmed by so many events that were unexpected and challenged by many events that were unexpected," she said in July as a Louisiana highway was named in her honor. "But God puts you where he wants you to be."

Once again, St. Mary Parish Council members voted on an ordinance that would change the date of the council’s meeting days from the second and fourth Wednesday to the first and third Thursdays.
Councilmen Glen Hidalgo and Kevin Voisin moved for the adoption. It was defeated again in a 4-7 vote.
The agenda item noted Councilman J Ina as the sponsor of the ordinance, but Ina stated that he “took the initiative to introduce these ordinances” but that he would not support them. The second ordinance was to designate the time of the meetings, and due to the failure to the first, the second was not voted on.
“Thursday is a big middle school athletics day and for high school athletics,” Ina said. “I just wanted to clarify that. I know that I took the initiative to introduce that, I did not write the ordinance, I will not be supporting it.”
Hidalgo said he didn’t believe Thursday activities “should be a big deal, because people that have things on Thursday night do not come to our meetings on Wednesday night. So I don’t see where the conflict is.”
He said he knew there were conflicts with church services on Wednesday nights, “My deal is these are all tax-paying people,” he added. “I can’t vote against something that they’ve been asking for and take the opportunity away for people to be more involved in parish government.”
Also, Councilman Paul Naquin said he voted against the move previously and would again, urging the sitting council to let the upcoming, new slate of councilmembers to be elected this fall tackle when they take office.
Hidalgo countered that the group asked the current council to take action, not a future council.
Chairman Gabriel Beadle declared that he authored both ordinances. “As chairman I can’t officially put my name next to that, but I can publicly say that my intention was to listen to the ministerial alliance, so that we could provide a meeting that was more inclusive,” Beadle said. “I believe that this ordinance becomes more inclusive for people.”
Beadle added, “This is something that will increase the population that’s able to come here…no resident should be able to have to choose between their faith and something with their property.”
He insisted that the decision should be made by the sitting council.
Councilman Patrick Hebert said, “This exact council has been here for four years. I’m the only person that’s new on this council in four years. When I first heard (about the request) I said the same thing: Why didn’t you do this four years ago?”
Hebert said that school principals also told him that they have functions on Thursday nights, adding that a softball coach at a school who considered running for parish council did not qualify for the ballot because of her school duties.
“This will affect every member of this council,” Hebert said, in terms of family members or friends in school activities.
The final vote was, against, Ina, Dale Rogers, Ken Singleton, Hebert, James Bennett, Sterling Fryou and Naquin; in favor were Hidalgo, Kevin Voisin, Beadle and Craig Mathews
In other business:
—An ordinance was passed setting the speed limit on Irish Bend Road from the Sterling Bridge Road to Blackburn Curve to 30 miles per hour.
—Resolutions of respect were approved in memory of Jack Anthony Pratt and Anthony Boudreaux; proclaiming Aug. 21 as National Senior Citizens Day; declaring an election in Recreation Dist. 4 to renew a tax; declaring an election in Recreation Dist. 5 to renew a tax; cooperative agreements with municipalities for the next round of road and street repairs and engineering agreements for several of those road and street repairs; financial banking matters; acknowledging a change order and substantial completion of Flattown Road from Chitimacha Trail to Ralph Darden Memorial Parkway; and others.
—Bayleigh Barbier was appointed to the Recreation Dist. 3, Bayou Vista area, board; LaGenia Darnell Bradford was appointed to the Recreation Dist. 4, Patterson area, board; Ricky Armelin was appointed the Recreation Dist. 5, Four Corners, Sorrell and Glencoe area, board; and William Hidalgo Jr. was appointed to the Wax Lake East Drainage District board, Berwick, Bayou Vista, Patterson and Calumet area.
—A $10,000 allocation from the Wards 1, 2, 3, 4, 7 and 10 3/10ths sales tax fund was approved for the City of Franklin for Caffery Park improvements; $1,500 from the same fund was approved for Recreation Dist. 5 for recreation activities for senior citizens and families.

St. Mary Parish Levee District will hold a public meeting in Baldwin soon, Parish President David Hanagriff reported Wednesday.
The meeting will be held Aug. 21 at 6 p.m. at the Baldwin Community center “for people in the west end of the parish who have concerns about flooding issues, with drainage, and everything else,” Hanagriff said.
In other business, Councilman Craig Mathews said he spoke to the president of Iberia Parish, M. Larry Richard, regarding reconstruction of St. Peter Street, which runs through both parishes. Mathews said Richard was agreeable to a meeting with parish officials to plan rehabilitation of the street.
Hanagriff said he would reach out to Richard for a meeting.
Chief Administrative Officer Henry “Bo” LaGrange reported “an unfortunate issue” where $700,000 in community development block grants were not included in financial statements.
LaGrange said the financial statements are being revised, and he was notifying the council as required and a report will be reissued.
“It has no effect on our fixed assets or fund balances, this is revenue that came in and went out,” he said. The grant was used in a Glencoe project.
Chairman Gabriel Beadle told LaGrange that he has received complaints from residents in Bayou Vista on several streets regarding construction rocks on the side-dressing of reconstructed roads are being pushed into residential yards, and he also asked about paint striping on some of those streets.
LaGrange said some roads and streets require striping, some do not. The parish right-of-way is dependent on how much shoulder there is available in a given area. He said a final inspection of the projects is near and could be addressed with the contractor.