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Each month, students at Holy Cross Elementary School participate in service projects sponsored by different classes. During December, kindergarten students and the faculty and staff of Holy Cross Elementary School collected Christmas gifts for the residents of the Patterson Healthcare Center. Also during December, the entire school collected funds for needy children in the Morgan City area. Pictured are the sixth-grade students from Holy Cross Elementary School who traveled to the Maison Jardin Senior Living Facility to visit with residents and sing Christmas carols.

Submitted Photo
Teche Regional Medical Center CEO Aphreikah DuHaney-West and employees present The Roots & Ribbons Foundation president, Maureen Alfred, with a check for $1,000. Teche Regional employees raised the money by buying T-shirts. The Roots & Ribbons Foundation is a local nonprofit organization that pays for women in our parish to have a mammogram if they cannot afford one. In addition, they are now offering support for women diagnosed with breast cancer to pay for things such as travel for their treatment, wigs, scarves, etc. All of the money supports residents of St. Mary Parish.

A hue and cry is mounting around the country that voting machines used on Election Day are eminently hackable.
Congress is investigating charges by the Office of Homeland Security that Russia attempted to hack into voting machines in 21 different states.
So is the integrity of our election system being undermined? Are computer hackers able to change election results? What gives?
Obviously, there is something fishy going on. It’s not just the election system being hacked. New reports have told us that computer systems of major companies like Sony, Equifax and even the U.S. Office of Personnel Management have been broken into.
So how can we be sure that your vote cast the polls on Election Day is secure?
There is a recent push by election reformers to go back to, can you believe, paper ballots. That’s right. Just like the first American elections back in the 1800s. There is a non-profit group called Verify Voting that is telling state officials: “We have a single technology at our disposal that is invulnerable to hacking: paper.” So will elections officials do an about face and reinstitute the paper ballot system?
When I was elected as Louisiana secretary of state back in 1979, there were a number of election fraud allegations.
I formed an Election Integrity Commission and appointed former Secretary of State Wade O. Martin to head up the effort to weed out voter fraud.
Were election shenanigans going on in the Bayou State?
I often quoted former governor Earl Long, who once said: “Oh Lord, when I die, let me be buried in Louisiana. So I can stay active in politics.”
Of course, there was voter fraud back then using paper ballots.
As one retired local sheriff told me, you could make the election results dance with paper ballots during absentee voting. Here’s how one could beat the system.
During the two-week absentee voting period, the sheriff would have his deputies pick up agreeable voters and bring them to the courthouse to vote.
A piece of paper was cut as the same size as the official ballot. The first voter was given the fake ballot and instructed go into the clerk of court’s office, where absentee voting was taking place.
He was instructed to drop the fake ballot in to the voting box, put the real ballot into his pocket, bring it back out to the sheriff, where he was paid $5 or $10, whatever the going rate was to buy votes back then.
Once the first official ballot was in hand, the vote buyer would mark the ballot for whoever he was supporting, give it to the next voter, tell the voter to put the official ballot into the ballot box, return with an unmarked ballot, and he would be paid for his effort.
This could go on all day for the two-week voting period with hundreds of illegal votes being cast.
This scheme was used, particularly in rural areas in the state, by numerous candidates who were trying to beat the system. So no system at the present time seems to be foolproof. But elections officials should move cautiously about throwing the current system to the wind and go back to paper ballots.
Louisiana currently has about 10,000 voting machines in 64 parishes. Current Secretary of State Tom Schedler is confident that the present election system works in Louisiana. He’s done a commendable job so far.
But he has his work cut out in the future in putting in place cybersecurity that protects the integrity of the ballot, but still makes it easy for citizens to cast their vote.
Peace and Justice
Jim Brown
Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

MORGAN CITY — The possibility of a fully open Atchafalaya River Bar Channel is within reach for 2019 as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has settled on a strategy to address both the sand and silt problems of the area.
Tim Connell of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers told the Morgan City Harbor and Terminal District Board on Monday that the sand problem areas of the Bar Channel will take priority over the silt problem areas as the special purpose suction dredge will be pushed back to 2019 when more funding becomes available.
“The approach is to deal with the sandy areas and clean them out. There is no special purpose dredge available right now and that’s not likely to be available until mid to late 2018,” said Connell.
Due to the limited funding, Connell said that the Corps’ strategy is to clear out the immediate threat of the sand plug of mile markers 148-151 in the Bar Channel as well as the shoaling that has occurred at mile marker 142 and 144. After completing the dredging of the sand areas and if only minimum maintenance is required, then the Corps will take any additional leftover 2018 federal funding and potential 2019 federal funding to deal with the silt.
“Maybe we will get lucky this year and not have a high river, not have a lot of shoaling that occurs in those sand areas …,” said Connell. “We will continue to work with the special purpose dredge in 2018-2019 and clear up the fluff problem. And if the fluff problem is cleared out and the sand problem still remains un-shoaled then the channel will be available at the minus 20 feet depth for the first time in a long time.”
The current dimension of the Bar Channel is 200 feet wide by 12-14 feet deep. Fully opened, the channel would be at its approved operational dimensions of 250 feet by 20 feet deep which can open up opportunities to raise tonnage and funding.
Connell said that the Corps currently has about $8.8 million in funding — $1 million left over from 2017 federal funds, an estimated $6.64 million of 2018 federal funds, and $1.25 million intended to be given to the Corps by the Board — for use this year to dredge the entire Atchafalaya River Bar Channel.
Connell said that currently, the Borinquen Dredge, the same ship that dredged the Berwick Bay area to Calumet Cut, from Weeks Marine Inc. has already started its 30-day dredging operations on the sand plug.
The current sand dredging project is funded under the current resolution authority, the bill that has allowed for the government to remain functional as Congress attempts to agree on a budget, with the leftover $1 million of 2017 federal funds and $1.3 million of 2018 federal funds.
However, a potential government shutdown on Dec. 22 threatens both the sand dredging projects and future silt dredging.
“We can’t direct the contractor to continue to dredge if we don’t have the money in the contract,” said Connell.
With a possible shutdown, Weeks Marine could leave with its Borinquen Dredge and could cost the Port to lose at least another $2 million for the cost of getting the company to come back to Morgan City to finish dredging the sand plug. If the Port loses the $2 million, which will come out of the remaining $4.2 million of the 2018 federal funds, contract negotiations with Brice Civil Constructors to dredge the silt will also be in jeopardy since the Port will be left with less than $3 million for funding to dredge the silt.
Connell said the Corps is in contract negotiations to enter into a five-year contract with optional renewal years depending on the funding, but the initial agreement was for the $4.2 million.
Yet, the Board may still have an opportunity to avoid the $2 million loss even if the government shutdown goes through.
If the Board enters into a memorandum of agreement with the Corps before the potential shutdown, the Board will levy up to $1.25 million of its own money to keep the sand dredging project going.
The Board sent a letter of intent to the Corps on Sept. 1 in an attempt to receive additional supplemental funding by showing a willingness to invest into itself and dredging projects.
Connell said the memorandum is in progress with the office of the assistant secretary of the Army for civil works in Washington, D.C., but he is still waiting to hear back for approval.
“This is the only chance we have had within the last four years to have a fully open Bar Channel,” said Port executive director Raymond “Mac” Wade.
Wade said the Board understands the issues with the lack of funding but will try every effort to keep the dredging operations going. Wade said that the Board has also requested additional supplemental recovery effort funding from the government due to the additional sand brought up from the Gulf of Mexico from Hurricane Harvey.