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The director of the agency that drew new St. Mary Parish Council districts took the blame Sept. 27 for mistakes that prevented one man from qualifying for an at-large seat in the Oct. 14 primary.

Problems with the district maps remain to be worked out.

The apology came from Kevin Belanger, director of the South Central Regional Planning and Development Commission staff, at the Sept. 27 council meeting. The council hired the commission’s staff to develop the updated district maps required after the 2020 Census.

Discrepancies in the new maps threaten to affect the Oct. 14 primary for Parish Council seats. In at least one case, they already have.

Former Parish Councilman Peter Soprano of Franklin originally qualified to run in District 10, one of the three at-large districts. Although members from the at-large districts are elected by a parishwide vote, members are required to live in the districts they represent.

Soprano learned that the new maps put his home outside District 10. So he signed up again later on the first day of qualifying to run in District 3, now represented by Rodney Olander of Franklin.

Olander is running for re-election. A third candidate, Whitney Bourque of Franklin, has also qualified to run in District 3.

Two council members later admitted that they hadn’t read the ordinance adopting the new maps. But they said they’d been assured by South Central that the at-large maps were unchanged from the maps in force in elections for the previous decade.

Soprano appeared at the Sept. 27 and called the mapping snafu “pretty rediculous.”

He also said he believes the discrepancies in the at-large district maps isn’t just a simplemistake.

“I hope Mr. Belanger has some secrets to unfold for us tonight,” Soprano said.

But, while owning up to the mistake, Belanger denied intentional wrong-doing.

“I think the inference is that this was an intentional act,” Belanger replied.”I want to say unequivocally that there was no conspiracy.”

Belanger said district maps in digital format needed for the redistricting work weren’t available from the demographer who performed the last redistricting. Mike Hefner of Duson performed the remapping after the 2010 Census.

So the South Central staff was forced to reconstruct the maps in digital form using paper maps and legal descriptions, Belanger said.

But the finished product wasn’t checked against the legal descriptions, he said.

“We take full responsibility for that error,” Belanger said.

Parish President David Hanagriff said the administration had no part in redistricting. And he took a swipe at the council’s decision to hire South Central to do the mapping rather than Hefner or Cedric Floyd, who had also sought the work.

“If we had gone with the guy {Hefner} who did it flawlessly the time before, we wouldn’t necessarily be in this situation,” Hanagriff said.

Councilwoman Dr. Kristi Prejeant cut off Hanagriff’s comments by bringing up a point of order.

Prejeant said his comments about administration involvement is “completely irrelevant because this is a legislative process.”

The at-large districts aren’t the only difficulty with the new mapers.

Registrar of Voters Terri Foulcard said voters in two precincts in the Baldwin area would have to go Franklin to vote under the new maps, which place the voters in District 3 rather than District 1.

“If we can’t get people to go around the corner to vote, why would we think they would go to Franklin to vote?” Foulcard said.

The affected voters, whom Foulcard described as “non-minority,” could also affect the election in unexpected ways. Olander, who is White, could lose votes because of the move, while the slim Black majority in District 1 would be reduced even more.

Foulcard attended an earlier council meeting to bring up the problem. But her appearance required the agenda to be expanded, and any councilman can block an agenda change. Councilman Mark Duhon cast that vote.

Belanger said he hopes to have corrected maps for the council to consider in two to three weeks.

A legislative task force convened last week to brainstorm ways to address a crisis in the Louisiana shrimp industry brought on by a flood of imported seafood.

The Legislature’s Seafood Safety Task Force met on Wednesday to review state policies for imported seafood in the wake of an ongoing shrimp crisis forcing many Louisiana shrimpers to stay on the dock.

Gov. John Bel Edwards last month requested an emergency disaster declaration from the federal government at the behest of the Louisiana Shrimp Association, which has raised the alarm about the safety of imported shrimp that have driven dockside prices below $1 per pound. The Southern Shrimp Alliance made the same requests for disaster declarations from governors in North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, and Texas.

The task force, initially created in 2009, was revived with Senate Resolution 159, sponsored by Sen. Fred Mills, R-Parks, who chaired Wednesday’s meeting.

The Louisiana Shrimp Association has repeatedly highlighted how imports of 1.8 billion pounds of farm-raised foreign shrimp have created a record-high global supply and rock bottom prices, despite concerns over harmful antibiotics, chemicals and toxins that put consumers at risk of food-borne illnesses.

The association contends most Louisiana restaurants serve imported shrimp and other seafood but do not clearly label it as required by state law. Despite 2,671 violations since the law was enacted in 2019, the state has not imposed fines available through a separate law.

State health officials told the task force that limited funding has also restricted testing of imported seafood, with just 11 inspections in 2023. A lack of oversight on the federal level prompted Republican U.S. Rep. Garret Graves to introduce legislation in August to provide more FDA funding for testing.

Along with Edwards’ request for an emergency disaster declaration, he penned a letter to President Biden last month “asking for additional funding for testing of imported shrimp by the Food and Drug Administration, as well as support for random testing, seizure and destruction of shrimp that contain banned substances, and implementation of a quota on the amount of shrimp imported from other countries,” the governor wrote in a letter to Louisiana Shrimp Association.

The task force on Wednesday discussed the possibility of sending health inspectors to more the state’s major ports to improve testing before products reach the state’s 58 distributors, but state health officials noted that would require cooperation with federal authorities that control the ports.

Mills suggested officials could possibly intercept transport trucks on state roadways before they reach distributors. Other suggestions centered on adopting a law similar to Texas that bans the use of imported shrimp as bait.

A 2020 study by the LSU Agricultural Center that tested imported shrimp from locations in the Baton Rouge area found prohibited antibiotics in 70% of samples, findings that further substantiated prior studies.The task force meeting followed several bills or resolutions introduced in the 2023 legislative session aimed at addressing foreign imports, from increasing the fine in the labeling law to $1,000 to resolutions asking Congress to ban shrimp and crawfish imports and for the FDA and Louisiana Department of Health to improve testing.

While multiple resolutions were adopted, the increased labeling fines for restaurants and retailers failed in committee amid pushback from the Louisiana Restaurant Association.
The Louisiana Seafood Safety Task Force is expected to meet again in October.

Celina Marie LaCoste, a longtime resident of Patterson, was called to her heavenly home on Sunday, October 1, 2023 at the young age of 95.

A dedicated and hardworking mother, Celina’s life revolved around her eight children. She lovingly raised them, took care of them, and worried over their safety. Even as adults, she was always concerned that they were home and safe. Her children recall her being an excellent cook, her meals having kept them nourished and healthy. She was also a devoted Catholic, saying the rosary every day sometimes twice. Celina’s favorite hobby was spending time in the casinos and though she absolutely loved flying in airplanes, her children take solace in the fact that she is finally soaring once more.

Celina leaves to cherish her beautiful memory her eight loving children, Alice Davis and her husband, Butch, Sandra Thompson, Grayland LaCoste and his wife, Kathleen, Elizabeth LaCoste, Geralyn Stephens, Peter LaCoste and his wife, Linda, Lisa LaCoste, and Elaine Trahan and her husband Eric; and numerous grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren.

She was preceded in death by her husband, Peter LaCoste; her parents, George and Eauphimie Rose Babin; three sons-in-law, Robert Thompson, Ned Stephens, and Leon Lipari; two grandsons, George J. LaCoste and Tonylee Mire; a granddaughter, Celina Lipari; and sisters, Inez Webre and Ethel Lee.

The family requested that a time of visitation and remembrance be observed on Wednesday, October 4, 2023 from 9am until time of services at Sacred Heart Catholic Church. A Mass of Christian Burial was held for Celina on Wednesday, October 4, 2023 at 11am at Sacred Heart Catholic Church with Celina being laid to rest in the Morgan City Cemetery following services.