During a recent Evangeline Parish Police Jury meeting City of Ville Platte officials addressed the jury requesting assistance in cleaning city canals.
Mayor Jennifer Vidrine said, “We need help from the police jury to clean the canals in the city. And, we don’t understand why the police jury cannot clean the canals in the city, especially now since that amendment passed last election that is allowing public political subdivisions to loan equipment to one another.
“Can we come to a consensus where the canals in the city can be cleaned?”
Without hesitation, Evangeline Parish Police Jury President Williams responded, “I can speak for myself, I would be willing to do that.”
He continued, “We have the equipment to pick up the skid steer (needed to scrape the canals) and the person to operate the equipment. All that is missing is the skid steer.”
The jury and city officials seem to come to the understanding that the jury would provide the equipment it has to clean the canals and the city would rent the equipment that the jury does not have.
Because the police jury’s equipment is shared between districts, the equipment will only be supplied to the city when it is being used by a police juror whose district is within the city.
In an effort to work together on cleaning the drainage canals, the city will also supply some of its own man power to do the job along with its own trucks to dump whatever debris is removed from each canal.
Before coming to an agreement on this matter, Bryan explained that the police jury gets no tax for drainage from the city. He stated, “There use to be a drainage tax for Ward 1, when Mr. Wilbur Ardoin was the secretary treasurer for the police jury, but that tax went away. That tax paid for people to go spray the canals and little jobs to get done.”
According to Bryan, when the tax was put on the ballot it was not renewed and “therefore the parish gets no collection within the city limits.”
Bryan continued, “There is no tax in the city that the police jury gets for digging ditches. We get taxes to dig outside the city limits. The equipment that me and Kevin (Veillon) have for our districts was paid for by the people in Lone Pine, the back of Pine Prairie, Bayou Chicot and outside the city limits of Ville Platte. They were not paid for by the people inside the city limits of Ville Platte.
“That’s why, before this amendment passed, it was law that you pay if you want to use it. The city collects a tax in the city for road and drainage which was just renewed last year. They can bond that money and go buy some equipment and they can use that. That’s what we did. We took the tax as it passed and bonded that money to purchase equipment so that we can do it ourself and not contract it out.
“You have the bonding power. So, just like you bought the red trucks, you can bond some money to buy some equipment for drainage.”
Ultimately, the jury decided that sharing equipment with municipalities would be left up to each individual juror. This equipment is also shared between the police jurors, so each juror will only be able to share the equipment with a municipality when it is being used by that specific police juror.
Image
ELIZABETH WEST Managing Editor