As of Monday, May 4, there has only been one death in Evangeline Parish related to COVID-19. On that same day, the Evangeline Parish Police Jury voted to pay for the swab test from the Evangeline Parish Coroner’s Office regarding the death. Each swab test costs $50.00.
Before the vote was made, Juror Bryan Vidrine relayed an issue he had on this matter.
“I would like to have a motion made that no cases be presumed positive for deaths,” he said. “They must be a confirmed case rather than a presumed case.”
Secretary-Treasurer Donald Bergeron stated Evangeline Parish Coroner Dr. Tommy Fontenot had been in contact with the coroner’s association and the association is requiring coroners to swab every person who died and was showing symptoms to see whether or not they had the coronavirus.
“But,” Vidrine said, “they don’t confirm that actually killed them. It could be a heart attack. It could have been 100 other things they could of died from like a vehicle accident, and they still get confirmed COVID-19 if they died before they were tested.”
He continued, “I just think it’s a false presumption. We will never get out of this pandemic if we keep making assumptions that these things are happening when they’re not really happening.”
Bergeron replied the COVID-19 death from Evangeline Parish “had a lot of underlying health conditions like hypertension.”
The coroner’s office, according to Bergeron, still wanted to “swab him to see if he had the virus, and he tested positive.”
Vidrine rebutted, “Well, it’s my understanding they also disinfect the bodies whenever they find them dead, so I don’t know how you’re going to get a case of COVID-19 when the bodies have already been tampered with. I just want to stress my concern with that because we want real numbers.”
Vidrine then took exception with the number of cases being reported in Evangeline Parish.
“I have still not been able to get recovery numbers that I’ve requested from the state through LDH (Louisiana Department of Health),” he said. I want to know how many recovered cases we have in the parish. I think it’s owed to us so that we can give our residents some hope instead of them just seeing the number go up.”
After the police jury voted to pay the swab testing fee, it approved a resolution to request state aid for expenses and loss of revenue due to COVID-19.
As Bergeron explained, “The federal government has sent over a billion dollars to the state, and the state has set aside 45-percent for municipal and parish government. But, the wording on the help from the feds has some restrictions, and the state cannot send us money for lost revenue.”
He added there is currently a bill in Congress co-sponsored by Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy “to help local governments address this problem.”
Senator Cassidy’s bill would give Evangeline Parish a clear path to receiving stimulus money for loss of revenue.
“Currently,” Bergeron said, “we’re short about a little over $500,000.00 of state money that normally comes to us from general severance money from oil and gas revenue. That’s not unusual for this time of the year, but, with the projections of what oil and gas is going to do price wise and the bind the state is in, we don’t know if we’re going to collect all of the money that we normally do.”
He continued, “Our operating budget is down about $900,000.00 in revenue. We still have a lot of time to make it up, and our sales tax is not one of the things that is presently hurting us. Our main concern is money that we normally get from the state.”
In other business, the police jury:
• accepted a Louisiana Public Service Commission Energy Efficient Grant in the amount of $63,390.66 for a lighting upgrade to the Courthouse parking lot, Ville Platte Health Unit and Police Jury outside perimeter lighting, and the Chauncey Pitre Barn.
• voted to seek funds from a Build Grant to repair/replace seven bridges in the parish.
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Tony Marks
Editor