Turkey Creek council OK’s hiring of officer

Before an executive meeting was called to address personnel issues, the Turkey Creek Council discussed the addition of new street lights and a new part-time police officer.
The board voted to hire Ethan Johns as the villages new part-time police officer. Johns, who currently works a 14 and 14 schedule, would be hired to work the two weeks that he is home from his job offshore.
Hiring Johns will allow the town to have a police officer on patrol in the area more often because the village, at this time, only has one police officer, which is Chief Glen Leggett.
The council unanimously agreed to hire Johns to work 66 hours during the two weeks he is home and to pay him $12.00 an hour.
Council member Curry Stewart requested that an item be added to the agenda to address the issue of not having enough street lights in certain areas of the village.
Stewart said, “We have about eight or nine poles that we could put lights on.” Mayor Heather Cloud said she will put a call in to Cleco to have the existing light poles looked at and try to have working street lights put onto these poles.
At the end of the meeting Cloud called for a motion to adjourn, which was made by council member Billy King and then seconded by Stewart. Council member Joey Ducote, however, opposed the motion stating, “We have items that still need to be discussed. I’d like to go into executive session.”
Ducote said, “We would be going into executive session over the discussion we had at the last meeting about the pay raise for the chief if no existing help was found.”
After consulting with the village attorney Greg Vidrine, he said, “Because it is a personnel matter, it is fine to go into an executive meeting.”
Ducote made a motion to enter into an executive meeting which was then seconded by Stewart and approved unanimously by the board.