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Police jury hears update on parish road resurfacing project

The Evangeline Parish Police Jury, during its committee meetings Monday, April 7, heard an update on planned road improvements to be paid with a bond issue, funded with a 2 percent tax approved by voters.
Ronnie Landreneau, the police jury’s consulting engineer, said he has been assessing the costs of the improvement project. He said he was surprised how much the cost of resurfacing has risen. When the parish had its last major road upgrade, about 15 years ago, the cost of asphalt resurfacing was about $14 million, or $35 per ton or asphalt. The cost today is about three times as much, to $105 per ton. That cost is driven by the cost of oil.
Landreneau said a conservative estimate of the asphalt road improvement project is $26 million, and upgrading of chip seal roads would cost about $3 million.
He said he needs more time to collect information about costs and new surfacing techniques, including microsurfacing, before presenting the results of his research so the police jury can decide on how to proceed.
Another factor that could affect the cost of road improvements is the effects of the extreme low temperatures last winter. “This was the worst winter that I can remember,” he said, and the freezing of water that seeped below asphalt surfaces could have damaged those surfaces.
However, Landreneau said “we found a lot of roads are in very good shape,” and will only need restriping.
The police jury also heard about improvements needed at Crooked Creek recreational area.
Overgrowth along rights of ways in the park has caused “major outages” of electricity recently, said Ken Johnson, park manager. The parish, and not the utility company, is responsible for clearing utility rights of way in the park. Johnson said he is receiving bids for clearing those areas.
Johnson said several visitors to the park have complained of repairs needed to playground equipment there. He said he is looking for donations from large industries such as Pine Prairie Energy and other possible sources.
Johnson asked for the police jury’s approval of hiring a security guard to be at the park three nights per week. He said the guard will be instructed to call him and the sheriff’s office if he observes problems at the park and not to intervene himself. The jurors voted to hire the security guard.
Johnson said the park collected $15,800 in fees in March.
The police jury had a difficult decision to make regarding the new holiday policy in effect starting last year.
Three parish road crew employees said they were unaware of the policy, which took away two holidays -- the day after Christmas and the day after New Year’s Day -- and allowed employees to have two days off of their choosing.
Those three employees asked to have four personal days off this year to make up the lost personal days last year. Eleven other parish employees didn’t take the personal days off but have not indicated they were unaware of the new policy.
Juror Kenny Burgess said the three employees said they were never informed of the holiday policy change, and there have been other instances when the district he represents have been “the last to know,” about parish policies.
Jurors discussed the employees’ responsibility to be aware of parish policies. Burgess asked if the jurors believed employees are responsible for reading legal notices published in the newspaper.
Juror Bryan Vidrine asked how employees who did take two personal days off last year knew about the policy. Donald Bergeron, police jury secretary/treasurer, said supervisors were provided a list of holidays, but apparently those lists did not include information about personal days off.
“This is a hard decision either way,” juror Eric Soileau said about whether to allow the three employees to take last year’s two personal days off this year in addition to this year’s two personal days off. “But we dropped the ball” last year. “We have to take responsibility.”
The police jury voted to allow the three employees to take last year’s personal days off this year, but not to allow all four personal days off this year to run consecutively.
Bergeron briefed the jurors on a survey he took of policies in other parishes regarding trail rides. He said that before taking the survey, he assumed the parish was undercharging for issuing a trail ride permit. The parish charges $50 per trail ride, but Bergeron said trail rides can sometimes last two or three days with bands or dances more than one day during a single trail ride.
The survey showed one parish doesn’t allow trail rides and other parishes do not charge for trail rides.
Juror Lamar Johnson asked what it costs the parish and was told that sometimes the sheriff’s office has to respond to complaints of loud music or other disturbances.
“I don’t understand why we charge,” for a trail ride permit, Johnson said. The jurors took no action on altering the parish’s trail ride policy.
In other police jury business:
•Jurors approved of a request by the Louisiana Rural Water Association to support its opposition to an attempt by the state to cut its budget and to affirm the value of its activities in Evangeline Parish.
•Voted to renew the pre-approval agreement the parish has with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality for burning non-hazardous and non-toxic debris, such as limbs, at the Evangeline Parish Industrial Park. The parish would have the option -- before a hurricane or severe storm causes damage in the area -- not to issue permits to companies to burn debris at the industrial park cleared from this and other parishes.
•Approved a request by Juror Rocky Rider to purchase a trailer for $8,000 that will be used to transport an excavator. The funds will come from the District 1 road fund.
•The jurors voted to accept the low bid of $5,000 to repair a vehicle damaged by rocks that fell from a parish dump truck when it became involved in an accident. Rider said he examined photographs of the damaged vehicle and said the estimate seemed reasonable. Jurors discussed the need to cover parish trucks when hauling any kind of material, to require periodic inspection of parish trucks, and to have parish employees have some liability if they are involved in accidents that result in damage, although the police jury did not take any action on those issues.

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