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Council Preview: Boulet aims to shake up parish emergency preparedness
Here is a selection of items on the agendas for this week’s meetings of the City and Parish councils. To see the full agendas, check out the links below:. City Agenda (Public Comment Time!) Lafayette 101. Emergency Prep. State law requires every parish to have an office of homeland...
Lafayette seeks new police chief amid staffing challenges
Lafayette’s next police chief, whoever that may be, will take over a short-staffed department. Lafayette is currently in search of its eighth police chief since 2020, after Judith Estorge stepped down in May. Personnel disruptions and stagnant pay have hampered the Lafayette Police Department’s recruitment, former and current police officials say. And there is optimism that the job opening at chief is an opportunity to improve LPD and make it more attractive to men and women seeking careers in law enforcement.
Chubby Carrier, parade top expanded Lafayette Juneteenth
Telling the Juneteenth story, and moreover, clarifying its history, are foremost on the minds of local organizers as area communities prepare to celebrate the national holiday earmarking the June 19, 1865 date when Texan slaves received official news of their freedom. The news, an order that arrived in Galveston and...
LCG: Around 80% of May storm debris collected
Contract crews have cleared 22,000 cubic yards of storm debris, Lafayette Consolidated Government reported Thursday, roughly 80% of the debris leftover from May’s ferocious wind events. LCG has 17 contract trucks working on storm debris collection and expects to complete the current phase of pickup this weekend, with future...
Lafayette Parish owes the city $17M. It’s time to pay it back.
Lafayette Parish government owes the City of Lafayette $17 million for money spent digging pits on Homewood Drive, according to Lafayette Consolidated Government’s annual audit. The question is: Why hasn’t the parish paid the city back?. Believe it or not, Lafayette Parish has the money to do it....
Mouton Park detention pond paused for ‘reevaluation’
LCG paused construction of a detention pond at Mouton Park, a pocket park with a playground near Teurlings Catholic High School and the Larabee neighborhood. City Councilman Kenneth Boudreaux, who represents the district, pushed for the pause, which took effect June 4, the day after construction began. In a press release, the Boulet administration said the project will undergo a “comprehensive reevaluation.”
May storms cause $2 Million in damage to LCG
Lafayette Consolidated Government reported $2 million in damage to its facilities from the May storms that walloped Lafayette with hurricane force winds. Nets were ripped Lafayette’s Hebert municipal golf course, a tree fell through the roof of the planning department’s building on Willow Street and shingles blew off the Broadmoor area fire station.
Lafayette comics fight for accessibility
Don Schexnider rolls onto the stage of Cité des Arts’ main theater for his performance at the 2024 Coullion Fest standup comedy festival wearing a bright orange shirt and a wry smile. For him to perform, his comedy group required him to make an announcement, Schexnider tells the...
Changes to public notice law could spell end of Lafayette’s oldest news source
Changes to Louisiana’s decades-old public notice laws pushed by Lafayette Parish state Rep. Josh Carlson could redefine local news in parishes around the state and particularly in Lafayette. State law requires local governments to publish notices of their meetings, public bids and other activities in their parish’s “official journal”...
Seven apply for Lafayette library director
Seven people have applied to be the next director of the Lafayette Parish Library System, the Advocate reports. Former director Danny Gillane and current north regional branch manager Cara Chance have applied. Gillane is currently the system’s interim director; he assumed that role in April after resigning his post as director in 2023, but only after the library board fired him, illegally.
Chris Stafford: A door between universes
A grieving procession shuffled through the Delhomme Funeral Home after spending an hour in a line that stretched hundreds of yards from his casket. Mourners came in from places unknown, some in thin-lapelled jackets, pearl button snap shirts, austere Sunday blacks, hipster prairie dresses and pencil skirts. They were family, friends, fans, onlookers and dignitaries. Dozens, if not more, were bandmates.
LCG may restore park police
The Boulet administration may reinstate a dedicated police force to patrol Lafayette Consolidated Government three dozen parks, KATC reports. Mayor-President Josh Guillory disbanded the park police in 2020, as part of an effort to slash LCG’s budget and restructure the parks department. The small police detachment were among 37 parks employees that Guillory fired as the agency was reorganized into the department of Parks, Arts, Recreation and Tourism.
Lafayette police may target more panhandlers under new state law
Two years after Lafayette’s City Council repealed local rules against panhandling on public roads, a pending change to state law would reimpose those potentially unconstitutional restrictions — which the city’s new interim police chief says “will solve a lot of these problems here altogether.”. Lafayette’s City...
Richard Zuschlag, Acadian Companies founder, dead at 76
Richard Zuschlag, local civic leader and longtime president and CEO Acadian Companies, has died at 76, the company announced in statement Wednesday. Zuschlag was battling cancer. Zuschlag grew the upstart Acadian Ambulance, which he co-founded in 1971, into a powerful emergency services enterprise with six divisions. Still headquartered in Lafayette,...
How Jessica Brown-Mason put her neighborhood on the map
Coming home to Lafayette after 40 years, Jessica Brown-Mason saw change happening in Lafayette’s historically Black neighborhoods through the coteries. She started the Resilience Rise Community Collaborative to bring that change to her neighborhood. Lafayette has five neighborhood associations designated as “coteries”: Freetown-Port Rico, La Place, McComb-Veazey, Oasis and...
BRIEF: Land bought for Northside library
More than five years since money was set aside for a new Northside library branch, parish government has officially purchased land for its construction. Lafayette Parish bought 10 acres of undeveloped land just south of I-10 along Louisiana Avenue, according to The Acadiana Advocate. Progress on the new library has...
BRIEF: Walter Guillory resigns Lafayette parks post
Walter Guillory, athletic programs supervisor for Lafayette Consolidated Government, resigned last week, the Boulet administration confirmed to the Acadiana Advocate. Guillory’s appointment to that role in 2019 raised eyebrows, given his then recent release from federal prison on corruption charges connected to his time as director of the Lafayette Housing Authority.
BRIEF: Boulet taps new spokesperson
The Boulet administration will appoint marketing strategist Jamie Boudreaux to the role of Chief Communications Officer, per a Monday press release. Boudreaux will leave her current post at BBR Creative to join Lafayette Consolidated Government later this month. From the press release:. Prior to her time at BBR, Boudreaux served...
Drake LeBlanc’s fight for French
Lafayette filmmaker and multimedia artist Drake LeBlanc is a product and advocate of Louisiana French education. The French multi-media organization he co-founded, Télé-Louisiane, is facing drastic cuts in state funding. A graduate of Paul Breaux Middle School’s now defunct French Immersion program, LeBlanc went on to host a...
Lafayette will vote in two congressional districts this fall
The map is set for this fall’s congressional elections, splitting Lafayette between two districts. But the fight over Louisiana’s second Black district may not be over. Louisiana will have two majority-Black congressional districts this fall after the U.S. Supreme Court halted a challenge to the congressional map passed by the state Legislature in a special session at the start of this year. The Supreme Court decided it was too close to the Nov. 5 election to change voters’ congressional districts.
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