The former Opelousas director of community development has pled guilty to forgery and felony theft charges, according to the Daily World. Louis Rom was arrested last year, accused of funneling $10,000 in city money through a non-exsistence company and into his own personal account. As community development director, he oversaw a city fund that made small business loans to start-ups in Opelousas.
Before working for the city of Opelousas, Rom was a reporter in Lafayette for The Daily Advertiser and The Times of Acadiana and most recently freelanced for the Acadiana Gazette, which still lists him as a reporter on its Web site.
Rom is scheduled for sentencing Jan. 9. He faces up to 20 years in jail and fines up to $8,000. There's also a hearing before the State Board of Ethics on malfeasance charges.
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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