The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the stimulus bill, provides funding for local infrastructure projects. On the agenda Monday for the Lafayette City-Parish Council is discussion of roughly $21 million in road projects in the parish, including an upgrade of U.S. Hwy. 90 in Broussard and overlaying University Avenue from Pinhook Road to Carencro.
The traffic and transportation department will also present the council with what amounts to a wish list detailing $5.2 million in potential upgrades to the city of Lafayette’s public-transit (bus) system via stimulus funding. Far and away the single largest expenditure is major upgrades to the Rosa Parks Transportation Center downtown totalling $2.5 million.
The remaining $2.7 million is divvied up among 13 projects. Among them: $800,000 to purchase two 35-foot low-floor buses; roughly $431,000 to upgrade bus communications systems; $50,000 to install solar lighting at bus shelters; and $75,000 to make bus shelters hurricane-proof.
At least one proposed expenditure might raise the ire of some fiscal watchdogs: $100,000 for a regional mobility study. If approved, the Texas Transportation Institute would be hired "to evaluate the Lafayette metro area on the feasibility of developing a Regional Mobility Authority for both transit and highways." Language in the discussion document that will be presented to the council suggests such mobility authorities might "adopt property taxes to fund permanent transit services for their citizens."
In rendering his ruling, District Judge John Trahan all but called the real estate developer a liar for inconsistencies in his accounts of what prompted him to punch a school teacher unconscious.
Frank’s Casing Crew, now doing business as Frank’s International, will make its final appearance on ABiz’s list of the Top 50 Privately Held Companies in Acadiana this year, and once again, it will likely be at the top with more than $1 billion in annual revenues. The 75-year-old company specializing in tubular fabrication and installation services to the oil and gas industry plans to go public this year.
The defeat, or rather highjacking of House Bill 420 in the final days of this year's Legislative Session, say Reps. Vincent Pierre and Terry Landry, is the result of the propaganda spread by one unidentified local media outlet and an unnamed former state Representative, but nothing to do with the original legislation's lack of checks, balances or details.
City-Parish Council Chairman Brandon Shelvin heaped steady doses of condescending ire on a Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Louisiana executive while failing to reveal his financial ties to a BC/BS rival.
Abbeville native David Primeaux was a popular professor until his death late last year, and while he was successful at camouflaging a dark past, he couldn’t outlive it.
Tehmi Chassion’s failure to recuse himself in the school board’s selection of a group health benefits provider raises ‘serious questions’ on whether he violated state ethics law.
He’s a singer. A songwriter. A piano man. A family man. He’s even got his own Wikipedia entry. He’s David Egan. And he knows ancient secrets about the monolithic stones of Stonehenge that he’s not willing to share.
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