Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Lafayette’s fledgling mobile food vendor scene is about to get rolling. By Nancy DeVille
Photos by Robin May
Our “cool town” is long overdue for its own food truck revolution, but many local residents seem surprisingly unaware of the momentum this movement has gained in the rest of the country, even our own state, and the potential economic growth it can offer our city.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
The quaint little St. Landry Parish town of Washington, famed for its antique malls and antebellum charm, makes a killing with its interstate speed trap. By Heather Miller
Photos by Robin May
About 30 miles north of Lafayette and not far off Interstate 49 lies the historic St. Landry Parish town of Washington, a quiescent community of about 1,000 people known for its antiques, bucolic bed and breakfasts along the bayou — and speeding tickets.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Less than a year after thousands converged in the Cajundome fearing the worst, Lafayette’s economy has taken a turn for the better.
By William Kalec
They came in droves – your angry, your worried, your curious, your concerned — all congregated beneath the Cajundome’s concrete roof, suitable shelter from a falling sky.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Is the party over for Louisiana Democrats, who in the past decade have been losing their grip on voters and politicos, leaving U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu as the only one currently elected to a statewide office? By Penny Font
In Caroline Fayard, Louisiana Democrats thought they finally had the breath of fresh air they so desperately needed.
Someone to counter their waning influence in statewide politics. Someone to ignite the party base and stop the decades-long bleeding of membership from the voter rolls. Someone to make headlines besides a steady stream of longtime Democrats in office defecting to the Republican Party. Someone to inject a little more blue into a state that grows redder by the election.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
We urge the Lafayette Parish School Board to dig deep and look far in the selection of our next superintendent. An Independent Weekly Editorial
When Lafayette Schools Superintendent Burnell Lemoine announced a week ago that he will honor his contract and retire at the end of 2011, a collective sigh of relief rose up in our parish.
Lemoine has by no means been a poor administrator of our public school system. He oversaw the successful expansion of our academy/schools of choice programs — a feather in his cap to be sure — and has served our students conscientiously.
MAY 21 Gambit columnist Clancy DuBos writes about the Mother's Day shooting, and how the stages of shock and blame and healing mirror those traveled by the same city following Hurricane Katrina. The city will recover, just as it did following the storm, by reaching out to help the people injured most seriously by the event, DuBos writes. It's how we heal, he says.
MAY 21 Here's a post on the Advocate (but buried on a subpage, not on the front) that reports something Louisiana Voice reported some time ago: a top DOE official lives in Los Angeles and "commutes" to Baton Rouge. The positioning of the story caused a stir on Facebook Monday, with several posters asking if the Advocate was covering someone's hiney. Sentell's stories on DOE are notoriously soft, and this one is no different: don't expect any hard questions in here.
MAY 21 Here's another post from blogger Tom Aswell about the "course choice" program. He's already reported on kids being signed up without their consent or knowledge, and has more here: For example, he tells of a six-year-old who was signed up for high school Latin. He also digs a little deeper into the sister companies of the main one operating in Louisiana; all of them seem to have complaints against them. Stinky.
MAY 21 Given the 80 percent cut in higher ed funding since he's been in office, it's clear Gov. Jindal would rather give tax cuts to out of state companies than have a functioning system, blogger Dayne Sherman argues in this post. The cuts have been such a disaster, Sherman says, that it will take 30 years to fix what's been broken. He says he believes the aim is to shut down most of the schools before Jindal leaves in 2016.
MAY 21 Blogger CB Forgotston says there are too many elections in Louisiana, and they're costing us too much money. The proof is in the pudding: turnout for most of these nonsensical pollings gets worse and worse, CB opines, even as millions of dollars that could be spent on health care or higher ed go down the tubes. The legislature must take action to stem the tide of pointless elections, he says.
MAY 21 Here's an interesting investigative piece by WVUE on the retirement benefits of some Jefferson Parish public employees. According to the story, the taxpayers are paying 100 percent of the retirement contributions of employees who started work prior to a certain date in April 1986 -- and have done for more than 30 years. It costs the parish millions annually, and might not be legal, the story reports.
MAY 21 This post on Bayou Buzz provides insight from Louisiana's intrepid pollster, Bernie Pinsonat, on the winners and losers from this year's legislative session. But to hear Bernie tell it, there's almost nuttin but losers: Jindal, the Republican party, the Fiscal Hawks all get big goose eggs in his win column.
MAY 20 This post on The Lens takes a look at a huge (either $500K or $250K) bill that one NOLA charter now has for school lunches. The RSD says the charter group didn't fill out the proper paperwork for federal reimbursement, but the story details how the RSD didn't ensure the people running the charter had the proper training, despite requests from hapless charter employees trying to fill out forms. Either way, somebody's asleep at the wheel.
Most Read
in case you missed it