In an eleventh hour settlement of a lawsuit headed for trial Aug. 10, Mosquito Control Contractors, Inc. reached an agreement with the Iberia Parish Council. "If the parties were going to settle, we had to do it now," says parish Assistant District Attorney Wayne Landry. The deciding factor, scheduled for a ruling prior to the trial's commencement, was a pending motion for parish government's right to cancel MCCI's contract. "Whoever wins that motion, there would be little incentive to settle after that," adds Landry, who represents the parish.
A ruling for MCCI would have caused the parish government to reimburse MCCI from the time the contract was cancelled through the length of its term ' more than $300,000. The council voted 10-2 not to gamble and instead accepted a payment of $132,665 from MCCI.
Council member Caesar Comeaux was one of the two dissenting votes. "There was an audit made, and we got the results that we have been overcharged," he says. "What would this be called if [MCCI President Glenn Stokes] overcharged over a long period of time? They call that fraud. I just don't feel it was right for us to settle that in a meeting room. It should have been sent to court."
Former council member Lloyd Nicholson, who introduced Stokes to Iberia Parish in 1982, and remains friends with him, agrees with Comeaux. "The problem with not going to trial is that if anything was improper or illegal, we'll never know about it now."
The dispute between Iberia Parish Government and MCCI came to a head in September 2004, when the parish council cancelled its source reduction contract with MCCI and filed suit for breach of contract, money due and damages. ("Foggy Contract Breakdown," June 1). Stokes countersued.
Landry is pleased with the terms of the settlement. "If there's one thing I'm elated about, it's to get the parish out of the source reduction business. There's a potential for too many problems ' the potential for abuse when you're doing public work on private property," he says.
Stokes is relieved as well. "We don't feel that we did anything wrong," he says. "We followed the contract and did whatever we were told to do by the parish. It was shown that mistakes and miscalculations were made on both sides. At no time during this was my professional integrity or the quality of mosquito control in question. This was about figures. We won a lot of things; they proved some things. Ultimately it saved everyone ' the taxpayers and us ' money." ' MT
BUS STOP BULLETINS
After the confusion experienced last year with new bus routes, the Lafayette Parish School System's Transportation Department wants parents, students and bus drivers on the same page for the start of school in August. To achieve that goal, it's launched a new transportation department Web site, and parish bus stop pamphlets will be mailed out next month to all public school students' residences. The transportation department also is sending out special letters to pupils registered in any of the school system's Schools of Choice programs and working on setting up a hotline to field questions. "We're trying to cover all our bases," says LPSS Communications Director Justine Sutley. The transportation department's new Web site, which can be linked from www.lpssonline.com, invites users to type in their address and view a map of area bus stops, along with school and bus driver contact information. Sutley says she hopes parents will contact bus drivers in advance so the drivers can estimate how many students they will be picking up at each stop. Last year's newly consolidated bus routes resulted in scores of students riding in overcrowded buses or waiting in vain at the wrong bus stops. ' NS
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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