The news came as a surprise to us and apparently everyone in the Lafayette Convention and Visitors Commission board meeting Wednesday afternoon: LCVC Executive Director Gerald Breaux announced at his retirement at the regular monthly meeting (moved up a week because of the holiday). Breaux will step down at the end of June, after nearly 31 years on the job.
The only other person aware the announcement was coming was Breaux’s wife Helen, a retired school teacher. The decision, 61-year-old Breaux says, was anything but spur of the moment. “Helen and I have talked about it for many months,” he says. “Now we can do the things we want to do.” Though he was not specific about those "things," saying he’s not quite sure how he’ll spend his retirement ("check back with me at the end of May, and then I’ll tell you"), travel is definitely on the agenda. Breaux's developed a love for traveling over his decades on the road promoting Lafayette Parish. Only now it’ll be all pleasure.
Among his reasons for stepping down, Breaux also says it’s time for new leadership at LCVC: “It’s maybe someone else’s turn to come in and move the place forward again.”
Breaux’s recommendation to the nine-member LCVC board and incoming board President Jimmy Thackston of the Hilton was to form a four-member committee that would determine how the search will be conducted. Breaux, however, stresses that all decisions are the board’s call. Breaux’s salary is $142,000, but he has no idea what the job will pay his successor. “It’s totally up to the search committee,” he says.
Under Breaux LCVC has successfully promoted Lafayette across the country and internationally, and this summer was instrumental in Lafayette earning the honor of Best Small Town for Food in Rand McNally and USA Today’s Best of the Road competition, an accolade that included a feature in USA Today Travel. It was a high point in Breaux’s career, but he says those high points came more often than not. “I’m proud every day that we have such a great city and such a great product to promote,” he says. “Our brand is our culture, our food and our music. It’s been a great, great opportunity.”
A Lafayette native, Northside High and 1972 UL grad, Breaux worked in sales at The Daily Advertiser right out of college for about a year and then moved to Washington, D.C., for an administrative job with the FBI. He returned to Lafayette in the mid-1970s to work for the late Mayor Kenny Bowen as his administrative assistant. In 1981 he was hired for the LCVC job — and never had a reason to update his resume.
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.
Most Read
in case you missed it
Subscribe to this comment's feed