City Council - Regular Meeting

Through your grace and mercy, we're here today, Lord. We pray and ask that you bless every family representative here, that you bless my colleagues, the administration, and everybody here that's trying to make Lake Charles a better city. In Jesus Christ's name we pray, amen.

We face the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

to review requests for proposals received for developer to design, build, finance, own, operate, and maintain a food and beverage and recreational establishment on one acre, more or less, to be leased in track three of the lakefront of the city of Lake Charles, all in accordance with and as authorized by Title 41, Section 1214 of the Louisiana Revised Statutes of 1950 as amended. Appointed chairman to review bids for project number CP3544, Hodges Street Waterline Extension. Appointed chairman to review bids for project number CP2894, Wastewater Treatment Plant A, McNabb and Klein Street Emergency Sewer System Rehabilitation. ordinances for public hearings, an ordinance ordering demolition and authorizing the City of Lake Charles Center into an agreement for demolition of a structure located at 1509 Pear Street, Edward Gallion Jr. and Jules J. Gallion owners, subject to a tax sale to the state of Louisiana. Another demolition at 621 Bank Street, Earl Melvin Anthony Wilts, Danielle Malone will and Monique Michelle will owners another demolition at 2123rd Street to fill your Petrie owner another demolition at 1716 22nd Street Brian Keith Hillary owner under the demolition at 1302 11th Street Stephen Daniel Peters and Betty Louise Allen Peters owners. Another demolition at 1400 McNabb Street, Isaac Jackson Estate and Beulah Antwine Jackson owners. Another demolition at 1300 Wendell Street, Austin Rogers Fontenot Estate owner. Another demolition at 738 Iberville Street, swimming pool only, Nakia Yvette Guillory, owner. Another demolition at 304 Calcasieu Street, Betty Jane Jefferson, Lisa S. Jefferson, Leslie M. Jefferson, and Jessica L. Jefferson, owners. Another demolition at 312 Maple Street, Marlene Johnson Marks, owner. Another demolition at 1400 North Shattuck Street, Cleveland Nash, and O'Vara Nash, owners. Ordinances for final action. An ordinance of the City Council of the City of Lake Charles amending resolution number 313-23 to authorize the City of Lake Charles to modify the location and scope of RCIP LDI City of Lake Charles, LC, Second Harvest 0084, and further authorizing the purchase of a vacant lot parcel number 00751405 from Immaculate Heart of Mary Roman Catholic Church to construct and own a primary community resilience hub in accordance with the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development's national objectives for the use of funds from the CDBGDR program. An ordinance authorizing the City of Lake Charles to allow more than 10% cumulative increase for a change order for project number CP3426, wastewater treatment plant A, operational reliability improvements collection system hardening. An ordinance amending section 24 of the City of Lake Charles code of ordinances by adding section 24-5-203.1 relative to outdoor lighting, an ordinance adopting and levying the annual property tax millages for the city of Lake Charles for the tax year 2026, an ordinance authorized in the city of Lake Charles to enter into a cooperative endeavor agreement with the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff's Office to fund to Sheriff's Office Sheriff's Office employee positions to the real time crime center. an ordinance amending the City of Lake Charles Code of Ordinances to an Act Section 13-37.5 to provide for a prohibition against laundering on Borderland Drive, the lakefront promenade, and all other city-owned property not specifically addressed by ordinance during designated hours. A resolution accepting project number CP3242, Southern Sewer Loop Sunset Lift Station Rehabilitation as substantially complete and authorizing the advertising of the 45-day lien period. A resolution accepting project number CP3339, Lakefront Parking. Garage Phase 2 as substantially complete and authorized in the advertising of the 45-day lien period. A resolution setting date for public hearing on condemnation of a structure located at 740 Cleveland Street, Russell Foster, owner with the companion ordinance. A resolution ordering and calling a special election to be held in the city of Lake Charles, Louisiana, the city, on December 12, 2026, are such other election date prescribed by the legislator of the state of Louisiana as an alternative for such date in accordance with law for the purpose of submitting to the electors residing in the city qualified under the Constitution and laws of the state of Louisiana propositions for authorizing the renewal of the levy and collection of certain special Avalon taxes for the purposes described herein, making application to the State Bond Commission in connection therewith and providing for other matters in connection therewith. A resolution authorizing the amendment of the City of Lake Charles' CDBGDR action plan with HUD to move the proposed Lake Charles Fire Department campus from the previously identified Sixth Avenue site to a site on Broad Street. The next item, the title was changed after it was sent out as a carryover, a resolution amending resolution numbers 81 dash 14 section 13 and 150 dash 97 section 10 regarding the rules and regulations covering the city council of the city of Lake Charles for procedures relative to comments by the public during city council and agenda meetings. Ordinances for final action and ordinance authorized in the city of Lake Charles, Louisiana, to designate the American press as the official journal of the city of Lake Charles, Louisiana, for the period of July 1st, 2026 through June 30th, 2027. An audience authorized in the city of Lake Charles to implement the 2026 pay matrix for the Lake Charles Police Department. An ordinance amending ordinance number 20542, adopted May 6th, 2026, creating the position of Chief of Administration and Chief of Operations within the Administrative Division of the Lake Charles Fire Department relative to certain applicant eligibility requirements. An ordinance authorizing the city of Lake Charles to accept the best proposal received from the request for proposals issued for a developer to design, build, finance, own, operate, and maintain a food and beverage and recreational establishment on one acre, more or less, to be leased in track three of the lakefront of the city of Lake Charles, all in accordance with and as authorized by Title 41, Section 1214 of the Louisiana Revised Statutes of 1950, as amended. an ordinance approving the city of Lake Charles is 2026 action plan. This ordinance will authorize the city of Lake Charles to make application to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development HUD for its 2026 Community Development Block Grant, CDBG and Home Investment Partnership Program funding allocation. an ordinance amending the city. Amending the code of ordinances for the city of Lake Charles by adding chapter 25 to establish the local health care provider participation program in the city of Lake Charles in accordance with Louisiana revised statute 40 colon 1248.1 to 1248.10. The next item is the companion ordinance. And then there's an ordinance authorizing the mayor of the city of Lake Charles to enter into a cooperative endeavor agreement with the merchants of Walnut Grove Incorporated to permit the construction of public parking on City Rideaway. and an ordinance to reconsider ordinance number 20563 passed and adopted on May 20th, 2026 regarding amending resolution number 313-23 to authorize the City of Lake Charles to modify the location and scope of RCIP LDI City of Lake Charles LC rr avenue revital 0088 in order to transfer funding to the gosport community center to construct a recreation facility in accordance with the united states department of housing and urban development national objectives for the use of funds from the cdbgdr program and that's all that i have

First, I want to thank Public Works, my fellow councilmen, city officials, and everybody I've seen who came out to my father's funeral. When I got out the car that morning and I saw Ms. D and everybody, Mr. Cardone, Marshall, everybody that's sitting here, it made me feel like it was family. I know it seemed like we argue a lot or disagree, but it made me feel that much better when I got out the car that morning to see everybody who came in from all walks of life from this department. It really did me and my family justice. You know, not justice, just made us feel better. And second, I want to if I don't mind, my my niece called me today she graduated from Cornell University and now she's attending Howard University and in law school and she had an interest in city stuff I said well come on down and just say hey I said you want to see it you gonna learn a lot of it right here but you gotta wait you gotta wait till yeah but I just wanted to he was amusing and on a other business A couple of months ago, I clicked on a video of these young adults fighting in some of our prominent places in Lake Charles. And I guess once I clicked on one of them, now it all comes. I'm not a great Instagram, Facebooker. Now all of them come to me. Every time I wake up on a Monday morning, for the last four weeks, I see young adults gathering behind the Civic Center to have fights in the video. And I know how much you want to say we don't agree to this real-time crime stuff. We don't agree to wages for hire to increase wages. I didn't see any of the police force out there. This video was seven, eight minutes. You can get from Lake Charles to highway in that timeframe. And I just want to know what are we doing because I don't want nobody to come say, man, y'all saw this going on and what are we doing to address it? Because the violence is getting more and more in depth every time I look at these videos. It's almost embarrassing to even look at it. But I'm starting to see it every time I wake up Monday morning. And it's a plan. They're gathering together in a group at The thing when you cross I-10 is the first thing you see when you come into Lake Charles. And I just don't think that's a great look for the city or whatever we can do to start putting a hold on to this. Mr. Mark spoke on it one day. I don't know the answer. Yeah, we just need to do something to try and contain this.

Mr. Bilbo, I appreciate you bringing that up. Just to address the latest video that surfaced on the July 5th following the 4th of July, that's probably the most recent one. And by the way, I feel your pain because that's on my feed as well. Every time I open it up, it seems to be something. That incident actually occurred about 5.11 a.m. And just to give you guys a little bit of background, obviously prior to the 4th of July, we had an additional 18 officers at work through the 4th of July from 7 a.m. to midnight. Unfortunately, we didn't have anybody to work over after that, and it happened at 5 11 a.m. on Sunday morning which is mind-boggling but just to address that incident it's currently under investigation by our investigator by our detective division they're working as we speak to identify the people involved beyond that we've stationed a an officer there between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. beginning last night and running for the duration until we pull them off so we'll have an officer at the Civic Center I'm sorry at the event center every night Item 21 that you guys have in front of you, it may seem like something small, but allowing our officers to have the opportunity to be proactive by issuing a no loitering, for the event center is enormous for us. I have four patrol shifts that are waiting with bated breath for next Wednesday when that hopefully goes into effect. That will allow us to be proactive and not reactive to things that are going on at the event center, and I think you guys will see a stark change on that. Hopefully there'll be no more videos coming from that area. Again, thank y'all for considering that. I very much so appreciate it. I hope I answered your question.

I really don't have nothing for District C today. Mr. President, while the chief is up there, can we ask some questions? Thank you for coming, Chief. Yes, sir. I was hoping that Chief Chief would be here.

I apologize for him not being here. He's in Baton Rouge, unfortunately.

I just heard you say about working over and being proactive. Yes. We had an event at the Civic Center that was televised. We knew it was happening. We knew it was going to take place. Yes, sir. I watched that video Mr. Bilbo was talking about, and it took almost the length of the video, and I still didn't hear a siren. I didn't hear anything. No kind of warning that the police are coming. If we being proactive, what happened with the event that the police presence wasn't there until the parking lot was clear?

Yes, sir. The parking lot was cleared following the event. Like I said, the red, white, blue, and you event, our officers were there until midnight. And Sergeant Scott Doherty, I talked to him specifically, he was the last officer to leave. And when he left, Borderlack Drive was clear. Those folks, by video, we saw them come in about 2.30, 3 o'clock in the morning, and then that erupted at 5.

But what... I thought we had discussed, and maybe not you, but we had discussed making patrols back there.

We do. But also, gentlemen, you have to remember, it was Saturday night into Sunday morning. I had nine police officers and three supervisors working that night handling calls all over the city. They make periodic patrols where they can. And you have to bear in mind, again, item 21 is going to be clutch for us because if our periodic patrols go through and there's 100 people out there, but they're not doing anything that allows us to take any police action, then they're just there. There's not a lot we're able to do. It's not illegal for them to be there. Because there's currently not a no loitering ordinance. That is item 21, which will allow us to actually take proactive action when those people gather there.

So, excuse me, item 21 will not allow people just to visit?

Correct. Unless I'm mistaken, it's a no loitering ordinance.

I don't think it's going to stop them. It just gives them a time frame to where it's illegal to be back there loitering. But it's still open to the public.

Oh, it's still open to the public. They're just not allowed to gather and loiter there. We'll have to warn them and then cite them and then, if need be, remove them.

So what is our plan going forward to be proactive throughout the city? I know we hear a lot of talk about the Civic Center. And I just want people to know we're concerned about the whole city. Absolutely.

Not just the Civic Center. Us as well. And I understand this is a... How do you eat an elephant? It's one bite at a time. We know they're going to gather. Folks are going to gather later in the evening at the Civic Center. So, again, this is, I think, our first step. And we have a multi-pronged approach. I've had multiple meetings, not only with our department, but I've spoken with the sheriff's office. If it's okay with you, I prefer not to get into specific tactical or strategic plans. But we are absolutely working on it, Councilman, for sure.

You mind if I go into mine next? Because it leads into this.

No, no, I was going to go to you next anyway.

I guess, Mr. Bilbo, you're done.

Hold up. I don't want to throw bad reviews, but I done seen, even myself, when I was a young man, got pulled over, and within minutes, they got six cop cars around me. So I'm watching this video. How long it was, Craig? Eight, nine, ten minutes that that we had and we didn't see any, you know, and we have a real time I think they're supposed to watch when things happen. They see text messages and stuff to computer-generated that y'all see, right?

I'm not. It's called real-time. Real-time crime. We haven't done that yet. That's not. We haven't done it yet. Oh, we haven't done it yet? No, so that's on the agenda, I believe, to fund positions for that, for us.

The sheriff hasn't. We haven't had that. The sheriff had it.

So the sheriff can see this.

and still nobody react to you see a bunch of people interacting at at four in the morning yes sir and you can see this and still no one well again we we can't technically see that not on video we don't have we don't have we don't have real-time access to it at this point officers can't see that from where they're at real-time crime may be able to see it but that is like as uh Mr. Deuce pointed out that as the sheriff's office, they would dispatch their units to that if they saw a need for that at that point.

And I guess at that point, I guess 70 minutes of the fight, at that point, there really wasn't any legal going on.

You're right. Yes, sir. Up until the fight began, there was nothing overtly illegal.

You can loiter there.

And unless the officers are on scene to make a reaction, someone has to notify us of that. And when we were notified and our notification came in as a shots fired called the 511, we had eight officers respond to the scene, along with several units from the Sheriff's Department. But by the time they got there, it was it was over.

But we were supposed to have a strategic plan because that was a hot area. So to say that We were on other calls. There should have been somebody patrolling that area so that when that congregation started, if they seen the police presence, it would have never happened.

Sir, I'm going to tell you that we've had there's other videos. I don't know if you've seen them of our officers out there with their blue lights on and the folks on the other side of the road making comments that they can't do anything to us because we're just sitting here. That is the blue lights won't drive them away. it just unfortunately it's we're in a kind of a different time i would guess used to if i saw blue lights as a youngster i would probably leave as well but that's just not the maybe folks are just emboldened now um but again there's there's multiple videos of our officers out there citing people on one side that where there is no loitering and the folks that are on the other side on the on the west side of the mortal act watching and videoing and commenting on it okay i get you Again, sir, all of you, I appreciate you all having Item 21. We are stoked about it. We can't wait for it to go into place. We have plans, and we're very much so looking forward to it.

Okay. The other thing I had is, and I'll just say, since I'm into my stuff, I'll just say it. There was something that happened here a couple of weeks ago that I was very disappointed in. I don't think that My colleagues, the administration, people coming to these meetings should ever have to worry about something getting attacked for something that happens in the meeting. And I was very disappointed that the chief was here and that. everything was allowed to go like it went. I'ma go back to not necessarily the police department, I'ma go back to when we hired this security firm. I was adamant in my belief that it does us no good to hire a firm that cannot do anything when an altercation happens like it happened two weeks ago and I believe that if we had the city police here in city hall with the face and the presence these type of things don't happen would you would you agree that a LCPD presence would be greater than what we have now?

I don't know if the presence would have been greater. The response likely would have been different. Here's the deal. Mr. Councilman, I'm not going to jump in to say what they can and can't do. That might have been an individual moment with that particular security officer. He could have taken action. Again, I'm speaking out of school on that. I don't know. Also, to your point, I watched a copious amount of surveillance video from that day. The chief had been here. The chief was in his unit leaving. He was not in the building when that occurred. And the officer that we had working that night had also exited and came back to intervene. So it wasn't that we weren't here and didn't act. We responded once it happened. The meeting was over and they had exited.

So tell me, in your experience, what happens in a situation like that? Nobody was arrested, but in my opinion, a councilman was put in harm's way. What is our policy for that?

Were the officers notified that any type of incident occurred where someone should have been arrested?

Yes.

Who advised? And I'm unaware that that occurred, that an officer was made aware that a battery had occurred or...

I informed the chief and officer that was there about the whole incident. We stood out there and we talked for several, almost an hour about this particular thing.

I'm unaware that I've watched a fair amount of video. I'm unaware of any conversation that took place where we were notified. Had we been notified, someone should have been detained and citations issued at least.

The police officer had to restrain the person.

When he arrived, he was, again, watching the video. When the officer arrived on scene, that gentleman was standing outside. He placed him in what we call an escort position and walked him away because I believe it might have been yourself was saying, get him out of here. And he did. He did exactly what was asked.

But he had to restrain him with force. I saw that with my own eyes. I walked him all the way around the building. I told the chief as well that something needed to be done. They walked the person to the car, yet nothing happened.

I don't remember seeing the officer have to restrain him. Someone else restrained him.

I saw the officer.

I didn't see the officer having to utilize what we would consider that level of force.

Well, I don't know about the level of force, but the officer had to grab him and walk him around the building. And the chief was right there when this took place. So I'm saying, not necessarily to you, Chief, but I'm saying to the administration, like I said before, this is not gonna work. We've never had situations like this to happen before, but I would hate to think that if it was one of the city workers, the mayor, Mr. Cardone, any one of these council members, to be put in that situation again, it's going to be a problem because we got to worry about how it looks. But if somebody run up on me, I know my manhood going to kick in to the point to where I'm going to have to protect myself because I don't know. I watched the video, and it was a bad situation. And I just think that we need LCPD patrolling the city council meetings at all times because what's going on now, I mean, the world is just different.

Well, Council Marks, what I'll say is what we'll have is our officers will stay until everyone's gone. That way there's someone in the building.

If I might just make a comment, the police officers are here. And we've had a meeting with Allied. We understand what took place there, and we've tried to address that situation. But we've also had a meeting with the police department. They're here, and they're going to remain here until everybody is cleared out in the future. So we'll have a presence here from the police department. We are addressing it, and we've mapped out a planned path forward. And if we could, I think maybe that's something we could discuss at a later date and kind of bring y'all up to date on what our plans are in order to make sure this place is safe and secure and stuff like that doesn't happen.

And I appreciate what you're saying, Mr. Cardone, but I'm going to go back to what I said from the very beginning. I mean, this is part of the city police system. This is part of their purview. And I think that if we've got to pay overtime, however it has to happen, we need that presence. If I see that chief right there somewhere, I'm subject to not do something, as opposed to if I see allied. I might just take a chance with allied.

I have that effect on people.

Mr. Marks, that's what I'm saying. They're here, and they're going to remain here for right now. They will not leave until these meetings and everybody's gone.

I'll be here tonight until they are all gone, for sure.

We can talk about it offline, but I'm not just talking about the meetings. I understand. Okay. Thank you. The other thing I have is I get calls in the village. I'm sorry, Chief. I'm through as far as the city police. The ditch is behind the village. We have to do something about that. I know Mr. Cardone has educated me before that's gravity drainage, but it falls in the purview of our constituents because we got an apartment complex on one side and we got the village on another side. And Mr. Hanchett told me the other day, well, how can we keep the ditch on Oak Park so clean, but we can't keep that ditch clean? I tried to explain to them about gravity drainage, but residents are not trying to hear that when they got rodents and rats and all that. So if we can get somebody to take a look at that urgently. The other thing is I think that we're putting a lot of responsibility on the contractor that we have for cutting grass for adjudicated properties. I'd like to see us visit maybe having more than one contractor because with the rain and the increase in the adjudicated properties, it's going to be hard for one contractor unless he just got a a hell of a crew to keep up with what we got going on through the city and we constantly getting reports from individual councilmen about the grass and you know i i don't think we see it as much you know because we're not involved in it but i know miss paula she's in the mix of it so i'd like to us to consider maybe opening another contract up i don't know you know how we do the funding or what would be the things with it but we need to do something in regards to that uh Again, on McKinley Street. Well, I ain't gonna just say McKinley Street. Oh, yes, ma'am.

It's okay. I'm sorry. Okay, it's all right.

I'll talk to you about it later. McKinley Street in the village again. The village is being taken over by homelessness. And I'm not saying that to make the homeless people out, that if I didn't have a place to stay, I'm going to sleep where I can sleep too. But it's becoming a problem now, especially since the housing authority has started to clean up And start knocking down some of these houses. They're even breaking the wood off the houses that people have secured. You know, so I don't know what the remedy is to it. I just think we need to highlight again. We might be stretching the LCPD a little thin, you know, to have them go off in there and have to be concerned about that as well. One of the things that was brought up to me and I'd like us to visit it is at the corner of Roosevelt and I don't know what the street it hooks into, but Roosevelt goes into a curve. Every time it rains or we have substantial rain, that area floods. Greenwich Terrace or Greenwich Boulevard, it floods. And one of the things that was brought to me, which I thought it was a good idea, I don't know how cost effective it would be, is to make get with the housing authority where we're tearing down some of those houses on Greenwich and do sort of a little retention pond, a mini retention pond right there where that water will have a place to run until it subsides because these people are always on pins and needles when we have a thick rain because the rain is coming up to their doors at the southern part of Roosevelt Street. Also at the end of, again, I'm in the village this week. the each street that runs into roosevelt roosevelt comes all the way around it starts on fifth avenue uh off of um i can't think of the name of the street when you come off fifth avenue you get on that street and you make the right on roosevelt and it goes around on the curve but they have several streets that dump into roosevelt i like to get some signs some some arrow signs at the end of those streets because one resident told me that a car continued to run and ran straight into the front door. So I'm hoping that if we put some signs, those yellow signs at the end of each one of those streets, I think it's gonna take three signs. What do you want the signs to say? Just the arrow, left, right arrow. Okay. The left, right arrow. Also, I want to thank Ms. Wendy Public works because I've called them several times. We've been having in the old park area. We have in the thing. Mr Bibble talked about and mr Harvey in regards to the landlords putting properties out and dumping everything on the street and they've been doing a great job going around and picking up you know as best they can the trash so it's not leaving and hanging in the streets because what happens is people go dig in the bags once they put it out to the street it becomes a free fall and now our workers got to go back and clean all that up but they've been doing a great job on that and I want to say kudos to them Other than that, that's all I have right now, Mr. President. All right.

Thank you, Mr. Marks. Mr. Harvey? I don't have anything, Mr. President. All right. Mr. Fondale?

I want to commend the rec department again. The mayor and I visit a summer camp at McMillan Park where they put on a camp for the kids in that area. And we had a company supporting that that that camp. And it was real good. The what was the company actually? What is Woodside? Yes, Woodside, Woodside. And the young I call a young lady. I got all this gray hair on my head. The young lady sat there and read a book to the kids. I might have to practice my book reading, but you are doing a very great job and that area really needs it. Mayor, you know, it's the mayor's administration. I really appreciate what you are trying to do there. And that area really needs that uplift.

And if some of our retired folks want to go read, I'm going to have them call the rec department.

because sparking a mind with a child goes a long way. I just wanted to comment on that. The other thing that I wanted to mention, I mentioned to Chief, the guy might be here today about the basketball thing, and I won't get into it anymore.

And he has a card. He has a card.

Okay. So you're here. I just wanted to know, I talked to the Chief, but you're free to come up. And the other thing that I think with the with Kroger's getting torn down I want to commend the planning and zoning for working with that owner it's been a long road and work with that owner the owner sold the property and now it's one of those things we just didn't tear something down it actually works its way through the system and that building will be back in that lot will be back in commerce and sometime we just got to be patient You know, and I want to commend the planning and zoning, but I know they work with the guy. I've seen all the paperwork and that was a great job.

I'm glad that's done.

Krogers is down and we got a new building coming. Thank you, Mr. President.

Yes, I forgot two things. One is I want to let the public know the city that there's an app that you can go on when you got a light out on your street. As much as the city wanted to help you, it's better to go on that app and put your light in, put the information in, and the industry can get through it faster than having us go through the administration and have to reach out and get those people to do that. Also, I want to thank Ms. Broussard for this list that you gave us that we're getting now about our property standards issues. But I just have a question. The responsible inspectors, is that the ones gonna be assigned to our areas now?

That's the inspector that's assigned to that particular case. For instance, the council members that are in the mid Lake Charles and southern Lake Charles, we have an inspector that's on the west side, the east side, and then south, the west side, the east side. And it has a lot of the council districts within their areas. So that's just the inspector in charge.

Got you, but thank you for this sheet. That's it, Mr. President. All right.

Mr. Rizzo.

Yeah, I just have a couple of things, and I know this issue has been brought up, and it's really for you, Mr. Stutes. These Oxford houses or sober living houses or whatever they're called, I know a lot of people, my fellow councilmen, have brought these up a lot of times, and I know there are some federal protections involved in this, but what I want to know specifically is, is the federal protection, you don't have to answer now, but just want to give you some of my thoughts, is the federal protection with the residents or the operation of it? And I ask that because I have one now and I have a very active community, Greenfield Circle across from SJ Welsh, that is really doing their research and they have some very good technical questions. But the operation of it, to me, seems it's a business. And I know there's a lot of people, we've had the same conversation. It's a business, and yes, the people living there have some federal protection for HIPAA or whatever reasons. But if it's a business, they have to have an occupational license, they have to get registered, is it considered a commercial property, and all these things. The specific thing I have now is I have one of the residents there that's running a mechanic shop. And I've talked to – Paula and her crew have done an excellent job. I stay in contact with them. They give me updates. But the residents aren't satisfied. So I actually went out there myself and spoke to this gentleman, and I got all the evidence that I need. I could go to court tomorrow about him running a mechanic shop, and he promised me he was going to stop and relocate. I even offered to help him find a shop. he still is running his mechanic shop. I mean, sometimes he has three or four people sitting in his driveway just

Is he permitted for that mechanic?

He has nothing.

Then we should be able to stop that.

I want to go write him a ticket. I'll do it myself if I have to. I don't know what authority I have. The sin property standards bring it to their attention. But there's a lot of technical information about the operation of these facilities. And I know the residents there probably have some protections, and I'm all for that. But the operation of it, do they have an occupational license? Are they paying taxes like Mr. Bilbo brought up one time? I mean, all these things. And then they go one step further and just push the envelope. And I explained to him that we're not mad at him, but if you owned a piece of property here and you cared about your property value, you wouldn't want this going on either. And that's why I pleaded with him. Call me. Here's my number. I'll help you find a shop. But we've got to do something because it's getting out of hand.

Go ahead, Mr. Stewart. I was just going to say, to the best of my knowledge, there's nothing in our ordinances right now that would violate any of the equal protection clauses. So we're free to enforce all the rules we have on the books now. So that should be reported to property standards, and it should be – Oh, yeah.

No, they're doing a fantastic job. They're staying on top of it.

But even above property standards, shouldn't that violate the statute of the house itself?

You mean the zoning for the house?

No, no. I mean – A mechanic shop? It's a – It's a residential property. Right. And it's a resident in a sober living house. In some way, that should violate running a business out of a business.

I don't know the zoning of this particular place, but if it's not in compliance, it's not in compliance, and we should be able to shut it down.

Because I think we've got rules with the sober living houses, what they can and cannot do. Yeah. And that would be a violation.

Correct. I mean, we need to cite them, and if they don't comply with the citations, then we need to address it as appropriately required. required under the ordinance.

I presume it's in the neighborhood, right?

It's in absolutely a residential neighborhood.

It's not on McNeese Street, on the corner. No, it's deep in the neighborhood. It's your residential neighborhood. I'm not asking for answers, but today.

I think you know my reservations deals with other issues than what you described. What you described, we should be able to stop and we should be able to police that and Yeah, because you can't have a – The other reservations I have have nothing to do with a guy running a mechanic shop, somebody not having proper occupational license. They need to have all that. And if they don't, we'll treat them just like we do anybody else.

Yeah, I have no complaints about the sober living house. just happens to be one and he's running the mckinnon and i don't think we should treat sober living houses any better than we treat other citizens or any worse that's that's the basic i could have made it short yes so my next issue is i'm sorry but uh and i know we talked about homeless people all the time uh and i know uh miss wendy and them had them picking up trash underneath the overpass at 210 and nelson today There's an encampment of about eight there that are just living under there, and they're doing shift work on the corners. Please, please, please, Chief. We know there's some ordinances we passed, but there's been a state law in effect forever, as far as I know, about on and off ramps.

So. When you say they're taking shifts, they're taking shifts panhandling, not taking shifts with a job.

No, no. And I've seen them more than a small amount of occasions spending their money on lottery tickets at Tobacco Plus. So, thank you.

That's all I have. I wanted to bring something up before we go any further. It was fine. Craig will have to help me with this, but last year, time when they was in office, I think they passed an ordinance to how far a gas station could be from each other. I want to see if we can put in something, how many tire shops that we can put in a certain area. Because it seemed like we got a new one just popping up. You know, I just, I don't know, tire business must be very profitable. Because every time I turn a corner, you got a gas station, then you got a tire shop. We need to try and limit it because we're losing space on other potential businesses because now we got tire shops everywhere that's not following rules anyway. It's just putting more trouble on Miss Paul and them because they all not being right. We got to force them to be right. So whatever we can do to limit how many they can, I know we did that with

gas stations, right, Craig? Yes, sir.

I don't think we limit. There was a spacing requirement for the service stations. What the council, I believe, ended up doing, Councilman Bilbo, was setting stricter provisions for setbacks and also providing a cost for each pump. So there were some things put in place that really limited where they could go. So there's some different types of provisions.

Whatever we can to... slow this progress down. I'm not I'm not a lawyer, but it's something we can do to limit how many we can put in a certain area because they go on to certain areas. I know they for some reason they flock in the District C, so I don't want them to have to flock nowhere else. But still, they fly to see, huh?

It's a high tire.

It's a high tire. I don't know. It might be. It might be Gerson Memorial in the speed bumps. I don't know, but they're getting fixed.

It's time for them to retire.

Yeah. Yeah. So check into that for me. We got it.

all right is that anyone else have anything if we could item 27 if we could send out the agenda fact sheet to all the councilmen

know before the meeting you know in the next couple days so they just have a chance to it's the one about um amending our rules and enforcing our rules i think mr stutes sent us uh email yeah did it go to everyone and i'll briefly the only the only change is to change the maximum amount of time from 12 to 9 and how you can divide that between rebuttal And to make it very explicit, a rule that we've already been applying about donating time. Those are the only changes. The rest of it was just enforcing the rules as they are. And, of course, any of those rules can be changed during a meeting by a two-thirds vote. I mean, I say changed. You can provide exceptions with a two-thirds vote anytime you want to do that.

Okay, I want to wear their one guys want to make sure I had it before them.

I had sent out an email describing what I was going to propose but but you're correct. We need to get the gender fact sheet out to everybody. But But I did just explain the only change.

Right. Perfect. All right. All right. We do have a looks like we have three or four cars, three cars for tonight. We'll start with the one on top, Mr. Vizina. I understand you've got an issue with people playing basketball all night in the street. Yes, sir. As I understand, we already have an ordinance against playing basketball on the street, but if you could just come up here and state your name and address for the record.

My name is Paul Vizina, 436 Scarlet Street here in Lake Charles. Yes, what I have, and I think it would help everything I've heard tonight. This is the first meeting I've ever been to. But what I've heard, it would free up a lot of your officers from coming to my street. In the last year, we probably had 30 units. And that's low-balling, 30 units on my street alone. But because I'm retired Federal Bureau of Prisons for 25 years, and neighborhood kind of sees me as the the enforcer of anything goes on they call me okay if it's two o'clock in the morning five o'clock in the afternoon whatever it is they want me to see what i can do about it so i try to you know talk to people and i try to get things settled down my issue is right now and it was the morning of friday morning fourth of july morning at two o'clock in the morning the only reason i was really up is is out of bed is because my grandson, his car broke down, he needed a ride, so I went and got him picked up and brought him home. Well, I get up and there's a basketball playing going on right in the street. It's one guy and a five-year-old child and a seven-year-old child out in the middle of the street. And I know basketball don't seem like it's a nuisance, but it is when you're trying to sleep. I have an 81-year-old neighbor across the street, which she still works 40 hours a week as a caregiver for a young lady. which, you know, handicapped young lady. And so she can't sleep. So when she can't sleep, she calls me, okay? So I can't sleep. And I looked up the ordinances, and the ordinances, you know, I called, he, she called the cops, okay, first time. And so they come over, and I was going to bring my grandson, I said, well, I'll talk to him when I get back. So I go back and I talk to him. I said, sir, if you don't mind, I said, it's 2 o'clock in the morning. Can you stop playing basketball? I said, it sounds like a gun going off when you hit the backboard of that goal. I said, people are trying to sleep. I said, it's got to be, you know. So I looked it up, and we have ordinances in place right now that says, that a temporary or permanent goal cannot be set up on the street or in the easement of the street. So I said, OK. So the cop's coming. I told him that. And he said, oh, no. It's better him doing that than being out committing other crimes. So we're going to overlook this and let that go. I said, even the noise, let's say the noise is not bad, but I said, he's breaking, the goal is on the street. I have pictures. I have videos.

What street is that on? Scarlet Street.

Which is off of Common.

It's off of Common. Yeah, you have to come off of Common. You've got to come down Patrick. But what I was trying to make these same people understand, we had cars on before, was because that street on Scarlet Street, and I know you're, Police Department can't be around. I'm not trying to put you all down. But the traffic down there because Castle, you know, has two buildings he rents for two different businesses.

Mr. President, the time has expired.

How much do you need? A couple? Just a couple of minutes. OK. If I could. Yeah, sure. Because we know we know is a buy. And my suggestion is, is it a property standards violation? If it is, it's not. It's a city ordinance.

Well, one thing I'd like to say real quick, and I spend my time running out here. I have a city council address to basketball on the city streets. This is dated January 19th of 15 that it was put into law, not ordinance, but it's actually made a law that no sporting activities could be placed played in the street, period, without a permit by the city.

Could you stop real quick? We need a vote to give you an extra minute or two.

Okay. Please vote.

You need a motion and a second.

I need a hand vote. I'm sorry. Okay. Motion to give him more time. I'll second it. Any discussion? Please vote. Bye.

You have two more minutes, sir.

Okay, thank you very much. I do appreciate it. But what I'm trying to say is we have units that are coming, and they're arguing with me about this, and it's time that I don't want to take away from them. I've told them that. I said, I don't want to take time away from you all. I had five units there, ten cops the other night, and – My neighbor's across the street, you know, she's 81 years old, she comes out, she's under a carport, and she says, can y'all please just have her stop playing basketball in the street after 10 o'clock, you know, when the noise aren't supposed to be. And they told her, if you don't get back in your house, we're gonna handcuff you and put you in the car. I have issue with that, okay, I really do. And then other things, I mean, and then these two minor children running around the street, it's not, they have, during the day they ride the bicycles wide open down the street and they cut across from one driveway across the street. Like I said, they're two businesses with a castle and then they have a church daycare right there. Parents are running late, the people are running late for work and they're trying to get there quickly. The speed limit's 25, they're going in excess of hours, 40 miles an hour, okay? One of those kids cutting across, they're not gonna see that car coming, okay? So one of them's gonna get killed, hurt, seriously. Well, when I mentioned to the officers, I said, I'm gonna hold y'all responsible because, you know, negligent, because I'm telling you this. And that's when they said, oh, well, we gotta go, we gotta go, and then they packed up to leave. I said, wait, we hadn't addressed issues here. Okay. But that's what they told me. You know, when I said new, you know, negligence, but I was, I'm out of here. Boom. We gone. Now everybody get in the car. Let's go. That was the end of it. Okay. This is an ongoing problem. It's been going on for months. You know, I've only called Friday morning. And then again, Monday morning, I get noise. So I get up. Sure enough. There he is playing basketball again. So I called, two cop cars come, and they talked to me, not to him. Now all this hot time there, just sitting there, he's still playing basketball. Not one out of eight cop cars that came since Friday morning to Monday morning, not one cop went knocked on the parents' door to say, hey, can you... Is the gold still there? It's still there. I got a picture of it right here if you want to look at it. Can I have it?

Sure.

Throw these five-year-olds out? Five-year-old and a seven-year-old. Well, that's violating curfew, for one thing.

The additional two minutes is expired.

Just give me the address if you can. 437 Scarlet Street. 437 Scarlet Street.

Can I just show them this one picture real quick? Yes. Please, just real quick. It leans actually over the street. I know where it's at.

All right. Thank you, sir.

Thank you all very much for your time, and I apologize for going over my time.

It's okay.

Do not bother me.

And the Chief Deputy is going to give you a call.

Absolutely, like I said, but myself and Councilman Fondell just spoke about it outside right before the meeting. I said I'll call him first thing in the morning. I just haven't had a chance today. I wish we'd had a chance to speak before this, but I'll call you tomorrow, and we can discuss this at length. Right, I believe you spoke with Sergeant Andrew Malvo in our professional standards division, but I'll give you a call tomorrow. Thank you very much.

Yes, sir. All right, I think I saw Mr. Geary leave. I don't know if he's outside, but he had a card, so I don't know if he had to leave. But if Mr. Geary is nearby, what we'll do is we'll skip over to the next. And I'm having trouble reading. There you go. There he is, okay. All right, Mr. Geary, you're up.

Well, good afternoon, Mr. President. Name and address? 2205 Highway 14, 70601. The reason I'm up here, I'm revisiting the rejection of our last tax. Y'all making a great mistake, because it was overwhelmed and defeated. What I want to suggest, you involved the citizenry in the process. how these taxes work for them. Not only these taxes, but these projects on the streets and all this stuff, they don't understand. So I suggest that to the last administration. They didn't do it, but they come back and involve the children. You know, showing them about civics. But it involved adults. I think, I'm just suggesting to the new administration.

So you're basically saying for us to give out a little bit more information? A little more information?

You ain't telling them how to vote. But they need to understand. And that could go through the councils, having their meetings with their general public. But y'all, hey, y'all taking a risk. And I'm going to tell you, y'all put it in December 16th. Why you didn't put it in midterms? That's being slick. They've been doing that for years. And I'm going to tell you, I don't know if y'all remember, went back in a parish, Salford get that arena. Salford voted for that arena, just out of Salford. But they come back and slammed it on the main text. But they also, at that same particular time, they wanted to renew. But the renew was like two years out. You see, they playing that slick game. People not crazy. And with this abatement tax, what's the state doing giving away all these tax dollars? And it's putting a burden on us. With that tax abatement? Hey, I don't believe in giving away our resource and then paying them when they take it. So that's just another history for me. And I think y'all need to consider that where it got to come from the administration. And the administration did say transparency. That's the biggest problem with our government.

But that's part of our plan, Mr. Gary, just to let you know. Before the tax come up, we're going to be having meetings, and the mayor's going to be explaining that. He said he would put it out there for the community.

Not just the taxes on the project. When y'all do streets, they got to process.

Mr. Gary, if you don't mind, just this past Thursday, we did a state of the city address where we addressed all that. The projects that have been going on for the past year, we addressed the challenges that we have. One of the challenges was crime. One of the challenges was the tax renewals and exactly what those tax renewals pay for. And plus, we're in the middle of our budgeting process, so we're going to give a lot of information about what that shortfall is going to mean for the services that people take. So we're going to be very transparent about that.

and then the other thing y'all which are required by law y'all go beyond what y'all do with the taxes you know just preserving so y'all got a cushion with that already but y'all need to be better explained in the situation i didn't see what you uh said miss uh miss katie is it is that on the uh the mayor of the city is that on the website

Yes, sir. The State of the City address was live-streamed on our YouTube channel, and I posted that link this morning. So it's on the Lake Charles City Hall Facebook page in its entirety.

And it's about being that slick stuff, putting it on, because you know, we already know what the deal is as an average person. When you're putting it on less turnout, that's why they're putting it out there. And that's being slick with the people.

Mr. Geary, we've been very clear that this election is going to be on December the 12th, so we're not going to... Then the police jury filed it right behind y'all.

You know what I'm saying? They're going to hold it at the same time instead of the main event. I don't know what they're doing. I'm not trying to be negative. I just want to be a citizen. I'm just only doing what a free man is supposed to do, whether you like me or not. And I'm not trying to, you know, critique y'all. But we got to do better because this conservative hadn't, we hadn't won with this conservative we had in this town. And it hadn't worked well for us. Look where we at. Man, I'll be 70 years old this month.

Mr. Gary, your time has expired.

That's fine. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. I also want to speak about the Lake Charles Promenade, and it looks like the last name is Jacobs. I can't quite read the first name.

State your name and address for the record, please. I'm sorry.

No, no, you're fine. No, thank you.

Good evening, guys. My name is Sade Jacob. My address is 420 Mill Street, Lake Charles, Louisiana. You guys are talking about is actually ordinance 21.

On the agenda?

Yes.

So it's the- Item 21.

Item 21, the laundering. I go run at the Civic Center around 8, 9, sometimes 3 o'clock in the morning. You have citizens that be walking at the Civic Center, not bothering no one. You have people out there fishing. So you're going to say that you're going to put no loitering and we're going to have to start writing tickets?

No, loitering just means you can't just be hanging out there. If you're running and you're walking, you can still do that.

But you have people sitting out there actually talking to each other as a community. And you're saying now you can't walk, you can't sit there and actually...

have time with your family out there because i see it all the time i run every day there chief so i i i'd like to go ahead if i may go ahead president and i think i'm gonna i think i'm he's probably gonna echo what i'm gonna say And don't leave because I want to touch base on something else before you leave. The officer has discretion. If you're out there fishing or you're out there running or you're doing what you're supposed to, that officer has discretion to say, keep driving. This gives us some teeth to stop what's been going on, all the things that we've been talking about. Those officers have discretion to do those things. Am I correct? Yes, sir, you are. So I do understand. And when we first put this in place, when the chief did, and we passed an ordinance about trespassing and stuff, I was opposed to it because I like going to the civic center. I'm a runner. When I was a kid, that's where we'd hang out. And I absolutely agree with you because you're like, what are we doing? This is a public place. There's a goal here to stop the negative things from occurring. When somebody's fishing or running or walking, holding hands, that's what we want being done there. This gives us some opportunity to be proactive and stop those things, the negative things.

If I can add to it, For the last few weeks, we've been dealing with situations where people are basically entertaining other people on social media.

I see it on my social media as well.

Yeah, but what's happening is, in order for them to get the most likes and everything else, they want to do it in the most public place, which is the lakefront, which is our front porch. A couple of weeks ago, I'm out there with my wife, and it's not even 10 o'clock, and there's a car cutting donuts and spinning out. And I called 911 and asked the police to come out there and get them. As soon as the unit come out there, a whole bunch of cars just left. So the bigger problem is if people want to do that kind of mayhem on private property, that's between them and the property owner. If they're doing that in the public area, that puts the public at risk. That's a public nuisance, a public danger. And what we're trying to do now is to put an end to it by when people start gathering and they're up to that kind of stuff, the police now have some tools to go in there and start issuing tickets, telling people to move on, make arrests. is not to try to punish the law-abiding people but at the same time you don't want to run out there and this mayhem breaks out and you're caught up in the middle of it so we're this is just like the mardi gras we're going to be proactive about getting these things under control and as they we get those under control we'll adjust it's a fluid situation but right now Weekend after weekend, we're having people going out there, degrade themselves, fighting, create mayhem. And somebody, the real-time crime unit picked up a person going to a white car and taking three shots in the air. And that's got to stop. That will not happen in this city. We're going to protect you, but we're not going to— say that we can't do anything about it because this is, and it's not just Lake Charles, this is happening everywhere, but we're just not going to let it happen here.

So I have another question. Yesterday I ran. We had two police officers out there On a Monday night. Do they do that on a Tuesday? Do they do that on a Friday, Saturday night? You got to think about it. The clubs close at 2 o'clock in the morning. You need to have officers from 2 to 6 o'clock out there.

The donors that I saw, it was 9.45. We were out there at 9.45 p.m. And people are... doing multiple cars doing donuts so it's not it's groups of people I mean they're drag racing down Nelson Road it's just it's just it's the summertime so I guess that people have these things going we're going to try to find ways to put that energy on but wherever they're doing this kind of activity we're going to put an end to it and like I said earlier at this point from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. starting last night that's why you saw an officer there we'll have officers there every night for until further notice

And when you're running, just don't stop for too long or we're going to get you.

I was just asking. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome.

All right. And we do have one final card. Miles Brown.

Miles Brown, 1020 Fourth Avenue. I just wanted to concur with what you said, Councilman Marks, about the security thing here, because I think it's important that we do have police instead of allied security, because judging from the security footage, you can see that the security is not going to do anything when something goes down. I made that pretty clear in the meetings on December 3rd and January 21st about how The allied security, nothing against them. They're gonna be pretty much like substitute teachers. Nobody's gonna take them serious. So I would like to say that hopefully after this six-month contract is over with, y'all do figure something out with possibly having the police or some other law enforcement agency because people actually have more respect or actually might have a restraint on doing something instead of just seeing the security here because it might embolden them to do something else. even worse but the issue that i really had was that you actually had a security guy there and he just watched and if all he's going to do is watch then what are we paying our money for because we were told that this contract was going to be around fifty thousand dollars but then on the news it said it was seventy five thousand dollars either way this is not money being well spent So I think security is very important. If it does cost more to have somebody that's paying overtime, I think it would be much better. But I've noticed coming in here every time there's always a breach in security. And I don't want to go into detail because I think it's something that you should probably address before people realize these breaches. But I've noticed that every time I come in here, there's an easy breach in security when people come in here. So one thing I would like to add is that I noticed that the city courts and 14th Judicial Court, they actually have it to where they have a metal detector to put your bag through. And I would highly recommend y'all start doing that instead of them just looking at your stuff and hopefully they see that there's no weapon. So that's pretty much what I have as far as the security thing, but I think this is a good lesson learned that hopefully y'all can find something after this September 20th or whenever this six-month contract ends. And on an end note, I just want to thank Property Standards for fixing the grass on 4th Avenue. I know that was an issue every time, the high grass, but it was fixed and hopefully it just continues that way. So thank you.

Thank you. All right.

We don't have any other cards. Does the administration have anything? No, we're good. Meeting adjourned.