City Council - Regular Meeting

No, no, go. How you doing today?

So. No, we didn't.

Well, we didn't change it. We started forcing.

Well, we did make one change. Um, They're blowing grass into them. Yeah, and then they're putting it right in the street.

do you have pictures and do you have um Why don't you bring those to me and we'll give them to Paula in property standards.

How are you?

That's all he wanted to do with Miss Paula right there. How are you doing?

I ain't wrestling.

Thank you. I'm just not in charge anymore. Thank you.

I didn't think we had too much That's all you can do

What's happening?

um um

Her back was awesome. I feel like a new man. I missed you. I didn't miss this heat. Not at all. All right.

Calling our agenda meeting to order. Let's see if...

Mr. Young, can you lead us in the prayer, please? And Mr. Fondale, can you lead us in the pledge, please?

Please bow your heads with me. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to serve this community. Remind us tonight that behind every decision that we make, that there are real families, children, parents in our community that are being affected, and it's up to us to help make this city better for them. Please give us wisdom to make good decisions and the courage to do what's right, even when it's difficult. We ask that you bless our mayor and my colleagues on this council, everyone in the room tonight, and just keep them safe. In your name we pray. Amen.

To the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay, we do have a couple presentations tonight. The first one we... Okay. For our City Golf Champions.

Yes, sir. Thank you, President. Thank you, Council, Mayor, and our First Lady, who's in attendance. We, like I always try to do with all our different divisions, when we have something to celebrate, we try to come up here and do it at the highest court. And here we are celebrating our golf course. And I think it's fitting because of all the investments that you've put into it and the great work staff has done. We, I can announce right now that we have won three-peat, the best golf course in Southwest Louisiana. So thank you for that. That's for everybody. We did this. I say we, y'all grab, push the funding and Lex brings it to life. So that being said, we are a championship golf course and we celebrate our champions. We have the best golf course in Southwest Louisiana. And when we say we have a city championship, we have a championship that is worthy of praise of those who play in it and win it. So Lex, let's award them. Mayor, would you like to come up? You can say something. Awesome.

No, I just want to thank y'all. Mike brings the things to y'all, the things we ask for and everything. And y'all have been nothing but supportive of us at the golf course. I've been with the golf course five years now. And it keeps progressively getting better by the day. So thank y'all. Something I would like to add, and obviously you're going to realize as we announce it, for the first time this year, we held a women and junior city champion. So we will be acknowledging some junior men and women champions and also our newly appointed, our newly won female champion. So we will actually start with our females city champion, Ms. Diana Kinclair.

In Congress.

Would you like them to grab it and just stand in the front right here and then we'll take a little bit of a photo or individual in the fair or just do one or no individual?

Okay. Sounds good.

We'll go on. All right. All right.

Go now.

yeah Diane if you'll just stand in the front right there we're gonna take one big one at the end this year's men's city champion is mr. scholar Petroski

All right. Yeah. All right.

And our boys, 18, you like Charles city champion is Mr. Henry Huff power.

All right. Ooh.

I don't want to get the age wrong. Our boys 14U city champion is Mr. Ty Edwards. Good playing, Ty. All right.

Great job.

All right, our boys 10U city champion is Mr. Jordan Derese.

Good job, Jordan. Awesome.

All right.

Our girls 14 you city champion is Miss Lauren Bogard.

All right.

And with the same last name, our 11 you girls city champion is Miss Emily Bogard.

All right.

Take a picture.

Oh, I'm sorry. Why don't you slide down that way just a little bit?

It's all right. All right. Congratulations.

We'll be right back.

Right, and our second, Ms. McDaniel, are you ready?

Emily, are you ready?

All right, and our second presentation is gonna be our presentation of our budget by our finance director, Emily McDaniel.

Good evening council and administration. I am here tonight to present the operating and capital budget for fiscal year 2627. The city of Lake Charles presents its proposed operating and capital budget for 2627, and we focused on maintaining high quality services, long term financial stability and continued recovery in the general fund. I see. I'm sorry.

can you just go to the next slide it's not huh it's on the side oh i'm sorry can you just advance the slide right here just go to the next one yeah okay

so in the general fund our revenues are projected to be 91.5 million with expenditures and operating transfers totaling 10 110.6 million with additional capital transfers from the general fund of 4.2 million the budgeted ending fund balance will be 42.3 million which is above the city's reserve target of 30 percent Our major revenue sources include sales taxes, which comprise 66.5% of the general fund revenues. And in this budget, as we had kind of talked about before, we did do a reserve of 6.9 million of property taxes to prepare the operating budget for the outcome of the property tax renewal vote on December 12th. Property taxes make up general generally make up about 13% of the general fund operating revenues. And the property tax renewals for consideration directly fund employee salaries, road construction and maintenance and the Recreation Department operations. So without these renewals, the city will have to operate without these funds in future budget years. And so we wanted to get prepared in the event that we wouldn't have those funds coming in. And then operating costs reflect increases in salaries, benefits, insurance, and overtime, which are tied to department vacancies. Next slide.

Before you move from that one, just to make sure that the slide, the part that says property taxes that That purple slice, that's the part that was not renewed.

That is correct.

But we're having that back on the ballot December 13. Give people a second chance to look at it now and see what we.

Yes, sir. And I think one of the one thing that maybe the public needs to understand is if if they do not support those property tax renewals, the city gets nothing. There's no like there's no fallback on those revenues. And so and the city does use these revenues for those purposes of employee salaries, the roads and the recreation department. So we just celebrated the golf tournament and the mallard. And so a part of the 1.5 million of those property taxes go to directly to that recreation fund.

Oh, I'm sorry. December 12th, we're having that back on. And to give you an idea, when people get their property taxes at the end of the year, the big funders of the property taxes are usually the school board, the police jury, and the sheriff's office. So we get a very, very small portion of that. But as you can see, that's 13% of our entire revenues that we would have to make up if we don't get those renewed. Just preparing everybody for what could be coming up. That's about, what, $8 million?

Yes, sir.

Question.

Yes, sir.

If we don't renew, where does that portion go?

What do you mean?

The portion that we will be getting, where does it go?

It doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't go anywhere. It's gone. It goes away. So it's not, it's not. Taxpayers keep their money.

Okay. Right. Ms. McDaniel, do you, have you, and I'm not to put you on the spot. That's fine. You can. What would approximately that be for, say, a $100,000 house, just that property tax on a yearly basis?

Actually, I think what we had done was a $250,000 house, and so it was about $450. So $40 a month.

So on $100 a house, maybe $10, $15 a month. Yes, sir.

Right, because it's 14.86 mils. And so on a $100,000 house, yep.

On a $75,000 house, it's zero. No, no, no. Oh, that's right. The exemption doesn't apply to us. I forgot about that. Yeah, homestead doesn't apply to municipals.

And just to be clear, this is dedicated funding for employee salaries, including fire, police, public works. Also, buildings and maintenance and parks and recreation, which parks and recreation doesn't generally generate any type of income that's more quality of life.

Yes, sir. Yes, and those are the three tax renewals that will be on the ballot for voters to reconsider on December 12th.

Any other questions about the property tax?

Okay.

Our special revenue funds are the our wastewater. And this year we have a projected revenues of 25.8 million with 51 million of capital projects. There is one large capital project that will be funded this year. So that's the reason for those the capital expenditures there. The Riverboat Gaming Fund is estimated to bring in about 11.5 million And as we had talked about, the recreation fund brings in about 4.1 million. 1.5 of that is property taxes and the rest is sales taxes. The other revenues, I'm sorry, federal and state disaster recovery grants total 69.7 million. And then we also have our enterprise funds, which cover our transit water department, event center and golf course. The fiscal year 27 capital budget totals 86.8 million. And in our capital budget, there is a specific section in your budget for the capital budget. And you can see it prioritizes streets, drainage, wastewater, water system upgrades and community development. Funding these comes from sales taxes, gaming revenues, general fund transfers, utility fund balances, and extensive federal and state grants such as FEMA, HUD, and CDBG-DR. Then total expenses, which take in all funds altogether, across all funds are projected to be about $350 million. And this is a 37% increase. And the reason for this increase is a lot of the spending is the capital driven largely by infrastructure and recovery investments. And so we have a lot of we have a lot of grant money coming in. And so we're taking that into account in the in the capital budget. And so that's where you're seeing those increases. The city remains fiscally strong and continues major multi-year projects supporting our long term resilience and service delivery. this year in the budget I wanted to bring your attention because we do get a lot of questions there are two new little tables in the budget that I wanted to show you and what these do they're in the exhibits tab and I'm going to hold it up here so one is it's one has a visual explanation of the budget structure relationship among our funds and then the other is the fund relationship to the departments So if you wanted to see if you're in the recreation department, what fund funds that department, that would be in this fund relationship. And then the budgetary structure, it kind of gives a high level of what the funds finance and how they receive their money and what other funds they relate to. So it's a good little chart for people to glance at if they have some questions. So we added that this year. And so with that, are there any additional questions that you may have about what you've seen in the budget?

Not yet.

Not yet. Okay. Well, we have the budget will go before you to be voted on on September 2nd. So if you have any questions or need to talk through anything, I'm always available to have those conversations with you. And I want to thank all the departments for their assistance with the process.

And I want to thank administration for your guidance through the process.

And thank you to our finance team for their dedication to their fiscal responsibility for the city of Lake Charles. Anything else? No, I mean, thank you guys.

All right.

Yeah.

Just to know, OK, let's go ahead and start reading our items, please.

An ordinance ordering demolition and authorizing the city of Lake Charles to enter into an agreement for demolition of a structure located at 2344 C Street Marlene Marks, Markeisha Elise Marks, and Kendall Wayne Marks owners. Another demolition at 740 Cleveland Street, Russell Foster owner. Another demolition at 210 Cherry Street and 212 Cherry Street, Benjamin Gann Jr., Willie May Jackson, Chester Gann, Claudette May Gann, Franklin Gann, and Margaret Haley, owners. Another demolition at 2123rd Street, Cecilia Petrie, owner. Another demolition at 621 Bank Street, Earl Melvin, Anthony Wilkes. Danielle Malo-Wilts and Monique Michelle Wilts, owners. Another demolition at 1302 11th Street. Stephen Daniel Peters embellied Betty Louise Allen Peters owners. Ordinances for final action. 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 authorizing the City of Lake Charles Center into an agreement with Southwest Communications to provide phone services for the City of Lake Charles. An ordinance authorizing the City of Lake Charles Center into an agreement with Block Works LLC to provide cybersecurity services for the City of Lake Charles. An ordinance adopting the operating and capital budget for the fiscal year beginning October 1st, 2026 and ending September 30th, 2027. An ordinance authorizing the City of Lake Charles Center into agreements for programs related to special arts and cultural exhibits and events as authorized in the operating and capital budget for the 2026 2027 fiscal year. An artist authorized in the City of Lake Charles Center into architectural and engineering any agreements on all projects outlined in the pro capital improvement program CIP funded in fiscal year 2026 to 2027 capital budget. An ordinance authorizing the City of Lake Charles Center into any right-of-way agreements for the approved fiscal year 2026 to 2027 capital improvement projects and or for right of ways and to acquire land and or compliance with the site triangle ordinance for fiscal year 2026-27. There was a resolution that also goes with those that was not included on this draft. It's a resolution authorizing the City of Lake Charles to advertise and to receive sale bids on certain projects outlined in the approved capital improvement project, CIP, funded in the fiscal year 2026 to 2027 capital budget resolutions, a resolution accepting project number CP 3277 state project number H 0 1 3 8 7 0 Enterprise Boulevard overlay, 12th Street to Broad Street 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 1817 Eleanor Street, Jury B. Webb, Jr., owner. A resolution setting date for public hearing on condemnation of a structure located at 2712 South General Rainwright, Lilly, May, Washington, owner. A resolution setting date for public hearing on condemnation of a structure located at 733 Cleveland Street, One Lantern Group, LLC, owner. A resolution setting date for public hearing and consideration of the Lake Charles Planning and Zoning Commission's decision to deny a request for a variance in order to maintain an existing unpermitted shed two feet 11 inches from rear setback versus the required five feet within a residential zoning district at 5464 Moulin Rouge Drive. A resolution authorizing the city of Lake Charles to advertise to receive bids to purchase downtown light pole lit Christmas wreaths and garland. A resolution authorizing the City of Lake Charles to participate in the Calcasieu Parish Multi-Jurisdiction Hazard Mitigation Plan, update 2026, and adopting said plan as the City of Lake Charles Hazard Mitigation Plan. A resolution amending resolution number 132-15 regarding the rules and regulations covering the City Council of the City of Lake Charles with regard to citizens addressing the City Council at agenda meetings with their concerns. A resolution proclaiming the month of September as sickle cell anemia awareness month in the City of Lake Charles. Several of those had companion ordinances. and the new items are an ordinance accepting the most responsive and responsible quote and authorizing the city of Lake Charles turned into an agreement for project number CP 3134 North Louisiana Avenue and Jackson Street interchange water main improvements and ordinance authorizing the city of Lake Charles Center into a cooperative endeavor agreement with the Louisiana Department of Treasury for the prayer Lake pedestrian bridge and ordinance authorizing the city of Lake Charles to enter into a cooperative endeavor agreement with the Louisiana Department of Treasury for the electrical streetlights on Salyer Street. An ordinance amending section 24-4-205-5A of the City of Lake Charles zoning ordinance relative to variance limitations. An ordinance accepting, and the rest of those are companions up into number 32, an ordinance authorizing the settlement of a claim against the City of Lake Charles in the suit styled Jana M. Gallier versus city elect Charles and Tyron Dean McGinnis docket number 2025-1812 division H on the docket of the 14th Judicial District Court Parish of Calcasieu State of Louisiana and that's all that I have Mr. President yes sir point of order if we may number 23

A resolution proclaiming the month of September sickle cell anemia awareness month in the city of Lake Charles. I'd like to pull that if the mayor, the mayor agreed to make a proclamation instead of this, where they can designate the month of September starting at the first of the month. We have the sickle cell anemia foundation here that would like to speak in regards to that.

Good evening, everyone.

Oh, my name is Leticia Peet.

My address is 4537 Bear Crossing Lane, Lake Charles, Louisiana, 70607. Okay. All right. Good evening, everyone. My name is Leticia Peet, and I am the Executive Director of the Edith Peet Sickle Cell Anemia Foundation, Incorporated. Thank you for allowing me to be here today. Here with me is Eric Frey. He is the president of the foundation, and Mitchell Peet is a board member. So, on behalf of the foundation, I stand before you today to request that the City of Lake Charles declares the month of September as Sickle Cell Awareness Month. Now please allow me to just share a couple of facts about this disease. Sickle cell disease is a rare inherited blood disorder in which the red blood cells become sickle shaped and heartened, causing serious and potentially fatal complications. People with sickle cell disease are born with this condition. It can cause chronic and severe and unpredictable pain. It is not contagious. It's nothing that you can catch. Unfortunately, there is not a universal cure either. People with sickle cell disease have genes that tell their body to produce abnormal hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is the main substance of the red blood cells, and it helps those cells carry oxygen from the air in our lungs to all parts of our body. Normal blood cells contain hemoglobin A. When you have sickle cell, your hemoglobin is S. which causes the cells to become stiff and distorted. When sickle-shaped cells block small blood vessels, less blood is circulated throughout the body. This process causes most sickle cell complications. It is a rare disease, as I stated earlier. An estimated 100,000 people in the U.S. have sickle cell disease. It mainly affects blacks and African Americans. The disease occurs about one in every 500 black or African American births, and one in every 36,000 Hispanic American births. Approximately 2,000 babies every year are born with sickle cell in the US. right here in our community and all over the world, I'm asking the mayor and you city council members of this great city of Lake Charles to help shine the light on sickle cell anemia by designating September as Sickle Cell Awareness Month and turning the city landmarks red. Thank you and God bless.

Mrs. Pete, I will issue a proclamation to that effect starting tomorrow for September 1st.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks.

Thank you. All right. Now we'll go to Councilman, I guess, was say with you, Mr. Marks. All right.

I got a few things, Mr. President. The first thing I'd like to know, I brought up a couple of meetings ago about the status of our small business opportunity program. I was told that we were going to look into it and find out you know where the disconnect is because as I said and I'm still receiving calls from small businesses questioning me how to get on the vendors list some of them are stating that they were on the vendors list in the past and I just like to know what is the status of that or have we found out anything in regards to it

Mr. Marks, I apologize. I thought they had gotten back with you, and I'm assuming they had not. We had written it up and gave it to the staff, and they were supposed to get back with you.

Well, if they got it to just email it, if they could just email it to the... Well, no, I thought they had done that, and I apologize.

I'll have them do it tomorrow.

Okay, that'll work. Um... Can we get an update of the sports complex? Where are we thus far with the sports complex?

So far we've received, we've drafted a contract agreement with them, with the architects. They have it. We're talking with the state now about the contract. the procurement the cost procurements and we got some guidance from them so we're getting all that together and once we do that well then and then to agreement with the architects it starts a public charrette where they're going to give an outline of the sports complex and then the public's going to come in and give a comment period up until november before they start the final design process so we still at least six seven months out before we go out for b

or maybe longer yeah they gotta they still gotta design this this thing okay um there was i was told uh about a little over three weeks ago on the last council we voted um for a hotel however it went down we voted for it there were uh i think the mayor told us in times past that the group had requested a market analysis am i calling that right yeah updated uh market feasibility study Do we have the results of that yet? Or?

No, they've given us the people that are doing the CBRE. If they started putting the market study together, we gave them a lot of information to add to it. Because obviously, a lot of things have changed since the since they put the initial study, they have a draft, but they have a couple of items that they were looking into, they should, I think they should about a couple of weeks, I think, I think a couple of weeks, probably, and we'll have the final.

Okay.

the mortgage study so around september 15th i would think so yes yeah they just had a couple they they told us that they had just a couple items they need to check off on okay um a while back we signed a security contract and to my understanding unless i got it wrong it was tentative for six months if that's correct. I think we're coming to the end of it now. Do we have plans on what our permanent sustainability for security is going to be? Are we planning on renewing that same contract?

Right now? We don't have the we don't have another option option so we're going to renew that contract because of the security we've done a number of security measures we have the security here we have a now electronic security they're securing access on the elevators they've got surveillance going up so until we get either the marshal's office the sheriff's office or the police department to to stand up going to continue with this security arrangement and obviously some of that is going to be played based upon the renewals because we don't know exactly what was going to happen and what kind of assets and resources we'll be able to allocate to the police and law enforcement protection well if at all possible i think uh being that we know a little bit more now than what we did when we first established that if we could form a committee of councilmen to possibly

build the contract better than what we did the last time with what we know now with all of the caveats that we know uh to probably strengthen it if we're going to do it long term we'll be glad to meet and get your input as we do look at the contract the i got a report again um this is for the police is we do have a representative here today If you don't mind, pass it down to chief. That's Mr. Larry Brawley's number. He's having some serious issues. He's a 45-year resident of Cactus Drive. I reported that they have a lot of speeding going on. They're reporting a lot of illegal activities from certain residents on that particular street. If we can get just touch base with Mr. Brawley. And I mean, Mr. Bradley and see, you know, what his complaints are, because he, this is the fourth time that I'm bringing that particular street. You know, I haven't been able to catch him at the same time for what he, when he calls, I go out there, but whoever he complaining about is not doing what they've been doing. So we can look into that. The other thing is the trees being cut. I know these trees gotta be cut off them power lines, but I think we can, if we could draft a letter sending it to NTG, there's a way to cut those trees. And I'm sure they're using the arborists and it might be legal, but if you come in Oak Park, those trees look like they about to fall over. They've been chopped up real, real bad. And those are historical Oaks. And I don't know what our recourse would be for that, but maybe we can just reach out to them that down the road, we can do a better job of what they cut. I mean,

in my opinion i'd rather cut the tree down than to leave it like it is uh now in opal so if we can get some sort of communication it might be worth it to invite a representative from interviews to come and explain the tree cutting process so you can i know you're getting calls from your constituents i thought i saw yeah i saw the story on kplc and i i've seen some of that so maybe they need to come in and explain what their processes are okay um the other thing is

Streets, Enterprise, the south portion of Enterprise past Pier and Lake Road, as soon as you come in from under 210 headed north, as soon as you pass the red light, you know where you come off the interstate, It's on the north side of 210 where you're coming down off the interstate from east to get on to Enterprise. That street has risen up. It's become a full-fledged bump now. I don't know. Wait, that's it. Okay, get on Louisiana Avenue and head north. You go under 210. You got to stop for that red light. As soon as you pass the off-ramp, right there the street has risen up whether um used to be a car lot right there yeah it's not it's not just a passover anymore it's a full-fledged bump the street is rising up along with from uh i think this is mr young's uh area is part of it from ryan street to Common Street on College Street. They repaved that street not long ago, but it's cracked up and rising. It's like riding on rocks. You know, it just all the way down there. And it was a good job when they started it last year or year before last, but now I don't know if it's the heat, but it's causing that street to be bad all over again. I'd like to request a copy of our bid law, the city's bid law, the process of which we do bids to be sent to each council member. So I know personally, I'd like to become better educated on the bid process so that we can answer some of these questions that we're getting. Also, I know we have a process for employees to report grievances, but is it possible for the council to have a copy of the work, the employee handbook? Are we allowed to have that?

Sure.

I'd like to get a copy in each council member if you don't mind sending it to them. I don't know if it's exactly a moratorium that we have on billboards, but I know we have something that's preventing billboards.

Well, as you drive throughout the city, and it's because of the development of the city, it was mainly done for the southern portion because all the billboards were being put up in there.

Well, I had this lady, she'd been trying for two years to get some billboards in the northern part of the city so businesses can advertise on those. But the moratorium has been caused because of the southern point. Is there any way we can work something out to open that moratorium up to let them put billboards maybe from I-10 going north towards Moss Bluff, one or two billboards, maybe some new ones, not the old traditional big billboards?

It was done by ordinance, so you would need to simply amend the ordinance. Just to open it back up? Yes, sir. Okay. It would have to be action of the council.

Okay. I'll work on that. Ms. Windy, I have a question for Public Works. Can you please tell me what do our trucks not pick up? You know, because I'll tell you why I'm asking. I've been noticing, especially in my district, a lot of apartment complexes and landlords are putting all right now on the corner of 22nd and 2nd Avenue. There's an apartment complex right there. The landlord, I guess they changing out, evicting somebody. They done put mattresses, dresses, all this to the street. And it's been there for a while. But to my understanding, we don't pick that type of stuff up. Okay, so that's, I noticed that the city court is having a landlord, some sort of program coming up. Do you think it's possible that we can get something in that program where we can catch those landlords at that time and let them know, hey, we're not responsible for picking that up. And they leaving that almost like they daring us not to pick it up. And it's happening a lot in my area.

You must be in one of my meetings because we are actually contacting the city court. OK, good. Well, that's my question. We contacted the court to have a better relationship on when evictions are handled and what can go to the role, how long it should go to the road and when it should go to.

OK. All right. Appreciate it. Thank you, ma'am. And my last next to last What are we going to do in the interim with adjudicated properties? Now that CivicSource is gone, there's still people trying to purchase adjudicated properties, but I don't know where to tell them to go. How do they purchase them now? Because if CivicSource used to be where you bid for it now, are they gonna come pay the city? They can buy it from the city, buy it from the parish. Have we come up with a plan for that?

We're actually looking at other options for adjudicated properties. The legislature passed some legislation, and the legislature started a task force on blight. As a matter of fact, the Louisiana Municipal Association asked me to serve on that board, on that task force that I'm serving on. They're gonna come up with some, other creative ways to try to deal with not just blighted property, but adjudicated property. So we're just reserving to see what needs to be done, because I think we had a big city mayor's forum during the recent legislator, and the biggest topic that came up was all these adjudicated properties now. just about in every urban area, especially ones that have undergone storms and had aggressive condemnation processes. So we're trying to find a way to get those properties back in the commerce and get some sort of way that they can be developed, because right now people are buying properties that they still can't clear the titles and and We're basically having a donut hole, so we're trying to see about getting that done. But right now, with CivicSource having filed bankruptcy or dissolved, we're putting a hold on all that until we can get a plan together that makes sense to how to comprehensively deal with these properties.

So is it safe to say right now, tell the constituents we're not selling any adjudicated property at this time? Tell them we're holding.

It was my understanding that the police jury was handling most of it south of town. I'm not sure about that. Were they handling... a certain portion of the adjudicated property?

Yes, they were going to sheriff sale, I believe, is what you're referring to. And I think what's happening is part of the problem with the adjudicated properties, people couldn't get a quiet title. So even if they were able to get it into their hands and they're going to bank and borrowing, they could not do that. And so I think what the mayor's referring to is we're going back and trying to find out is there another alternative where people can purchase adjudicated properties and try to get a clear title. Because then they can borrow money on it to purchase it.

So was the police jury handling certain properties or not?

At one point, yes, sir.

So are they still doing it or not?

It's, to my knowledge, they are.

So where, what area is that, the exact area?

Well, the majority of the properties, I believe, were in the northern part of the city. In Civic Source, we were trying to help get those back into the hands of citizens and back into commerce. And that's where they came up with the Neighbor Next Door program, which we thought worked pretty successful. I would say let us get back with Corey. Corey was looking at some of this for us. I was looking for him just now to see if he was here. And let us try to see if we can get an update of other opportunity to try to get these properties back in the hands of people who want them. You know, you can go to a sheriff's sale. You can pick up properties. You can pay liens off. But at the end of the day, you still may not have a clear title. And that's what creates these issues for adjudicated properties.

Well, I would urge us to look into reinstituting the lot next door. And I'm saying that because no telling how long it's going to take us. It's going to cut into our budget to have to keep cutting these grasses now that we're not going to be selling a lot of them. So we're going to be stagnant for a while. But if we can encourage the citizens, hey, institute the lot next door, that might encourage some citizens to cut some of these properties next to their house. And they have first right to bomb whenever we come back up. You know, that's just something that we can do because it's going to put a hit in our pockets when we have to start cutting these grass, you know, for the time that we have.

No one wants to get rid of these properties more than us. So I agree with that. I think the administration does completely.

The last thing I have is I would like for us to get back on the... revamping the smart codes, you know, as soon as possible so that we can put ourselves in a good position when businesses do start opening up downtown, more businesses all over. You know, I don't know what the mayor's vision for this is, but as soon as we can get back on it, I think that's going to alleviate a lot of headaches going forward. That's all I have, Mr. President.

Thank you.

Mr. Fondell.

I think he's going to do.

Oh, you want to go? I know there you want. I'll come back first. Well, since, you know, Councilman Marks was so thorough, I think he covered almost everything. But one question I had was really just piggybacking because we share a district and I know what the city picks up for residential. And I got the same apartment complex as people get confused on which one is our district. But I think we should, when we tell them we're not picking it up, do we tell them we're not picking it up or do we just ride by and say, we're not picking this up? Or do we warn them and say, no, there's not a city issue, it's your issue.

Better than that, Mr. Bilbo, if Ms. Wendy can tell us, do we have a fine?

Yes, I was getting to that, yeah.

Okay.

Because if it's not a fine, they just gonna leave it. Even at city homes, I know sometimes they say, a tree's gotta be cut so much, and then they sneak in some furniture, then I just get letters saying, we not picking it up.

Okay. it's not the homeowner or the property owner that calls, it's the neighbor who has to pass by and see it, or somebody who's reported to one of you guys that this is out there, because, and then we have to call that person who reported, because they're leaving their contact information or their email, we'll tell them, we don't pick up construction items, we don't pick up fencing items, or anything, you just tore out a whole fence in your yard and picked that up. they're not the ones, this property is owned. So then it becomes a property standards issue. We have to share this issue with Ms. Paula and then Ms. Paula has to contact them and get the property owner involved. Is there a fine? On the public works side, no.

Can we institute?

Paula Broussard, property standards supervisor. The apartment complexes that put furniture and they evict someone, we do get an email from the marshal's office on evictions, when evictions are complete. I'm not gonna say what their process is, but we do get an email from them letting us know that they have an eviction somewhere. Our inspectors do go to the apartment complexes and let them know that they are responsible for the removal. They give them a certain amount of time. We send out notices. If we have to pick it up, they get charged for it. So it does go through our process.

So you say if we have to pick it up, if we're not picking up those items,

No, we have to pay a contractor to pick it up. It's a property standards issue. We go through our regular process where we send out notice. We talk to the apartment complex manager to get them to remove the items because Public Works will not pick it up. You know, we don't expect them to. An apartment complex is a commercial business. What's our standard time? It's our regular notice.

They have five days from the- Would it be within the law to shorten that for apartment complexes?

that's a city ordinance so y'all we could make an ordinance to shorten that time yes mr. mark there's another piece to this yeah you know when they talked about us going to talk to the city court judges what's happening is this we don't pick up apartments at all if furniture and stuff is put out there that property owners responsible for getting rid of it what's happening is they're going through an eviction process and under the eviction process The court says that they sent a martial out there and you put the tenants stuff to the curb. So when they put it to the curb, we're trying to find out what time frame is allowed for it to sit out there to meet that requirement. That's why the staff is meeting with city court to find out what those requirements are. and let the judges know it's creating issues for us because the owner of the property doesn't want to be in violation because it has to go to the curb, I think, the way it's worded. But we're trying to see how long does it have to stay and what's the process. So that's why they're meeting with city court to try to resolve those issues.

And if we could ask, at what point does that trash become the owner's property?

Here's the issue. Apparently, when they evict people, they have a certain period of time to go and get valuables. I mean, like, you throw out a dress that may have a wedding ring and things like that in it. We'd like to get them to not have it at the curb that the person has so much time to come in and get anything out. Then after that, we encourage the owner to take that out to the Calcasieu Parish trash site because what we're finding is that while things are sitting at the curb, it becomes a community dump because other people start looking and bringing a whole bunch of things And it's a commercial business, whether it's a rental property or an apartment. They're making money. We had one right down the street here. They had a bunch of things. Three sisters bought houses around there and fixed up their homes. They sent a pile. It was already a pile that had already been done from eviction. And then the next month, apparently somebody else moved in and got evicted again. So somebody's making money, and we're – having to deal with the social consequences and I think once we start putting it where if if these outside of uh this process if we go if that property if that trash has to be removed and that cost is borne by that that property owner I think that's going to change something because they can go right there to the Calgary Parish uh trash site and do it for free so putting it to the curb I think it's kicking the can down the road they need to just bring a trail and bring it to where it needs to ultimately go but the thing that's holding up right now that we need to work out is the time period from eviction, whether people have the time to go and get those valuables. I'd rather them keep that in the facility and then take it to the trash directly as opposed to putting it on our curb.

Yeah, but I think, forgive me if I'm speaking out of turn, but I think the process that the Marshal's Office used is to take the property and get it off of the property. Right.

Right.

So it's not necessarily trash. It's the evictee's belongings that they put out there.

When you evict somebody, it's all their belongings on the inside. So it's not saying I'm throwing junk out there. Everything in that house goes out off of their property to the curb. And that's what we're trying to work out with the city court judges and our legal department.

And I apologize for the verbiage, because eventually whatever they don't go and pick out, it stays trash.

It's all their belongings go out there.

But the bigger problem is that when other people see that out there, then it becomes a community dump.

But in some cases, this is just not apartments. Sometimes this is regular.

Rental properties.

Rental properties, even homes.

And we're going to have to address it like a commercial enterprise. If you're renting a property out and somebody doesn't pay you rent and you evict them, part of your cost of doing business is that you have to dispose of those belongings. not not relying on the taxpayers to do it.

Part of the operation of the rental.

I think there's two there's two pieces to it. There is the eviction process where it goes out to the curb. And there's just landlords who's putting it out there. So the landlords putting it out there. He's wrong. If you go through the eviction process, they're putting all the belongings out there. And that's a little bit different situation. That's what we're trying to resolve.

Either way, we shouldn't have anything on our curb that isn't allowed to be picked up.

But if it's a homeowner puts an old refrigerator at the curb, we'll pick that up, correct? So I don't know how often they do, but we do pick it up for residential.

Yes, true statement. Go ahead, Wendy.

Yes, white goods if they put if a homeowner puts white goods out we will pick that up.

Now that includes like a sofa or if a homeowner put a sofa out there would it

Typically, Mr. Stewart, if it's a homeowner putting a piece of furniture out there or something, we try to accommodate. We are not going to pick up an entire home. It's not going to happen. That's right. You can't go clear your home out and say, I'm moving it. I want the city to pick it up. If it's a white good, we pick it up. We dispose of it. But you can't go drain your entire home. It's unfair to the city. I agree.

We probably need to put some parameters on that, too, because you can throw a few things out The bigger thing that I'm seeing is that whatever you put out there, we were behind and out and picking up the trash and that and people just found a way to just go and bring all their trash to those places.

And with all the storms, people got used to putting their stuff. Exactly. At the curve. Yeah, it's unfortunate. Well, amongst the many unfortunate consequences of storms is that people get accustomed to just doing that. Right.

Okay.

Ms. Fondale.

Ms. Windy, I have a couple of things for you. I just want to say for the record for my constituents, we all working on the drainage on Franklin. We're trying to set up an apartment. But the road zone, they're doing some road work in North Lake Charles. It's on north lines. One particular area is right there by the school on north lines in Opelousas. It's loose gravel. Every road in the every road you go down got loose gravel. Just everywhere. You know, and kids are, it's a crawl is actually a school crossing with loose gravel. These kids got the cross every day. And I don't see nobody doing anything out of the past a couple of times now. And and do we sweep it? What do we do? Just leave it there.

No, it came to my attention on Friday, and I'm finding the contractor is doing the work out there, and we're going to have them to clean that up. Because it's them making the repairs, and they're temporarily filling in the void. Then they're going to come back and redo the overlay. But their temporary fix is this loose gravel that's gotten out of hand. Thank you. EVERY I AGREE MORE THAN ONE STREET YES ONE STREET GO DIRECTLY YES CHURCH I KNOW THEY YES HAVING TO CROSS THIS UH OKAY THAT IS ON MY LIST BUT AT LEAST THE SCHOOL AREA NEED TO BE ADDRESSED EARLY I KNOW WE'RE WORKING ON IT TOO I WAS WORKING ON IT AGAIN TODAY WE'RE TRYING TO FIND THE CONTRACTOR AND AND I HAD SOMEONE WORKING ON IT THEY DIDN'T GET BACK WITH ME BUT I'LL FIRST THING IN THE MORNING I'LL MAKE SURE WE GET THAT TAKEN CARE OF OKAY UH AND

that's all I have I just want my constituents to know that you and I are working on this water because I'm still getting calls about that water okay.

Your meeting is on Wednesday at 1.30 with public works okay.

Thank you and that's mainly to let them know.

Thank you, Mr. President. Throughout this week and last, multiple department heads, the administration has been very helpful with addressing many issues. Because we've gotten that done, I don't really have anything to address further tonight.

All right.

I don't have a couple of little things. I want to thank Ms. Paula again for the list. I'd like to ask you some questions about it. done, so please give me a few minutes. And, Ms. Wendy, I thank you for taking all of my texts and emails I sent you. But I'm going to ask that you or a representative — I know it's a big ask — come to a Greywood HOA meeting with me to help me explain — you don't have to answer tonight — how it worked. I don't know what's going on. I'm new at this City Council thing, relatively, but I get phone calls every day. I know they're watching, and I know they're needy, but I got to have some good answers.

What's the problem? What do you want?

No. Trash pickup. Trash pickup is just unreal. All the little different areas give me phone calls about it wasn't picked up. It was picked up. It wasn't. And I know you told me you were working on it. understaffed or trucks broke down, cameras on trucks and all that kind of stuff. I'm relaying that information, but it just seems like the phone calls don't stop about it. So you don't need to comment, but please get back with me if there's some way we can communicate with him. And I'll be glad to go to a meeting with you or with a representative.

I'll call. We can set something up. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Miss Wendy at I have one thing in my district if we'd like, I'd like to have, actually it was a state project I believe, but Where we have the traffic circle there at Holly Hill, both north and southbound, there's a where the Holly Hill asphalt meets that traffic circle. There's a pretty good little bump there. It's been there for a while, but if there's a way we get that smoothed out, it's not a huge deal. It's not an emergency, but it is. a small bump that I think can just be shaved down. The asphalt gets shaved down there. Also, we had an individual ask before the meeting is going to send pictures to Miss Paula, but it's It's in Oak Park, but I think it's all over the city. We still have people that are cutting grass. A lot of times it's contractors that are cutting grass and just letting the clippings go into the street. And, of course, that winds up in our drains, which causes major issues. So this is going to send pictures and have some addresses. I'm not sure how we after the fact. We yeah.

We could probably send an ordinance letter out because it is against art and city ordinance to do so. So I have the ordinance enforcer to go out and look at that. And if you do have any pictures from anyone or addresses, then we'll can look at it and send

Yeah, and sometimes it's hard, so when I see it, sometimes they put it, but then I come back out of the fact, and I think they put it, but then they come back and actually blow it back out of the street. I'm not sure why they do it in that order, but sometimes they do do that.

we can put in reminders um I think the fall of the usually in the fall we try to put some public works reminders in the water bill about what we pick up for trash and what shouldn't be put in your drainage and things like that so we we do that we did it last fall we can do it again this year and when you said I mean we even haven't

Leaves were getting dead leaves because it's been so dry that, you know, leaves are falling off trees as well. And that's what that's going to be an issue because of this heat. Luckily, it's not I guess it's not a big drainage issue because we're not we don't have any rain going for now.

That's a good thing. Yeah, for now. All right.

All right. And oh, and I want also good to see Sail Road Bridge is open.

Yes, sir. I have one more thing. I guess it's getting the house tore down by the city. Who handles that? That's the list you got in front of you. No. I had a resident asked me that they have a barn house and they're they're asking if the city would get quotes from it had to come up before.

How much does a a house that city down calls.

And we have a really depends on the size it could be anywhere from you know 3,000 to you know 2030,000 so

So when we tear one down, we send the residents a bill.

Yes, we send the residents a bill for the demolition, the cost of the demolition, and then other fees associated with the case.

Okay, and other fees.

other fees associated with the case which means filing fees um mail fees um and we have to so it's automatically more if this yes it's not just that it's part of the when we tear a house down as part of our condemnation process but if a person is wants to get their own uh property just torn down the city doesn't have so it is cheaper for them to go ahead and take care of themselves generally yes so that

I'll tell them to call you for the list. Okay. Thank you.

All right. We do have one. We did have one request to speak that came in. And we also have a car from that same person, I guess, on that same issue. But we did have the request to speak. And the subject is adding a visible time clock. It's public comment. We have Miles Brown and Terrence Prudhomme is would like to yield time to him as well. And actually, we I believe that we were able to get – we do have the clock available now on the screen.

Oh, yeah, I do. Yes.

Wow.

Is that good? Well, I can't really see it that well. It could be digital. It would be better, but – That pretty if y'all can have a digital time clock, that's pretty much all I need to say on that aspect. But I can start it if I can.

And can we make that a going forward, make that a digital instead of the three? It does. It does have a just make it a little bigger. So a little bigger. And so this is set up with six minutes. Yeah.

OK. Start the clock.

Miles Brown, one zero two zero fourth Avenue. so for the most part look like y'all uh did that so i appreciate that for the most part uh the second thing i just had a question on is um on my second part with the public comment i see that y'all added on the agenda for a new public comment vote in the future no that's to amend that's to amend the resolution Okay, so is that an entire new vote that's going to be happening? Yes.

Right, it'll be at our September 2nd meeting.

September 2nd meeting. Okay, well, I'll just hold my comments for that, then I just realized that today. So I appreciate the time, Clark. Thank you all.

Appreciate it. Thank you.

And Mr. President, if you say since we've been televised, it makes note to ask the residents to brush up on their council meeting and the gender meeting rules. I think they're posted, Mr. Student on the website.

Yes, sir.

Encourage the residents to read up on the rules and regulations for gender meetings and for regular meetings, because we may have some new enforcement that they need to be aware of.

Right. Appreciate that. All right.

All right.

Any other questions? Administration, do you have anything?

Nothing today. All right.

Meeting adjourned.