Metropolitan Council - Regular Meeting

here is the mayor, president pro tem of East Baton Rouge Parish Councilman Brandon Noel. Councilman. Thank you Dennis. Welcome, everybody, to the Metropolitan Council meeting this Wednesday, March 11th, 2026. We're going to call the meeting to order. Ashley, do we have a quorum? We have a quorum. We're going to have an invocation and pledge led by Jacob Schaffert, the district three and district nine legislative assistant, Jacob. Good evening everyone. Please bow your heads. Dear Heavenly Father, we come before you today asking for your guidance, wisdom and unity to rest upon these elected leaders. May your hand lead them in peace and clarity as they make decisions that will shape the future of East Baton Rouge Parish. As we are reminded in First Corinthians 110, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought. May their hearts be aligned with yours as they work together in service to the people in your name. Amen. I pledge allegiance 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. Thank you. Jacob. All right. Introductions. Ashley, can you please read the introductions? Section 2.12 introductions. Number one, amending the 2026 current

expense budget for the doctor, Martin Luther King Junior Community Center, so as to appropriate $50,000 from the Center's fund balance, designated for community centers to provide for stripping and waxing of the floors of the community center at an estimated cost of $12,000, and remodeling the literacy lab, calming room and game room at an estimated cost of $38,000. By Councilwoman Harris. Number two amending title 11. Chapter six driving on right side of roadway. Overtaking and passing use of roadway. Section 11 colon 73 drag racing and racing on public roads so as to prohibit and add the definition of spectator to provide for collection of fines and to provide for impound under state law. To provide for penalty of businesses to add a provision related to private roads and parking areas to provide for injunctive relief and to exempt designated areas by Councilman. Code number three authorizing settlement of the matter entitled Paula Williams versus the City of Baton Rouge Parish of East Baton Rouge and Patrick Weinmann. In the amount of $300,000 plus court costs, the amount of $333, and appropriating $300,333 for such purpose by the parish attorney. Number four, amend the 2026 Pei Pei plan for the classified unclassified Non-classified contract. Fire and police employees of the City of Baton Rouge Parish of East Baton Rouge, so as to make the following changes. Effective March 26th, 2026. Add new classification Program administrator, administrator Head Start Pay Grade 2270. Delete classification program administrator head Start Pay Grade 2270 and add classification to classified and unclassified. Appendix. Item 30 program Administrator Head Start step 14 by Human Resources Director and Director of Human Development and Services. Number five amend the 2026 Allotment of Positions for the City of Baton Rouge Parish of East Baton Rouge, so as to change the allotment of Human Development services. Head Start Administration effective March 26th, 2026. Human

Development and Services Head Start Administration at one program administrator, Head Start classified and delete one program administrator. Head Start unclassified by the Human Resources Director and Director of Human Development Services. Condemnation introductions. Number six Rolanda Gale, Harold Jackson and Roosevelt, Harold Jr and Mildred Abbott, Harold, 664 Plank Road, Council, district five. Hurst, number seven. Lourdes L Caruso, 9435 Prescott Road, Council, district five. Hurst, number eight Prudent Acquisitions LLC, 4122. Shelby, 4112. Shelley Street Council, District five, Hurst, number nine. Sheila Marie Earls Cochran, 4354 Shelley Street, Council, district five. Hurst, number ten vote. Louisiana 1566. North Acadian Thruway West Council district seven. Harris, number 11. Alpine Property Management LLC, 1431. North Acadian Thruway East Council, Districtp. Katrina Dion Richardson, four two, three eight. Provost Street, Council, district seven. Harris, number 13. Marie O'Connor Stevenson, 773. North 47th Street, Council district seven. Harris, number 14. Timothy Duane Williams, 672. North 35th Street Council district seven. Harris, number 15 Charles E Wilson and Marian W Wilson, 5083 Fairfield Avenue, Council, district seven. Harris, number 16. Reginald Pierre, 1360. North 32nd Street Council district ten. Coleman, number 17. Front yard bikes, 974 West Roosevelt Street Council district ten. Coleman adjudicated property introductions. Number 18, lot six, square three subdivision. Hart Council district ten. Coleman, number 19, lot 209 part subdivision, southern Heights Council district two. Kinney. Number 20, lot five, square two subdivision.

Georgetown Council. District seven. Harris. Alignment. According. All right. Do we have a we have a motion. Are we is there one. Yes, sir. I'd like to make me. I know I'd like to make a motion to delete number 17 front yard bikes from introduction, please. And introduce all other items and introduce all other items. Thank you. We have amotion by Councilwoman Coleman to introduce all items with the exception of item 17. Is there a second? Second by Councilman Gaudet? Is there any opposition motion carries. Okay. We're going to go to separate sheets for condemnations. I'm going to read. DPW recommendations first and then we'll go through with everyone. If you if you already gave Ashley your information on yours, we have it. Recommendation is to proceed with items 33, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 49, 50, 52, 54, 55, and 57, 90 days on items 44, 48, 51, 53, 56 and 58 and delete item 34, 3847. I have further recommendations of 30 days on items. 39, 45, 49, 52, 55, and 57, 90 days on, 37 and 43, in addition to the ones previously read in the also delete item 41. These are recommendations from the council members. Does anybody else do any other council members have any

recommendations to me on those 30 days, on 36, 30 days on 38 and 90 days on 48. Hang on, 38. It was recommended to be deleted. You want 30 days, 30 days. Okay. And what was the last one? Alright, last one was 48, 90 days, 30 days for 36, 30 days for 38. 48 is already 90 days, 48, 48, 90 days. Okay. Okay. Councilwoman. Yes, sir. I have two who have applied for permits. Number 40. Give them 30 days and number 4230 days. Okay. Anybody else? Okay, before I read them back, we have a public hearing. Anybody wishing to speak on any of these items. Seeing none, request is to proceed with item 3335, 46, 50, and 5430 days on item 36, 38, 39, 40, 42, 45, 49, 52, 55, and 57, 90 days on items 37, 43, 44, 48, 51, 53, 56 and 58 and to delete item 34, 41, and 47, we have a motion. Motion by Councilwoman Coleman, second by Councilman Gaudet. Is there any opposition motion

carries? Imma read them back one more time. Yeah, I don't have the same thing to proceed with. Items. 33 3546. 90. I'm not sure. Oh, there. Okay. 46. Oh yeah. 46 is proceed. 50 proceed. 54 proceed. Good. Okay. Beyond what we already did, it didn't change. Oh, motion was Councilwoman Coleman seconded by Councilman Gaudet. We're good. Moving a little too fast by Ashley. It's true. You know, I kind of change up how I do condemnations each time. I apologize. Trying to find the easiest way. Alright. Item 59. Rescinding directing clerk of court to cancel notice to attend. Recorded on May 21st, 2025. Matter of City of Baton Rouge versus Katy Charlotte Everett. The reason for rescission is the property is currently being renovated by the owner. This is by Councilman Hurst. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Seeing none, go to council. We have a motion. Motion by Councilwoman Amoroso. Councilwoman Ojohansson. Go ahead. Ashley, this is the one

that we canceled last council meeting. Y'all deferred it. Deferred council meeting? Yes. And you're stating now that it's been shown that they're doing work on the place. Is Rachel available? Yeah, it's a development question. Give me a second to get it pulled up. I'm not logged in. So they've applied for a permit. And they have some approved plans that were approved on the sixth, but they still have quite a few other they don't have any contractors listed on the permit so that it can't be issued. So is it still at a point that everybody could walk away from it? And we have to start the whole process all over again? If it is if this rescission is passed tonight, then yes, we would have to start the whole condemnation process over again. But I cannot issue the permit until the condemnation is rescinded. It's prohibited. But I do. I will say that applying for a permit, having approved construction plans, it is a step in the right direction, does show some good faith in my opinion. Okay. Thank you. Rachel, I have a question. Can you expound on the not being able to issue a permit until the rescission? What prohibits that specifically? Because to me, the ordinance. The ordinance, the ordinance. So we'd have to adjust the ordinance to allow for that.

Yes, but it's A61 way, half a dozen the other way, because what's preventing them from, you know, doing anything going forward, we would just be in this crazy loop of, you know, oh, it's condemned, but yet I have a permit issued. The ordinance states that when a structure is condemned, that a null and vote nullifies and voids every existing open permit that has been issued and that any future permits cannot be issued. Okay. And the reason I asked that, I understand we struggle internally with the thought process of, well, this could help us out, but I feel like once someone, if we know that council member has spoken to that person, they know that they have the financial means to make the repairs. And then they also have approved construction plans and are pretty much ready for the permit to be issued. That means they're ready to go and that we just need to resend, and then we can click the button the day after the meeting. Would you say financial? A lot of times it's, you know, we're not verifying income or looking at bank statements necessarily. It's just all, hey, we want to do this, but permit we can't get a permit. They're not letting us get a permit. To me, somebody's obtaining a permit and spending the dollars to do that shows me that now their skin in the game and they're actively moving towards. I'm going to phone a friend I know. And look, I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong, but, you know, I don't know legally that like, what kind of a predicament does that put us in? But to me, that tells me a lot more than somebody saying, hey, we're going to do it. And so kind of what council was saying, if we if we undo this and then they don't move forward, we start all over again. But I think if they've actually shelled out money and gotten a permit in some fashion, it shows a little bit more skin in the game. But please, Mae, whatever. So the thought process behind that is that that's what they were supposed to do before it came before you and got condemned. So they've had all that time to do that. Now. It's a for you if you condemn it and we say, hey, you

can still get permits, what's going to happen is someone could go get a permit, start work, and we're going out in two days, in two weeks to go tear it down. Yeah, that creates a problem. So the thought process is and what the ordinance shows or provides for is that once it's condemned, if you really do want to make a change and ask for rescission, you will go through the process of doing what you need to do to get ready to make those changes to the property. I mean, there are five very specific reasons that permits. I mean, that condemnations can be rescinded. And, you know, I think that there is a there should be a giant burden of proof on that property owner in order to show that they can both physically and financially complete the remodels and repairs because they have had as, as Mona said, a significant amount of time to do this. It makes sense. What's the cost for the rescission? Typically it's like because you're paying typically for like, I think 3 or 4 recommendations. It really depends on the number of errors on a property, because we have to notice and record a notice to attend for each error or each person, whatever's been spent by the city. Yeah. Okay. So it's to cover the cost that we've spent. We've done a lot and spent a lot of money to get to the point of condemnation. So they've been noticed. They've been sent notice a couple times often. And so that's what we're just getting the money back to make sure we recoup that money before they start the process. And so in a situation like this, have they already paid? They have paid for the rescission. It does not go on the agenda until they've paid. Okay. Good. Thank you Councilman. Yeah. So I guess the average cost of getting to this process, like I've spoken with you, one that is on. It was supposed to be deferred for 90 days and it's condemnation, it's own condemnation. It's been through the process. You sent out the inspector. Now they have to pay a $650 fee because they did the inspection for asbestos to actually bulldoze it. Now they're

wanting to to hold off and I'll take some responsibility for whatever happened. But I guess it kind of just shows that whole point of, we're going through these. I get maybe years is the wrong term, but some of them are out there for a long time. The oldest stuff in my backlog currently is mostly from last year, 2025, when we got the $3 million or whatever. In Arpa funds, we really worked through a backlog. The only things that are older than that are have been sitting in litigation either. They've sued us in 19th JDC, we've had air secession issues or title issues that we've needed to clear up. And so we've been working through those. But anything that, you know, and we're constantly checking before we go out, we're checking title. We're seeing if anything's going on. I mean, my inspector's touch a piece of property every time before it comes to this council. Like when it when you defer, we go out and inspect the week before council, and then we go out and post notice, and then we inspect at least two, three more times before we actually tear that structure down. And if we see something going on, we're going to flag it and bring in permits and inspections. If there's unpermitted work going on, we may contact, you know, the council members office if we see something, have questions. You know, we're always trying, looking and trying to, you know, make sure that we're doing the best possible thing or. As far as condemnation and us actually going out there and tearing them down, if an owner says, and I look at some of these properties and I, I just maybe it's just me, I don't understand how do you, how do you fix this? This is not a fix. This is a I need to build a new house. Agreed. There. There are. And that's not my. That's only owner to decide. You know, to gd

and do what they do. But when does it. The cost of. If the owner comes in and says, I want you to pull it off. Condemnation, do the reception and I'm just going to tear it down and levels a lot. Do we allow it to be pulled from condemnation for that, or do we let them give them a permit to go in and tear the house down? We have opined that a condemnation is authorization to demolish. We're not you know, I'm not going to issue you a demo permit, but I'm not going to go after you. If you go out there to demo that structure on your own after it is condemned and you get there before me, okay, then I'm not going to charge you fees and you know, all that stuff and it's hooray, I didn't have to do it. But we're not prosecuting people who are tearing down structures without permits. We are considering the condemnation and authorization for it to be demolished, whether that's us or the property owner. I just want to make sure it wasn't something that was holding them up from going and tearing it down themselves. No no no no no. Typically we're having that conversation when someone does apply for a demolition permit or is seeking to, we're like, just go do it. Okay. Thank you. Councilman Hudson. Hey, Rachel, just a quick idea. What if we were to an ordinance, have a fee for rescission of a condemnation that is applicable to the permit fee once the rescission has happened? I mean, it's possible. You know, typically, I know that most of you because when it when it's going to be rescinded, it has to come from one of you and whoever's district it's in, you know, I'm not going to stop my process until I hear something in writing from the council member whose district it sits in. Right. I just think, you know, that might help the process of, quote unquote, having the skin in the game. I know I don't do a lot of condemnations, but I have had a

similar situation happen, and it was very difficult to get me to a level of comfort that they were going to actually do the work. Agreed. And, you know, I think we even went so far as to require them to escrow some money with a title attorney as a part of it. And of course, they never did it. But just an idea, something to bat around in your office and I mean it. I do think that we need to have a larger conversation that revolves around fees and fines and penalties that go along with actually having a, with the city parish actually condemning and demolishing a structure, because typically when we do this, we lean the property and that lien never gets paid. It goes into adjudication, the liens get wiped and we never recoup that money. You know that it's a catch 22, but we are looking at as a whole all of the blight fees and fines and penalties. So. Councilwoman Adams, Rachel, does your office track like so once we do a rescission and I had one recently and it took a while once we rescinded it for them to get to get going on the construction repairs, does your office continue to track what happens with those rescinded properties? We try. We try to monitor them at least, like put a sticky note in it. Let's let's go and check on it in six months, see if there's been progress in the permit. Typically, we'll get another complaint again about a property which will prompt us to also go out and investigate to see if they've made any progress on their permit. And there are plenty there. There are few, quite a few that have been condemned, rescinded, issued a permit, nothing happened and then they get condemned again. So if I were to ask you to do a report in a couple of weeks on, you know, kind of rescissions over the last 12 to 24 months and what the status of those, at least some of those houses or you could do that for. Yes, ma'am. Okay. I'm going to put that on

the agenda if that's okay with you. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thanks, Maimona. I'm sorry. Mona, correct me if I'm wrong, but when the profit is rescinded, there's already a fee or fees associated with that rescission, right? Yes. And that's before it can be brought to be rescinded. All fees have to be paid. Okay? So that we don't need to institute a new fee. There's already there's already a part of the process. It's not it's not necessarily a penalty as far as like a fee. Like, you know, when you go to blight, he issues you a fine, right? The the officer does it's actual cost incurred. So we've paid the clerk of court parish Sheriff's Office has paid the clerk of court $135 for everything. Every time something gets recorded and we're just recouping that costs. Recouping expenses paid. Okay, so it's not like a fine because you're asking got rescinded. Okay. Thank you for that clarity. Okay. We've got a motion by Councilwoman Amoroso, second by Councilman Molk. Is there any opposition motion carries item 60 authorizing the mayor to execute an intergovernmental agreement with the city of Saint George, conveying, transferring, relinquishing and assigning without warranty any ownership in and to the portion of state route LA 1248, known as Bluebonnet Boulevard from its junction with State Route LA 30, known as Nicholson Drive, proceeding east and north approximately 2.52 miles to its intersection with State Route LA 42, known as Burbank Drive by Transportation Drainage Director. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Seeing none, go to Council Councilman Don junior. Yes, sir. I would tk on this. Can you just talk through this for the public to let us let us know what we're doing here? Well, part of the issue is that when the vote took place, we're moving the roads that actually that Saint George has incorporated. Part of this blue bonnet is the section that we're talking about from Burbank to Nicholson

is all within the district or the boundary of the Saint George area. This is also the location in which you'll see on the next item is the agreement for the roundabout that would. That was what was being proposed to be built at this location. But under this. This particular item, if we're not going to own the road, we want to be sure that we transfer that legally. And that's what the parish attorney has also recommended to us. So just mention or talk through what the what that does from a maintenance responsibility standpoint when you're transferring ownership. Well, when we transfer the ownership to them, the city of Saint George will be responsible for all the maintenance and regards to that particular roadway within the boundaries that have been defined. And that will be strictly their responsibility to to be able to maintain. And what about the maintenance or any expenses that have been incurred to this point? Are we recouping that from them? When we originally worked with Saint George, we were providing them estimates of what that cost was going to be to do whatever work that we needed to do. That has now been done away with. We've got we've gotten money from it, but I don't know exactly if it's totally everything, but I just would say that with the agreement at this point that we've already executed with Saint George a letter, they're totally 100% responsible. We're not to be doing any work on on that particular roadway. So just to be clear, you say the conversation started, you made them aware that there's some expenses that was occurred that they owed, but we hadn't collected them. I wouldn't say we hadn't collected. I know that they've been put we provided official documentation showing them what that cost was going to be to do the repairs that they needed to be done in this particular location. To be honest with you, Councilman, I

don't think there was any work done on it because there was a concrete street and we really didn't have any real problems. There are areas within the Saint George that were that we were asked to look at, and we did. And I think we submitted invoices for reimbursement. And as to my knowledge, I think we have been reimbursed for all the costs at this point. So you've been running point on that, or would that be finance or somebody in the administration? It will. It will probably be within our department. The Department of Public Works probably would be more in line with Trina Hall, who is our business manager, and with the person who's doing the work in regards to be sure it's getting done and we're submitting the proper documentation, then we also seeking to get reimbursed. Okay. Can you when you get a chance, give me an email or us an email on the status of that. Yes, sir. I'll be glad the fees were if there were any and if they've been collected. Yes, sir. On this particular area, are you on this area and anyone forthcoming? Okay. Yes, sir. Thank you. Appreciate you. We have a motion. Motion by Councilman Gaudet. Have a second. Second by councilman. Is there any opposition? Motion carries. Item 61 authorizing mayor. President, execute a cooperative endeavor agreement with Birdville Development Corporation and SLP development LLC outlining the terms of the transfer of $1.2 million in traffic impact fees for installation of a roundabout on Bluebonnet and Harvesting way by the Transportation and Drainage Director. This item was deferred from February 11th meeting and deferred to February 25th meeting. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Seeing none, go to council. We have a motion. Motion by Councilman Gaudet, second by Councilman Hurst. Is there any opposition? Motion carries. Council members, I

apologize. You should have received an email comment in opposition to item 61, item 62 authorizing the mayor. President, execute an intergovernmental agreement with the City of Saint George for the provision of animal control services in the city of Saint George at a cost of $405,170 paid to the city parish for the year 2026 and continuing year to year by Animal Control Director. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Seeing none, we'll go to council Councilwoman Adams. Councilman Don junior. Thank you. William, would this e you? Would this be. I don't see anybody from animal Control. And Andrew, you come. Oh, I didn't see him. I'm sorry. Both of y'all can come. Just want you to explain for the public exactly what's going on here with this intergovernment agreement. So each municipality does pay animal control for the services that animal control provides in those municipalities based on population. And so this is the proposed agreement for 2026, which also authorizes us to continue year after year. Saint George has agreed to this, and we're doing the same, applying the same methodology that we currently apply to Baker, Zachary and Central. Thank you. What about any expenses or services that have been occurred prior to this point? So I did verify because at the last council meeting, you had asked that question, and all services provided from July through December, which is after the intergovernmental agreement have been reimbursed by Saint George, I verified we received the check, and I did look in the account to make sure. Thank you. Can you give me that report? Yes. I don't know if some of those expenses could be encompassed in what

Fred was just mentioning earlier. Okay, I'm not sure. We all just get together, follow up and send it to you. Yes, sir. Thank you. You want to add anything? Alright. Thanks. Councilwoman Adams, I still have a technical question. It'll probably be easy to answer. So I understand that we look at the prior year expenses and take and figure out per capita what the the cost of animal services were. And then we charge that amount. So is the amount that we charge for that service in 2027. It's based on the expenses and the per capita share of 2026. Is that right for 2027? Yes. For this, it's based on the expenses of I'm sorry. No, it's 24 because you have to have an audited actuals. So right now we don't have 25 final and audited. So it's actually 24 actuals is what this is calculated off of for 26 payments. Okay. And so at some point there might be a misalignment there. Right. Or no, just that's what their budget that's is that's what their budget is. And that we just move forward. We don't true up because it's based on actual. So they're always going to be paying true actual costs. That's why we wait till there's an audit. Okay. Oh, and so so are we. So are you, I cash wise, are we floating everybody until they pay us back 18 months later? No, because we received the money up front. So again, in in last year, this municipality just started having paying for their own services. So they're, they're paying for January through December. We are a little late in getting it to you, but they

will back pay for January through March once this agreement is fully executed. And so the budget's based off January through December, even though we're using 2024 actuals. It's from a budget standpoint, they are animal control is being made whole by all municipalities. Okay. Got it. So you're basing the budget. Yes, ma'am on that. Okay. That that makes sense. I was just curious. I just wanted to thank you. All right. Do we have a motion? Motion by Councilman Don junior, seconded by Councilman Gaudet. Is there any opposition? Motion carries. Item 63 authorizing. Mayor. President, on behalf of the Office of Community Development to execute an amendment to the contract with workforce Group, LLC between the City of Baton Rouge Parish of East Baton Rouge, increasing the contract amount by 200,000 for a new total, not to exceed $38,571,406.53 and extending the agreement expiration to May 30th, 2026 by the Community Development Director. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Seeing none, we'll go to council. Council? McKinney. Hey, somebody from OCD to come up item for the viewing audience at home. Thank you. Council. McKinney. So yes, that's a large number. I had a issue with it at first as well. So those dollars were administered by workforce Group directly to landlords since 2021, when Erap won and a portion of two was received, we added the 200,000 to get through the end of this year and the beginning of this year to stabilize housing and still provide tenant, a tenant tenant based rental assistance. It's going to go through May 31st. So our effort was just to not to abruptly end it because the disaster dollars end. So they only have 4% of this 38,000 to do case management

and program management. And they've not met that 4% since 2021 yet. Thank you. Council. Councilman. And I may have missed something. I got a text and I blinked away. But workforce development dollars, right. No, no. Workforce group is the name of the entity that cuts the checks for tenant based rental assistance. I gotcha. Okay. All right. Well, I'm good on that. I'm aware of this. My mind was somewhere else. Oh, good. Thank you. Councilman. Councilman. Oh, come on, back up. Step back up. You mentioned just a second ago we're adding $200,000 so that we could. Not just in the program because the other dollars ended. Yes, sir. So it was emergency dollars that ended September 30th had to be spent by January. And so what we did was made it a part of our entitlement dollars through our home program. So now it's a part of OCD for us to do rental assistance, but we're actually working wraparounds with it now, not just doing rental assistance, but trying to fix the holistic problem for those individuals that we provide rental assistance to. So it took it from being the program we're continuing. Yes. With dollars that we get reoccurring, just a gap fill between the previous dollars allocated and other dollars that are coming in. Yes. So the dollars ran out. Okay. We've expanded them all. What we did was add our own OCD dollars so that we can can continue rental assistance rather than just ending it when the emergency dollars went away. And then what happens when this ends? We're going to keep funding it. We want to make it a part of what we do. But I think the program was started from a grant, from a funding source of funding source outside of city parish. Yeah. Disaster dollars. Erap stands for Emergency Rental Assistance Program. Okay. Yes. So it was no different because we got those disaster dollars and

we've been doing this program for how long? Since 2021. Since 2021, we're going to just because the disaster dollars ends, we're now going to pick up this program through the general fund. No, it's through community development, federal dollars, but it's not the same program. We're not just giving rental assistance. No. Yeah. I'm just trying to figure out that we're I'm just trying to make sure that and especially the public to know and stuff that just because whatever those dollars were, that ended its other federal dollars coming in from a different way, that is continuing the program. Yeah, it's our reoccurring HUD dollars that we get our annual allotment, our entitlement dollars. Okay. But we are changing the program to where it's more efficacy to it. And what we're trying to do is stabilize housing in certain areas as we do more developments, homes as well as low to moderate income. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Councilwoman Harris. So, Kelly, so once the 200, I want to make sure I understand what you just said. Once a 200,000 is gone. So we're going to do away with workforce Group. And the program will be housed through community development. Yeah. But we have a policy we put in place on how we think it will work best as far as rental assistance, but we'll do a new RFP. I think this has gone an awfully long time. I think it's time for a fresh RFP and a fresh look. Make sure that we're utilizing the city's dollars in the best way, but it's a program that we need. I know I've dealt with several of you, you know, once a month and it's great. It's a great help. But I think we should try to look at the holistic problem and not just do rental assistance, but how can we help, whether that's through workforce or any anything else. Okay, so we will continue to provide rental assistance. But you're going to add to that is what you're saying. Yeah, we'll do an RFP and it'll become a

separate program that we can continue. Okay, thanks. No problem. Anyone have a motion? Motion by Councilman Harris, second by Councilwoman Harris. Any opposition? Motion carries. Item 64, authorizing. Mayor. President, on behalf of the Office of Community development to an amendment to the contract with Southeast Louisiana Legal Services Corporation between the City of Baton Rouge Parish of East Baton Rouge, extending the agreement expiration date from August 31st, 2025 to May 31st, 2026 and authorizes the execution of all necessary documents by the Community Development Director. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item. Seeing none, go to council. Have a motion. Motion by Councilman Gudes, second by Councilman Hurst. I have a question. Councilwoman Coleman. Yes, Kelly, what is this amendment? How much is it to this contract? Help me. Help me. Yes, ma'am. It's just a date extension. So it was in a time frame extension. No cost extension. They just have so many people in the pipeline that they're fighting the eviction process. No money? Yes, ma'am. Items properly motion. And second, do we have a do we have any opposition motion carries 65 authorizing mayor. President, enter into an agreement with Let's Fix It LLC and the amount not to exceed 66,000 from funding provided from home. AARP, Cdbg Public Services and Cdbg administration for the purpose of Co-designing the city's healthy housing Program by Community Development Director. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item. Seeing none, go to Council. Council. McKinney. Kelly, come on right back on up. Explain this for the viewing audience at home. So there's no

miscommunication about what this funding is coming from and what the aspect of it is for. There's a chair right up there if you want to just I know a stool, right? I'm gonna let Miss Daryl really go into depth on this one. Good afternoon. Community development has been working with a few entities along the lines of housing and housing health, and we find that they basically intersect each other. And we are for example, we work with the New York University Housing Solutions Program, and we were a part of the Healthy Innovations Cohort through the National League of Cities and working on some other efforts. So we've combined those. And we this is our intent to have a contractor to hire contractor who will help bring all these partners in and facilitate this process, help build our frame rate, work around healthy housing, and also just health in general. So Alfredo is our consultant that this impacts. And he's here, Alfredo Cruz, he's worked with us on some other initiatives. If you would care for him to provide more detail. He's here to answer questions as well. But this is basically to have a collaborative effort with one person facilitating this between our partners and our staff to come up with a framework and a strategic plan to address healthy housing. Leah Collins, who is our chief health officer, is a part of this initiative. So it's a, a very involved effort, but we need one person other than a

staffer to help facilitate this. And Alfredo is our choice. And this contract involves him. Thank you. Okay, Councilwoman Adams, Alfredo, would you mind coming up and talking about this? I, I I'm not sure, and maybe I missed something. I'm not sure I understand what the term healthy housing means. Is this aimed at affordable housing? Is this aimed at the quality of housing? Is this aimed at helping home unhomed people? Sure. Thank you. Thanks for that question, because that is, in fact, one of the first things that we must do. We must define as a community. What does that mean to us? In some communities, healthy housing means affordable housing. It's part of that definition. So part of this process is for us to ensure that we as a community are talking about the same thing. When we talk about healthy housing, that is not just the condition of the property, but it could be also the condition of the neighborhood as well as the affordability of that home. So to your question, we don't know yet. I mean, I can tell you here what usually communities define as a healthy home that is free of rodents, roaches, you know, that has good air quality, all of those things. But we haven't asked the rest of the community for help in defining what that means. And so that's part of this process is to define it. I can tell you, though, that my personal hope is that in designing a healthy housing program, you will see less condemnations, because the question I would start asking is, what's causing so many properties to fall into such decay? That meeting after meeting you all are having to look through so many condemned properties. And I know that Rachel is going to give you a report in a future meeting to follow up on those properties that have been rescinded. But my hope is that we can give you a report on the properties that

are no longer being condemned, because we'll be able to reverse those conditions and make them into healthier homes before they fall into decay. And so I sat here listening to all these condemnations. My hope is that we can really prevent them from becoming into such disrepair that they have to be condemned. So that's I mean, that's huge. What you just talked about right there is really huge. Taking a survey of kind of what our entire housing stock is, why some housing stock is falling out of usage barriers, probably to affordable housing, and which there are a ton of barriers to affordable housing, both, you know, societal, financial and governmental. Okay, so what what should we expect to receive from you at the end of the process? What's what's the output? What are we going to see? Hopefully a. Hopefully you'll, you'll see a program that has a clear budget on how it'll be supported, a program with very clear objectives to improve health conditions as well as the housing and environmental conditions. A lot of ideas that have already been developed and circulated, but they're connected now. They're connected to one thing. And, you know, I can tell you that I've been working on this intersection of health and housing for years here, but there's so many efforts that are disjointed that my hope is that we can bring them all together and bring you a program that has all these ideas, not only on how to move them forward, but also how to implement them. And so it would be a project design that has included a budget and resources to fully implement at least a pilot, and then ideas on how to scale it. Okay, so that's, that's what we plan to produce.

That makes sense. And I see it looks like it like March 2027. So it's a year, it's a year long project. So maybe, maybe like a six month, we'll do a six month check in and a report in six months so we can see where you are. I'd like that. Okay. That would be that would be great. Just one note because people check your your your registration with Secretary of state is out of date. You need to just re-up your registration with Secretary of state. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Councilman. Couple questions on some. You could you stay up there a couple on your statements that you made? All right. So first of all, or you want to we're creating a program. This is this is funding to create this program requirements and extent of what it's going to do, what cities healthy housing is going to do. That's what we're fixing to fund. Is a study, correct? No, it's not a study. It's actually the design of a program with the implementation of a pilot. Okay. So we've done a lot of studies. We have a lot of studies. We have a lot of data. This is about putting all that research that's already been done, all that data that's been collected about health and housing conditions, and coming up with a program to improve housing conditions in a way that also helps to improve health. So we're coming up with a program. I mean, we're, we're developing a new a whole new program. Designing it. Yes. Specifically designing it. Okay. With the intention of improving both health and housing. Understood. I that's great. You threw in the mix with the whole condemnation thing. And if somebody else wants to come up

and answer this or whatever, I don't see how this is going to help condemnations because I may see it wrong, but to me, most condemnations are houses that have been abandoned after a emergency situation. Houses that get left out, family issues or whatever else, and they just sit and rot. This wouldn't do anything with that, would they? Not necessarily. You know, and I may have overstated my hopes for this program, but really the question I would ask is why are houses falling into such disrepair? You know, what prevents the owner of fixing them at some point? Right. Well, most condemnations are not people living in the home, but some are, some are. But I would think a of them are are not. Their houses have been abandoned. They're falling down again. I could be reading it wrong. This program. I could see if you get in there early enough to make it a healthy home, right. I got I get that, but we're sending off the condemnation. I don't know. So, you know, part of the Kelly and OCD and we have conversations all day long about how condemnation is not the answer. It. We're never going to condemn our way out of the the healthy housing problem that we have in Baton Rouge. We have so many houses that are not condemned, they're not livable, but they're not falling down structurally. Nobody's living there. Right. And there are a multitude of reasons why that occurs. And this is a key part of designing a program, right? Because in order to apply for federal funds and grants and all those other things, you have to have a whole program set forward, right, and set up and say, here's how I'm going to take this money and here's how I'm going to use it. And here's the good it's going to do and all those things. So this is helping the city parish move forward to try to, like you said, bring less properties to condemnation, but also elevate, you know, the condition of structures, bring people back into those having

healthy and affordable housing. And that's what I'm mainly seeing is you're helping to put a house or home that someone is living in back into a more livable, conducive condition for them to be there. Not using this to, you know, a house that's looking to be condemned or it's been abandoned or anything like that. Correct. At that point, too late. Okay. Thank you. Well, I think there's the point is, is that I mentioned that OCD has partnered with a lot of different partners and been a part of different collaborations. So what we want to do is take that knowledge as well as even look at our own internal programs and see what the implications are beyond rehabilitation. And let me give you an example of that. We have a lead based program that we're currently operating. Well, on the surface, you can look in at peeling windows or whatever. Some of the other attributes are where you know that there's a problem with lead. But what you may not know is that there is a child who has eaten some of that paint, or who goes to school and may have a behavior problem, and they're thinking it's because they may have attention deficit disorder, but it's because of the environment or the impact of that unhealthy house on that family or in this particular case, that child. So we want to look at who we're serving. We're going to look at the different programs we're participating in and try to have some kind of synergy or organized path forward in terms

of how our work can have some kind of meaningful result that impacts both housing and while addressing the health implications that we have been faced with in this community. I hope that helps a little better. Yes, that helps, and I agree with that process and everything else. What I'm concerned about is do we start another program that's going to try and restore a home to, you know. That actually needs like full blown repair, like holes in the floor, it's falling down. It's, it's everything else. I agree with the healthy part. You know, you get help families get rid of lead based paint, clear out stuff that has been, you know, over the decades changed in different ways of structure of doing it or whatever else. But I guess I'm, it's been brought up the condemnation part, I guess, don't want to blur that line between, you know, a house that's, you know, maybe on that verge or it maybe should be condemned. It's been sitting there and all of a sudden the family members come back and they want to use some of these dollars to restore it to a healthy home. And I'm just getting clarification on I know what you're saying. I know you're shaking your head. I'm just want to make sure that the public understands the healthy home, carbon dioxide, those different things, detectors, that kind of stuff. So I just wanted some clarification on that, that we're it's, it's beyond bricks and mortar. It involves several components. And we want to take a look and e components intersect, how they impact the work that we're

doing along these lines. And at some point we will be, you know, we can come back and 90 days or probably at least six months to let you know where we're going and what, how things are looking and what is actually being impacted. Okay, last question, I don't know who can answer this is there's nothing else on the books that does this anywhere in the system. Never been thought of. No. Hadn't been planned, implemented and then worked and not worked. And we moved on and now we're coming back to it. It just seems like a lot of these ideas. Here we are, 2026. They've has any program been like this before? There are bits and pieces of different programs that have been a part of this administration and the past administration and the one before that. Are those programs still around? I can't say who's all still here, but there is a specific need. After looking at, again, who's in the in the room internally, meaning in the city systems and those that we have partnered with. And looking at it from a standpoint, it's kind of like some churches get to a point where if you got to do a committee on committees because you got to figure out how many committees are doing what, and so on and so forth. I just don't want to reduplicate the same thing that we might already have out there. I know that's not the case at all, and we don't believe in no disrespect intended, but our aim within the Office of Community Development, we don't aim to meet, to meet, but we want to move forward. That's

why we bring the community in. When we have our our consolidated planning process. But we also meet and, and as a staff and with our partners to see what the needs are or what the gaps are. And so we're at the table because there's a need to design something that is not there at this time. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Coleman. Mr. Alfredo, I want you know what you spoke. Sounds good, but it ain't great. Walk me through what your day would look like, because. Yeah, just walk me through what your day would look like. I'm confused. Okay. Well, the first step in phase one is to design a work plan, because my day will interface with the days of a lot of other folks who are working, people like Rachel working on condemnations. You know, folks at OCD who are working on the lead program, really interfacing with all of them to ensure that I understand what the goals of each of those programs are and that a healthy housing program helps to also advance those goals. You know, if it's to reduce the number of properties that fall into decay. And to the point that they have to be condemned. I'm just going to go back to that example, because it isn't about fixing properties that are condemned at that point. It's too late. It's really preventing them to get it to that point. How will you be doing what somebody is living there, right? And so be really looking at where are their people living in housing conditions that are very poor

housing conditions and that it's impacting their health, that intersection of people with poor health conditions and living in poor housing conditions. And we already have a lot of that data. And then designing a ten. I have a lot of the houses that you're talking about. So I know about the data and we don't need to hire anybody else to come tell us the data because we have that. I want to know what you're going to do. And we're talking about $66,000. And then on the other breath, we're talking about cuts and not having money. That's my question about this. And then I don't know if it was Daryl or Kelly who mentioned Leah Collins is doing some of this. And so all departments are lesser in their employees. I only have two, so I'm just trying to wrap my brain around $66,000. But you can't tell me what you do on a daily basis. It's too vague in my opinion. Yeah, no, I can understand that. The first step really is designing a work plan to really figure out together, how are we going to work together towards meeting the goals of all the other programs that are trying to address housing conditions, and then figuring out where this program may focus, because some districts, some of your districts have a lot of properties in very poor conditions, and a lot of people living in them with poor health conditions. And so that is one of the first steps in the work plan is identifying where to focus this program. But it isn't about collecting more data, really. It's about what data do we have to design a program that helps to address the health of people and the condition of the homes in which

they're living? Okay, Councilman Hudson. So I'm looking at the scope of work for this item that's attached to our agenda for tonight. I had a question, Mr. Alfredo, you may not be the best one to answer this. It may be Kelly or Miss Fletcher. Can someone tell me about the Live Well initiative and explain that that to me? I see that in the scope of work and it's referenced. It's highlighted in bold there. So I think that's the first thing we need to understand is, is what is the live Well initiative? Yeah. So one of the first ways I started asking about this is we were one of three cities selected to NYU for a program I applied for. And one of the key recommendations is how we ended up on the Detroit trip. It's through their alliance. They said, y'all need a real healthy housing model. There's a lot of people that have done the work, but we really need to understand it. In essence, live well is something that and we have not rolled it out yet. This is one of the key components to start it off with. Doctor Collins is doing with mental health, physical health, right? That well-being, what we're doing with our homelessness intervention and prevention, what we're doing with housing, what we're doing with our federal programs. Oh, it's Ryan White across the board. How do we put all those things in one place to have a one point of entry to where individuals know this is who you contact, this is our programs, this is how we're working. So live Well is a component of that. I can tell you all, every federal grant we apply for, for housing, they ask us, what is your healthy housing model? We don't have a model, have a lot of moving parts, but we need to document it. It needs to play a part in how we rehab homes, where we rehab homes, where we provide density, where are we going to throw our darts at one place, right? So live well is that it's not fully off the ground, but this is a beginning step to that. And you'll see more contracts we bring before council that have that live well moniker as we move through

it. Gotcha. So as I read it, as I understand it, this contract is to help build out the housing plan for the Live Well initiative. Is that the healthy housing portion? Healthy housing portion. All right. So I'm looking in the scope of work. I see it looks like four phases. Phase one ideation, phase two implementation, phase three assessment. And then project closeout. I'll just tell you my my issue is not with Mr. Alfredo or this contract specifically. And I don't know that I have an issue, but I will tell you generally, as I've seen us roll out these programs and these different things, often the federal funding that is attached to them is insufficient to run the program for an entire calendar year. And so these folks end up doing work for a short amount of time. They help maybe a few l assistance, let's say they help a few people avoid, avoid being evicted and something that to that effect, but there's no systemic change. And I'll just tell you, I'm not confident that Mr. Alfredo can design a program that is going to initiate systemic change. And so that's why I my preference would be to see us use our our federal OCD dollars and that type of thing for infrastructure projects. I'm okay with this tonight because I know this is the direction y'all want to go in, but but I'll just tell you, for me, I would love to see us focus on infrastructure. No, and I appreciate that. And let me make this clear. We want the plan designed so we can make it a part of our policy. So we move it forward as a city, as OCD, we don't want Alfredo to take this for 3 or 4 years. We need an entity, someone with the capacity to help us design it and make it a part so that we are considering healthy housing. And we have moved a lot of dollars over to infrastructure in our one year

plan. I totally agree with you on that. Councilwoman Rocha. Mr. Cruz, thank you so much for being here and for asking all of our answering all of our questions that we're asking here tonight. Can you give us an idea of where you have done this type of program before? For the last four years? Perhaps even more like 2022. I helped the city with a different team, go through a process with the National League of Cities to develop a healthy housing program design here in East Baton Rouge Parish. Yes. What other parishes have you helped with or other cities? I've been a funder for the most part. I worked in philanthropy, funding projects and processes similar to this. Okay. And so having an understanding of what it takes to develop a healthy housing initiative, funding the process to develop one, but also understanding that these plans don't go anywhere without the money involved. And so one of the pieces that I bring into this work is making sure that you end up not just a plan, but also a way to capitalize it, a way that you can implement it. And so part of my knowledge is knowing who funds this kind of work. Where do you get the money to support this kind of work? Because without having a plan with a budget and the resources identified to fund it, you just end up with a plan. And usually those things don't go anywhere unless you know where the money is going to come from and even begin to apply for some of that. You can begin to apply for some of that funding to implement a project with just the idea. And there are donors and funders out there that can support this kind of work. If you just give them an idea that's based on best practices and you do it ahead of time so that when you

finish the plan, you have the money in hand to implement it. And so that's one of the biggest contributions I can make to the design of this work is knowing how it's funded, who will fund it, and making sure that the city ends up with a project design that has a budget and has resources identified to fund it. So in what program are you using? Whenever you were funding those projects, where were those projects at and under what program and in what city? Yeah, there is a national organization called the National Healthy Housing Alliance, and they're sort of like the big think tank of anyone doing any kind of healthy housing work. Usually that is the depository of best practices to improve housing conditions and also health conditions in communities. So that that is sort of like one of the best places to look for models, right? But you also look at cities similar in size demographics as Baton Rouge, and you begin to look around about who is doing work in this intersection of health and housing. But the National Alliance for. Healthy Housing is the depository. The City of Baton Rouge also has a big relationship with League of Cities and has for years. So as I mentioned, in 2022, I helped design a model for a healthy housing program that did not get implemented. That was here. It was here. Yeah. That did not get implemented. The administration at that time chose to tackle crime, and so I went in that different direction. But we had some of those ideas ready to begin implementing a healthy housing initiative. And how do those ideas change from the

ones that you're currently trying to create a plan for? Yeah. So this work is to put together a lot of the pieces that were created over time. You know, if we go back to 2022, there was a healthy housing initiative through National League of Cities that was intended to improve housing conditions in East Baton Rouge. There are those ideas. There are others ideas. Through a lab at NYU that we participated in, there was a landlord engagement lab through National League of Cities that we developed ideas on how to engage landlords and being part of the solution. And there was a more recent National League of Cities initiative that the City of Baton Rouge participated in to figure out how technology can be also part of that solution. Okay, so, Mr. Leduff, I'm sorry. I'm running out of time. Mr. Leduff, can I please talk to you for a few seconds? I need a really short answer. I have 20s left when checking references and how this work has been done in the past, can I get a real direct answer as to who, what, when, where and how? Please. He was the one who kept coming and kept caring. We had several conversations and talking with National League of Cities. His name kept coming up. I'm willing to do whatever makes you comfortable if y'all want to defer this and we give you more information and you all look at it more, I want your ideas. If there's something better, if there's a better way to do it, I'm all about it. I just. Is is there. Has this happened in any other city or any other parish? Yeah, under Mr. Cruz. I don't know what, Mr. Cruz. I know the work he did here. I thought it was phenomenal. And I looked at it. Okay. We are doing crime and healthy housing. It's something we need. So that was my our thought. I'm going to make a motion to defer this. If it doesn't impact it, will it impact any of your grant? We find no, we had this in the one year plan. That money's there. Let us revisit it. Let us send you all some ideas, get

feedback and go from there. Or would it be your preference 60, 30 or 60 days? I think 60, if that's fine with y'all. I'd love to sit down and talk to you about how this what this looks like moving forward. Also compare ideas from our trip in Detroit. See what that housing initiative looks like, how we can implement this, and maybe all have a collaborative discussion of what we want to see come from this study before we allocate those funds. I trust the 12. Whatever you think, I'll make a motion to defer for 60 days to the to the May 13th meeting. Sure. Thank you. Motion by Councilwoman Rocca, second by Councilwoman Coleman. Councilwoman Harris. Mr. Alfredo, I would like to make a suggestion to you, sir. You came before this body and laid out the work that you have done in the past. I would suggest to you that you bring that work with you next time to show just what your work is and what you're doing. Okay. Thank you sir. Councilman. Good, thanks. I would I guess a couple of things. I know, Alfredo, the work he's done and I would definitely refer to him in this field as a subject matter expert. And so I'll make a substitute motion to approve it and just see if see if that goes through. The second thing I would say is healthy housing is when I worked other side of, of this office building, something we delved into. And at that time, we defined it as partnership with local hospitals. So hospitals, when a, when a patient comes to a hospital on repeat visits, the hospital is penalized essentially on their reimbursement payments for, for the for that patient having to come back multiple times within a given amount of, of time. So the hospital's incentivized essentially to get that patient well, so that they're not making repeat visits to the hospital in Detroit. Those hospitals viewed that incentive and a return on investment to get involved in affordable

housing. So, for instance, one of the things we toured in Detroit was an old office building that was once blighted. It was revamped. The first two floors are clinics operated by the hospital, and floors three through ten are housing. And so the people that live there obviously have those services right on site. They have people with the clinics who are coming to literally into their living area to check on them. So it was an example of how the combination of health and housing and the involvement of local hospitals, financial, as well as the health involvement, really paid dividends for that community. And so in my mind, that for me is the definition of healthy housing. And, and we have some health care partners who I think would be very interested in that form of conversation. So that's, that's what I'd offer up to the administration in seeing this Su made a substitute motion to approve. Is there a second to the substitute motion? Yeah, I'll second that. But I want to talk explain why. Okay. We have a second by Councilman Hurst, Councilman Hurst. So one thing I was talking to a few council members about up here is that when you do consulting work and some of us have been in that space, I'm in that space. At this level of money, you're not going to start doing the work until you know that the contract is in place. And so sometimes a part of that contract, the first step you do is take 30 to 60 days to dig to figure out information that makes that space relevant. And then based on the information that you find, you build a business plan around your findings. And so asking him for me to come in and say, hey, other than just, just giving you some check boxes of his references, I've seen him lhc

other places on boards and dealing with the homeless housing and continuum of care. So I've been around some of his work, so I respect that part of it. I don't know anybody else more qualified than Baton Rouge that can do some of the work that you do based on the board, you sit on the people that you serve. So if I was in your shoes, I wouldn't do the work. I would get the contract first and then lay out a plan to implement where I do my digging first, and then build a business plan around my findings. So I don't mind. Second, if it fails, but go with 60 days and I'm okay with that too. But I just wouldn't do any work without getting the contract signed. So that's why I'm on second. Thank you. Okay, we have a we have two motions on the floor. We're going to vote on the substitute motion, which is to approve. We're going to vote on that on the machines, and we're going to vote on that. First. Machines are open on the substitute motion to approve. Motion fails. I'm gonna do a roll call, Councilman. Yes. Councilman. Molk. Councilwoman Adams. No. Councilman. Junior. Yes. Councilman. Hurst. Yes. Councilman. Rocha. No. Councilman Noll. No. It didn't register, though. Okay. Councilman. Hudson. Yes. Councilman. Amoroso. No. Councilman Coleman. No. Councilman Kenny. No. Councilwoman Harris. No. Thank you. Now, we're going to vote on the original motion, which is to defer to the May 13th meeting. Machines are open on the motion to defer to the May

13th meeting. The motion carries. I'm gonna do a roll call. Councilman. Yes, Councilman. Yes. Councilwoman Adams. Yes. Councilman Dunn. Junior. Yes. Councilman. Hurst. Yes. Councilwoman Rocha. Yes. Councilman. Noll. Yes. Councilman. Hudson. Yes. Councilman. Amoroso. Yes. Councilwoman Coleman. Yes. Councilman. Kenny. Yes. Councilwoman Harris. Yes. Thank you. Item 66. Authorizing the mayor to enter into an agreement with Civic Collaborative Foundation in an amount not to exceed $80,000 from act 461 state appropriations funding for the purpose of executing grant modification services, administrative support, partnership and fund development around violence prevention and intervention activities by the Community Development Director. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item. Seeing none, we'll go to council. We have a motion. Motion by Councilman Hurst, second by Councilwoman Harris. Is there any opposition, Councilwoman Adams? Hey, Kelly, can you is this you, Kelly? Yeah. Come talk about this. Yes, ma'am. Hey, Kelly. Okay, so Civic Collaborative Foundation is at the Baton Rouge Area Foundation. Yes, it's a new entity. Okay. And so talk about talk about what, what they're going to do. What, what? Yeah. And I have Eric in the team here. So one of the things that when I first looked and me and Councilman Dunn talked about this with the nofa that we're going to open back up for, you know, our social programing around violence prevention. It was important to us. We always hear P three, P three, right? Number one, I think the we're going to have to have a grants administrator. And that's one of the things we talked to Senator Barrow about. These are the funds that she gave us directly to help set up the Office of Violence Prevention. And we thought about having that capacity. Who

better than someone that could help bring other dollars to the table to continuously fund certain programs that we see doing really, really great work in the community as far as violence prevention goes. So our goal was kind of a double edged sword, right? How can we bring more dollars in philanthropy to our violence prevention work, but also have some grants, administration support? Okay. Yeah, I get that. So it's you think it's going to be a, a force multiplier as well as an oversight management. Okay. Yes, ma'am. Just to increase the funding that we have. Okay. That's great. No problem. All right. We have a motion and a second. Is there any opposition? Motion carries 67 authorizing the mayor. President, on behalf of the Division of Human Development and Services, Ryan White program to accept funding from the US Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration for the Ryan White HIV Aids program and an amount of $1,243,770 for a grant period of March 1st, 2026 through February 28th, 2027 by Human Development Services Director. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Seeing none, we'll go to council. We have a motion. Motion by Councilman Don junior, second by Councilman Molk. Is there any opposition? Motion carries. Item 68 authorizing settlement of the litigation claim of Eric Pate for damages resulting from sewer backup and claimant's home for a total amount of $11,430.08 by the Parish attorney. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Seeing none, we'll go to council. Have a motion. Motion by Councilwoman Coleman, second by Councilwoman Amoroso. Is there any opposition? Motion carries. Item 69 authorizing settlement of the Pre-litigation claim of Peggy Harrison for damages resulting from the sewer backup in the claimant's home or a total amount of $14,090.68 by

the parish attorney. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Seeing no go to council motion. Motion by Councilwoman Coleman. Have a second, second by Councilman Don junior. Is there any opposition? Motion carries. Item 70 authorizing settlement of the Pre-litigation claim of George Keller junior for damages resulting from an auto accident caused by wastewater collection. Employee and an amount of $30,000 by the parish attorney. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Seeing none, go to council. Motion by Councilwoman Coleman. Second by Councilman Kenny. Any opposition? I'm going to oppose it. Let's vote on the machines. Machines are open on the motion to approve item 70. Motion carries. Roll call. Councilman. Yes, Councilman. Motion. You can just say abstain. Abstain. Councilman. Adams. No. Councilman Dunn. Junior. Yes. Councilman. Hurst. Yes. Councilwoman. Rocha. No. Councilman. Noll. No. Councilman. Hudson. Yes. Councilman. Amorosa. Yes. Councilwoman. Coleman. Yes. Councilman. Kenny. Yes. Councilman Harris. Yes. Thank you. Item 71, amending title eight, chapter eight fees. Section eight, 801. Schedule of permit fees so as to provide for an increase of certain permitting fees and add subsection 33 fire prevention fees by Development Director and the Fire Chief. Anyone here

wishing to speak on this item? Seeing none, we'll go to council. Motion by Councilwoman, second by councilman. Is there any opposition? Yeah. Councilman. Go to. Thanks. I had sent the chief a a series of questions. A few of the answers that I got were that this proposal hasn't been floated to any of our business organizations. The chamber of the partnership, groups like the Growth Coalition, they haven't laid eyes on this. I also asked some of the fees that are in here. While I appreciate moving to a model where you recoup your costs, for instance, one goes from $25 to $150. You know, I had asked if we could do a three year implementation of those where you go up to year one, $100, year two, $200, year three, $300 give businesses in our community an opportunity to understand and withstand those cost increases. And I was sort of starting that dialog with the chief. And so I was going to move to defer this item so we could spend a little time diving in on what that structured fee could look like. There's also some other communities that do things like certain square footage where there's reduced fees. If you're a small business and you have smaller square footage. So, you know, I appreciate the need for recouping and getting things to recover costs, but I also have an appreciation that an 1,100% increase for a small business matters. And this would be a a quite a steep thing for a number of businesses in our community to swallow. Additionally, I would worry that some businesses would look at the fees related in East Baton Rouge Parish and start to wonder, is it more attractive in a Livingston or in Ascension or West Baton Rouge? So. So for those reasons, I was going to

seek at least a two week deferral just to sit down and work with finance and the chief and, and see if we can come up with a proposal that phased these increases in. Thank you. Colleagues. Councilman Don junior. Thank you. Chief, can you come up, please? Could you make a motion? Sorry, was that a motion? Yes. Is there a motion on the. No. Okay, then. Sure. Motion to defer until let's see, two weeks. 30 days? What do you think, chief? Thumbs up. Whatever you need. 30 days. 30 days. So the first meeting in April. Okay. He don't defer at all. I'm a second it. Let's see what happens. But, chief, I want you to kind of elaborate on the process, how you arrive to this proposal. The historic nature of the current fees, some of the things we talked about, earmarking some of the dollars to your department, just some of those things we discussed, have some of that been ironed out and worked out? Yes, sir. Miss Rachel was saying she has a PowerPoint of all this information. If you want to go that route, or I can just spit it out to you, I got you. Yes, sir. So right now, Mr. Councilman, it's $25 to go and do an inspection of a new business in the city of Baton Rouge that was put in place in 1987. So as we looked at this was, how can we get to where we need to be in 2026 to recoup the funds and help build up the Baton Rouge Fire Department in the city of Baton Rouge? So looking at other places, how did we come up with the number of the dollar value? We looked at the average salary rate of a

fire inspector, not benefits, just the salary of the individual. And came out to be $50 an hour. We looked at the FEMA rate for the use of the vehicle is what we would charge FEMA if it was a disaster to get that funding back. And it was $25 an hour. So it comes out to be a $75 hour depends on what the inspection was. Being a new construction, it takes four hours. That's where the 300 come from. And we had them earmarked. If it was not a full inspection, they didn't need the sprinkler or the alarm, just alarm. We narrowed it down to two hours, so we had it broke down per job of the task by the hourly rate of $75. Okay. And could you and I know you talked about a few things, but there are several items in here that are that are changing or increase. You're proposing to increase. Can you just kind of run through a few of those? I know my council colleague, Mr. Gaudet talked about percentages, but if you just say the dollar amount on some of them, that'd be helpful. Yes, sir. For the use of the inspection for a new construction to do a fire alarm was $150 for the fire sprinkler inspection was $150. The hood sprinkler system $150. There's currently a flat rate of $25. Yeah. Chief, I want you to say what we're currently charging and what we're going. So right now it's all $25 no matter what it is. Gotcha. To do a whole turnkey was $300 unless it was a partial request of what product was needed. Right now we do a re-inspection now nothing. If we go back the second time, no charge with the proposal. The second if we had a problem with your business and we showed it to you when we went back, there wa no fee. But if we had to go back to third and fourth time, there would be an increase in the fee of the time. Since we're taking away from other property owners getting their inspection done. The temporary tents that we

have, the firework permits, open flame events right now is roughly $25. We want to bring that up in charge by the hour. Most of those take about two hour projects. Those are the reinspection fees that we're talking about for a new construction. I'm sorry, a re occupancy. Your building's already built. New companies coming in was $150 rate. It's 25 currently. Not talk to me about the inspections on every business that you do in the city and how many that is. And what's the man hours it takes to on average do an inspection? Yes, sir. And that's coming up in another item on the agenda. But currently right now we do 14,718 premise inspections by ordinance. We're supposed to go in and check by NFPA fire code every commercial occupancy in the city of Baton Rouge to make sure that our, our people, our citizens are safe. We do those. It takes about an hour to get those done. Thank you. Give me a double nickel on this one. Mr. Pro Team chief, I think you've done your research and your evaluation on. What best practices is as far as the fees and the charges and things of that nature. But I kind of lead to Councilman Gaudet being a small business owner. The the strains and challenges financially, financially on business owners these days, any increase can be detrimental. How do you feel about a phase in approach? Is that something that you're open to? I'm open to 100%. Let's have a discussion how we can build on this to make sure that the city, the city is taken care of and our business owners are taken care of, care of at the same time. And in your current drafts, does this take place immediately or is it a 30 day, 60 day, 90 day? It was going to be a pun. Whenever we decided here, we would look to determine what that activation

date would be. April 1st. I'm sorry. April. April 1st. Okay. Again, I'm a second councilman Gudes motion. I don't know if it's going to move. It's going to pass. Councilman Don, I was incorrect earlier. We do have a motion and a second. So this will be asubstitute motion. Councilman Gudes motion to be a substitute in your second. I'll second the substitute. We'll see what happens. I'm not opposed to it. I agree with what you need to do. It's been since 1987, but getting more input from small business owners and other entities, I'm not opposed to that either. But also, Ashley, can we introduce language from the floor or legal to do a phased in approach? Can we do language from the floor to make it effective in 30, 60, 90 days? Is that a substantive change in your opinion? I think an effective date change would not be a substantive change, but I do think a phased approach would be a substantive change. Okay. Thank you Councilman. How many of these inspections and requirements that you have on that list and all are required of y'all by NFPA and federal state standards by the East Baton Rouge Parish, city of Baton Rouge ordinance that's in place today. I'm responsible for 14,718 of them. The inspections that you're required to do as far as what you're required to inspect, those standards come from where NFPA. Okay, that's a national thing. That is correct, sir. And these fees that you're getting and what you're seeing. NFPA probably puts out some standards and where they're at in the baseline nationally, correct? That is correct, sir.

And these fall within where where do we fall with these fees compared to what NFPA puts out and stuff. So NFPA does not put out fees, sir. They put out what is life safety code. They don't put recommendations for a funding source. They put out what is required to save lives. Okay, so these they put that out and then the fire departments and everybody follows those guidelines. And then they set their own fees and stuff. Where do based on those guidelines, where do we fall in standard wise nationally on those costs? So the cost above average average right now today where we sit, we're rock bottom, right, right. We're going back to 1987 again. There's other places we the closest one that we could mirror is looked at Austin, which our rates are still. If this passes, we're below Austin's rates by quite a bit. And. Okay, so they have a. I would guess that Austin would have a much, much higher volume than what we're talking about with the 14,000. And they're higher than us. Yes, sir. Okay. You have a whole department for inspections. That's correct. Sir. I have a 12 person division that all they do is fire prevention and community risk reduction. Okay. And. Roughly when did we did we form that department back in 87 or before then or since the fire department's been around. I would have to say the inception of that was probably in the late 70s, but I don't have that date to be actual with you. Okay. And it's just been funded through the general fund. You have specific employees and stuff. What I'm getting at is I used to do these inspections with Central Fire department, and what they would take us and do is we would be on shift our 24 hour shift, and they would say, we're going to go out and

inspect you on your shift. You're going to inspect this many businesses and so on and so forth. So in all due respect, they were getting a twofer. I was getting paid to be a firefighter. If we got a call, we went on the call, then we went back to our inspections. We didn't have an inspection division and so on and so forth. So there was no cost to cover per se, doing the inspections and everything. Here we are. We have 1987 prices and we are have a whole division that we have to fund and stuff. Why were we not set our standards and get those done and in place? Now that's that's my thing. I'd like to see this past tonight and get started. Councilwoman amorosa. Thank you chief. So can you tell us where we would compare to surrounding parishes as far as these fees go? Yes, ma'am. And this local area here, as I sent out a letter today. New Orleans is around $100, and they're looking at adjusting their fees. Now, that was a study that was done through this city of Baton Rouge, put together a study sometime back. Shreveport doesn't do nothing. Bayou cane community. They're in the process of doing this. And it's almost identical to these numbers. He used the numbers of the hourly rate with the FEMA looked at Austin, Texas. Again, we're below with this proposal. If passed, we're below. But what about our surrounding Livingston Parish Ascension Parish? So not many departments currently have a fire prevention bureau that goes out and strictly does inspections and gets the fees. So this is something that is kind of stuck out right here. The larger municipalities are doing it right now that I could find. I did a search to the International Fire Chiefs

Association across the country. That's where I gathered my data from. It's not many people in the Louisiana area that we could find. Okay. Thank you. Councilman Hurst. Okay, so one of my questions when we initially started discussion was how many inspections do you do a year? And it was about 22,000. And so we looked at another fee model a little different because I brought up $50 going from 25. So I kind of agree with the scale up, scaling up if we have to go that route. But that was $1.1 million back into the general fund at a time when I think we need it the most. So even if it doesn't all go to the fire department, maybe it's reallocated. It takes the burden away of some money that we already supplement to the fire department to provide the same functionality. And I'm okay with being the leader, being and setting the. We don't always have to follow what everybody else is doing. I'm okay with setting the tone in a large municipality. I do agree that the businesses should be contacted, but the same way we brought a bunch of constituents in the room, you ask them if they wanted to increase property taxes. Everybody's going to say no. If you try to ask them, do they want to increase fire inspection, everybody's going to say no. So I don't expect by necessarily doing direct engagement, that the feedback would be to increase the. They'd say, you got to find another way to do it. It's always find another way when it impacts somebody's wallet, whether it be a human or a business. So, so for me, I do want to see it move forward as well. I would like to incorporate the tiered approach that we talked about. I think that's more palatable to us. To

the to the businesses. And so I would who made the motion to approve? So if she made the motion to approve, would you make the motion to approve with potential tiered approach? So the I think phasing in fees over a tiered time period would be a sbstantive change. Okay. I think changing the effective date ould not be if you wanted to change it from, you know, to May 1st, but oh, okay, I got it. She said, okay, I'm okay where they are with the growth. So I'm going to support it if it goes for a vote. But we always talk about and I leave leave with this is this doesn't impact everybody. It impacts people who are making money as this being a cost to do business, which they understand when we start talking about property taxes, sales taxes, other things, it impacts the entire parish for goods and services or where they live or how's their business. This is specifically almost like a user fee. So you have my support. Thanks. Thank you. Councilman. Inspections come up once a year. So what we're talking about here is again, is new construction and re occupancies. Okay, so it's not this is not it's not the previous inspections. That's another topic that's coming here in the next few items on the agenda. This is strictly when a new construction is built, the fees of making sure they meet the standard and the code that's in place. Okay, there's occupancy change. And I know we we advertise the agenda. We have discussion here at the council meeting. But you know, I mean, I'm all for getting it started, but if everybody's worried about a delay and if we can do the, the date delay to get notifications out to people and let them know, I'm fine with that. But if not, you know, that's the only delay I think we can do without having to rewrite the ordinance. If

everybody feels a little more comfortable saying instead of starting April 1st, you said started May 1st or June 1st. And that way, if there's any notifications or any kind of something like that that needs to go to the businesses, we have time as a city parish to say, hey, this is what we're doing. So that's up to the people that introduce it. If they would like to do that. Councilman, I was just I was just going to reiterate that the fire fees that are part of this ordinance are one time fees. They are not annual fees. They are for when somebody comes to build a new commercial building for his costs associated with doing the fire prevention review and inspection. And then also if a new tenant is moving into a new commercial space, every single commercial new tenant requires an occupancy. We go out, my inspectors go out to make sure that the building is safe and can be energized. And we send, you know, authorization over to the electric company. The fire marshal is involved and and so is chief and all of his guys or whatever. And that's when the $150 fee would be assessed. This is has no annual fee. It's one time fees. I would simply just say, look, I'm not opposed to this. I've shared with the chief. I think us moving to a a cost recovery model is a positive thing. You know, I would just reiterate, I think this 30 days provides us an opportunity, number one, to engage stakeholders on this because they're not aware when when Rachel sent out her helpful memos about the fees that are further down the agenda, my first question to her was, did we involve partners and stakeholders like the Growth Coalition on this? Yes. We've been in a two year conversation with them. They're well aware of these increases and they understand what it means. You know, my kids go to a school that recently raised

tuition. They spread it out over two years to ease the immediate impact on parents and families. I absolutely appreciated that. I just think it provides us some benefit. And look, come back with a with a new item. It's the same amount of time to reintroduce it at the next meeting and get it on for 30 days from now. So I just don't see any downsides to us saying, let's, let's take a little bit educate some stakeholders about what we're doing and then come back with the same plan that gets them the same amount of fees recovered. So thank you, thank you. Okay. We have a motion on the floor to approve and then a substitute motion to defer until first meeting in April. We're going to vote on the machines. We're going to vote on the substitute motion first. Machines are open on the substitute motion to defer to April 8th. I'm sorry. Motion fails. I'll vote on the original motion to approve. Machines. Or do we need to roll call the other vote? No. It's fine. Machines are open on the motion to approve. Motion carries. Mayor, do a roll call. Councilman. I voted no, Councilman. Yes. Councilwoman Adams. Yes. Councilman Dunn. Junior. Yes. Councilman. Hurst. Yes. Councilwoman Rocha. Yes. Councilman. Noll. Yes. Councilman. Hudson. Yes. Councilwoman. Amorosa. Yes. Councilman. Coleman. Yes.

Councilman. Kenny. Yes. Councilman Harris. Yes. Thank you. Item 72. Amending the 2026 annual operating budget so as to appropriate 1,350,000 from general fund fund balance and assigned to provide operational support for the District Attorney's Office in the amount of 850,000 and the public defender in the amount of 500,000 by the mayor. President, anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Yes, ma'am. State your name for the record, please. All right. My name is Marion. I, I definitely have a few questions. I see that there was, as we say, over $1 million in unassigned in a general fund. Okay. As we talked about layoffs and we have communities that are in dire need, who determines where those unassigned funds go? Also, when were these unassigned funds discovered and are there more? And is there a plan on how these unassigned funds will be used? So I think that's my biggest thing, because I just find it interesting that there is, you know, over $1 million or plus unassigned. And so yeah, those are my questions and comments. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak on this item? Seeing none we'll go to council. We have a motion by Councilwoman Rocha, second by Councilwoman Coleman.

Councilwoman Amorosa. Angie, you want to come and answer her questions, please? So fund balance unassigned is a combination of over collection of revenues and under spent of expenditures, general government accounting practices. As you take those two numbers and they fall into fund balance, there are several fund balances that we have, and one of them is unassigned. And that's the at the discretion of the administration, puts a budget supplement before the Council for approval in the 2026 preparation. Both of these agencies expressed concern about needing additional funding. At the time, we were putting on the table a reduced budget. So what we did was make a commitment that if we over met our targets for 2025 on collections and expenses, that we would put a proposal before the council to consider giving these two agencies additional funding. And so we finance we're on a calendar year. So we close the end of the year. For the first three months of this year, we have made a recommendation to the mayor that we feel comfortable, that we have met all of our financial targets and that he could put something before you all for consideration of approval. Councilman Don junior, that's what I was going to ask her to come up and answer the questions. Councilman Moak on the on the unassigned. And I've given an example for the public. I'll use my budget. For example, I had approximately 25 to

35,000 left in my budget. That gets put back into the general fund because I did not spend it. It doesn't sit on mine in accrue over and over and over. It goes back into general fund. My budget starts over. That's where a lot of this comes from, is what happens with money that doesn't get spent over the years. Yes. And then we have governmental accounting standards that have recommendations on best practices, that you maintain a certain level of reserves. And so after we take all that into consideration, we will make recommendations to the mayor's office. Right? So again, just kind of reiterating to the public that unused dollars doesn't just sit in multiple members budget items to roll over to the next year, they go back in for use in other departments just like this, right. Being brought before us to help another department. Thank you. Yes, sir. Angie, if you could explain just a little bit further on why this wouldn't have been known at the end. The the delay in knowing what we're receiving all the time, but especially because obviously we're passing the budget at the end of the year, but we still haven't received a lot of information on tax revenue. And then obviously, like Councilman Moak explained, on fund balance, some of those departments don't know until right up at the end of the year what all they're going to utilize. So if you can just expound on that a little bit for the public and for the lady who, yes, sales tax is our largest revenue generator. I think it supports over 65% of the expenses within the general fund. And so that revenue has a 90 day delay, if you will. So the taxes are collected by taxpayers from constituents like in the month of December. In January, those constituents remit the sales tax to the

parish. The parish then takes those collections, allocates them out to the different taxing jurisdictions in February. So we do not know our main revenue source. Those final numbers till mid-February. So once we have all that information, plus there's a delay in on the expense side as well with us all. You know, we get our electricity bill for the month of December and then we pay it in January. So there's delays and expenses as well. It's just been a normal practice that we don't make a recommendation till we feel comfortable that everything has been posted. But in addition to that, when did you start preparing the budget? I'm sorry. The budget is start prepared in May throughout July, and then we start having information come back to us throughout August and September. However, when we prepare the budget, we only have probably four months of sales tax due to the delay that I mentioned. We do use rolling forecasts, which is historical information, but as anyone would know, day to day information is the most reliable. Wonderful. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay. We have a motion by Councilwoman. I don't think I use all my time. Is it? Can I make another comment? No, ma'am. Public hearings over once it turns over to the council. No, ma'am. All right. Thank you, thank you. We have a motion by Councilwoman Rocha, second by Councilwoman Coleman. Is there any opposition? Motion carries. Item 73, establishing a new fee schedule for inspection and testing for public improvements for subdivisions and subdivisions by the development Director. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Seeing none, we'll go to council. We have a motion. Motion by Councilman Gudes, second by Councilwoman Harris.

Is there any opposition? Motion carries 74 repealing resolution 39784 adopted by the Metropolitan Council on September 22nd, 1999, said repeal shall be effective April 1st, 2026, following adoption by the Metropolitan Council by the Development Director. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Seeing none, we'll go to Council Councilwoman Harris. No. Sure. All right. Do we have a motion? Motion by Councilwoman Coleman, second by Councilman motion. Is there any opposition? Motion carries 75 amending ordinance 8367, adopted March 11th, 1987, which provided for fire safety fee and a service fee schedule for the City of Baton Rouge so as to delete and or increase certain fees and address other related matters by Fire Chief Michael Kimball and Mayor Edwards, is there anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Seeing none, we'll go to council. Have a motion. Motion by Councilman, second by Councilman McKinney. Is there any opposition? Motion carries 76 authorizing the president to amend CPE contract with Louisiana Telecom LLC. Extending the contract expiration date to June 30th, 2027 and adding $388,800 in funding for telecommunication services for the East Baton Rouge Parish Library system. Funding is included in the 2026 budget for his contract by the Library Director. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Council members, you should have received one email comment in opposition to item 76. Saying no. Go to council. Have a motion. Motion by Councilwoman Harris, second by Councilman Moak. Is there any opposition? Motion carries 77

authorizing mayor president to execute a contract for construction, testing and laboratory services with Southern Earth Science Inc. for services associated with the move by our capacity project, Old Hammond Highway segment two Millerville to O'Neal in an amount not to exceed 238,000 by Transportation Drainage Director. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Seeing none, go to Council. Have a motion. Motion by Councilwoman Amoroso, second by Councilman Moak. Is there any opposition? Motion carries 78 authorizing the president to execute supplemental agreement, number one, to a contract with WTA engineers Inc. for additional construction inspection services associated with move b r a d a transition and enhancement projects in an amount not to exceed 430,000 by Transportation Drainage Director. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Seeing none, we'll go to council. We have a motion. Motion by Councilman, second by Councilwoman Amoroso. Is there any opposition? Motion carries item 79, rescinding and directing the Clerk of Court to cancel a notice to attend. Recorded on November 21st, 2025 and decision order recorded on December 15th, 2025 in a matter of City of Baton Rouge versus Katy Charlotte Everett region for precision. This property is being sold and renovated. This is by Councilman Hurst. 90 days. This is the rescinding. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item. This is another rescission. Seeing none, we'll go to council item 59. It's the same one. Katy. Charlotte looked like the same item. I thought I recognized the name. As the same person. Oh, but it's different. It's different, isn't it? The other one was

same person, same case. 5169. Barksdale was the other one. This one. And both were Katy, Charlotte Everett, both of them. Same person. Yes. No. Yeah, yeah. Let's go around the same. 126. It's two different properties. It's two different properties, two different municipal addresses with the same person, same same owner. Motion by Councilman Hurst. We have a second. Second by Councilman Don junior. Is there any opposition? Yes, we have opposition by Councilman Moak. We're going to vote on the machines. Machines are open on the motion to approve item 79. Motion carries. I'm going to do a roll call. Councilman Code-a. Yes, Councilman Moak. No. Councilman Adams, no. Councilman Duncan. Yes. Councilman Hurst. Yes. Councilman. Rocha. No. Councilman Noll. Yes. Councilman. Hudson. Yes. Councilman. Yes. Councilman. Coleman. Yes. Councilman. Kenny. Yes. Councilman. Harris. Yes. Thank you. Item 80. Authorizing the parish attorney's office to institute expropriation proceedings and order to take such other actions as may be required in connection with the acquisition of land necessary for the Huber Enhancement Project. La 42 Highland Road at Pico Lane, being project number

23. NHC0028 by the Parish Attorney. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Seeing none, go to Council Councilman Don junior. Thank you. Fred, can you talk about the action that needs to be taken by the parish attorney for this project? Please? With the parish attorney, be an appropriate person to speak on. P Q. Come on, come on. Yes. He's going to get afraid of you. I think the last time we chatted, we had some concerns that were expressed by by Saint George. I think those issues have been resolved at this point. This council also has approved the resolution to say that they support the decision that I think that the City of Baton Rouge has made, and we're going to move forward with the existing project as was. So that's the one that we did the resolution on at the last meeting. Yes, sir. Yes. And just for, you know, fresh, everybody remembers. Can you just walk through that? There were 3 or 4 different options. Okay. There. That is, there are different options. We went back to the existing option, but I also want to make one more comment about this too. The issue is we, we had a, a signalized intersection. That was another plan B was to move a little bit more to the east. I mean, to the yeah, to the west. Excuse me. And then the next plan was to move it directly away from where we are and have a straight shot into Highland. It was very expensive. We had a lot of options to look at. We met with the city of Saint George. They concurred with our recommendation to the points that we would do what we needed to do as we plan and propose, and after our meetings, we've had with the public also to say this is what we were going to do, and we are honoring that, that commitment at this point. The thing for

this issue here is for expropriation. You do have to acquire property from from owners alone. The property in the area for this project, I think because of the alignment we picked, I think it's going to be much easier to deal with. But however, we still need to have the legal authority so we can move the project forward under those circumstances. Thank you. Bill, do you want to add anything? Just the general authorization we have for any project. So whether we buy or negotiate or continue, this is just we bring you an authorization for every single project and move we are. Thank you. Thank you for it. Yes. Councilman Gaudet, that's fine. They both just said it. I was going to make sure it was clear to anyone who might be living in that area or impacted by this. This is not the actual taking of property. This is the authorization to engage those property owners in discussions around it. So thank you for that, guys, for making that clear on the record. And I'm sure Council Member Hudson would love to make the motion on this item, since this is a shared portion of our district. Motion by Councilman Hudson, second by Councilman Gaudet. Is there any opposition? Oh, so so motion carries. Stay in your lane I like that. All right. Appointments out of respect. 81 East Baton Rouge Parish. Oh, I'm sorry you didn't highlight it. Sorry. Go to your separate sheet for administrative matters. Item A is the introduction, rescinding and directing Clerk of Court to cancel a notice to Attend recorded on July 14th, 2025 and decision and order recorded on December 1st, 2025, and the matter of City of Baton Rouge versus Henry L Thurman Jr. Reason for rescission. The property is being renovated by the owner. This is by Councilman Kenny. I need a motion to waive the rules to

allow the item be introduced. Motion by Councilman Kenny. We have a second. Second by Councilman Hurst. Your second. Do we have a second on the motion? Second by Councilwoman Coleman. You have a public hearing on the motion to waive the rules. Anyone wishing to speak on the motion to waive the rules, seeing none, need a motion. A vote on the motion to waive the rules. Any objection on motion? To waive the rules we have objection. Item cannot be introduced. Appointments 81 East Baton Rouge Parish Mosquito Abatement District. Consideration of reappointing or replacing Stephen Wade. Our current ballot of Stephen Wade, who is requesting reappointment. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Seeing none, we'll go to council. We have a motion. Motion by Councilwoman Coleman to reappoint. Second by Councilwoman Amoroso. Mr. Waiter, any opposition motion carries. 82 Capital Area Transit system reappointing or replacing Frederick Thomas, who has applied for reappointment for the term. January 26th to June to December 31st, 2028. Current ballots. Frederick Thomas Anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Seeing none, go to council. We have a motion. Motion by Councilwoman Coleman, second by Councilwoman Harris. Is there any opposition? Opposition? No. Councilman. Go. Mr. Thomas is in the audience. I was just going to get him to say hi. No opposition. You don't have you don't have to speak if you don't want to. Okay? Congratulations, Mr. Thomas. No opposition motion carries 83 Capital Area Transit System replacing John Vukovich, who resigned. Term is January 2nd, 2026 through December 31st, 2028. Current ballot is Ashley Young, Ashley Young. Anyone here wishing to speak on this

item? Seeing no one go to council. Motion by Councilman Kenney, second by Councilman Harris to appoint anyone. Any opposition motion carries. Congratulations, Miss Young, 84. Let's take 8485, 86 together, East Baton Rouge Parish Communications District, reappointing or replacing Wade Evans, reappointing or replacing Michael Kimble, reappointing or replacing David McDavid. Term. January 10th, 2026 through January 10th, 2029. On all three. All are requesting reappointment. Current ballot are the three requesting reappointment? Anyone here wishing to speak on these items? Seeing none, we'll go to council. We have a motion. Motion by Councilwoman Amoroso, second by Councilwoman Adams. Is there any opposition? Motion carries. Change orders. We're going to take 87 through 91 together. Public safety complex chiller replacement contractor Bob Bernard and Associates Mechanical, LLC. Additional time for manufacturing and installation. Time for change. Order one. Scope of work. Additional time to reconcile actual completion of work with final acceptance. 88 labor only for plumbing and sewer services contractor Lewis Mechanical Contractors. Change order amount 192,580 9BRPD. First District Precinct interior renovations contractor Sage Construction LLC. Change order amount $39,656.55. 90 sales tax Street and Road Rehabilitation Program Project 19 dash seven Hollywood Street airline to scenic and evangelist Street airline to Baton Rouge contractor Brother Contracting, LLC. Change order amount 144,535. 91 is Picardy Perkins Connector Mall, Louisiana

Boulevard. Contractor Daniel.brown contractors, LLC. Change order amount $71,956.12. Anyone here wishing to speak on these items? 87 through 91 seeing. Now go to Council. We have a motion. Motion by Councilwoman Adams, second by Councilman Don junior. Is there any opposition? Motion carries. The final acceptance is 92. Public safety complex chiller replacement contractor Bond Bernard Associates Mechanical LLC. Final cost $666,506. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Seeing none, go to council. We have a motion. Motion by Councilman Gudes, second by Councilwoman Adams. Any opposition motion carries acceptance of low bids 93 temporary labor services for building maintenance and construction staffing. Low Bid Capital Staffing LLC $147,340. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Seeing none, we'll go to council. We have a motion. Motion by Councilman Gaudet. We have a second, second by Councilwoman Amoroso. Any opposition motion carries 94 Lobdell Avenue,Goodwood Boulevard and Lobdell Avenue, seven Oaks Avenue. Intersection, pedestrian improvements, project low bid. Brown Industrial Construction, LLC, $651,032.79. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Okay. Seeing none, we'll go to council Councilwoman Adams. You want to call him up and talk to him. So share with the whole class. We'll share with all. So, Fred, we've had some concerns from the neighborhood about the overall cost of this. Yes, ma'am. Help me think through this. Should we go ahead and just accept this low bid tonight? And then if we need what I guess, Councilwoman, my

issue would be we have it within the bid. I mean, it's a little higher than the estimate, the number that was on the overall proposition was an estimate. And but these are the numbers now. But if you still want to get back to some of the homeowner groups and that and let them know what we're doing, what that cost, I'll be more than happy to meet with with them to discuss that, or we can go ahead and approve it. I mean, I me personally, I think we ought to approve it because for what the price and what the work that's going to be done for this area and the, the need and the concerns expressed within the area that we're talking about, I would I would recommend moving forward with it. Okay. I mean, you and I are in the same place. I just had concerns from the neighborhood. That is the only, you know, thing here. So I'm going to go ahead and recommend that we approve it and we'll just deal with it on the backside. You asked me, I I'm I'm going to recommend I just think it's the right thing to do. And I think it's well within the numbers. And when they, I think when they actually see what we're going to show and lay out, I think they'll see the benefit too. I, I, I agree. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. A motion by Councilwoman Adams, second by Councilwoman Amoroso. Is there any opposition motion carries. Item 95 receiving report from the Baton Rouge Fire Department on fire data and fire safety by Councilwoman Denise Amoroso. By the fire chief. We're going to hear the report first. Then we'll have the public hearing. Chief, thank you again. And while he's getting it ready, I want to tell you as a council, thank you for your continued support for your city's bravest. As I tell everybody, these men and women give everything they have to this city and fire protection. As you know, we're the longest continuous class one department in the United States of America. And that's something I'm proud to stand on, what our men and women do

outside of just fighting fire is we want to reduce the risk that our deal with. Before I was appointed a fire chief, I was a fire investigator for the city. In January of 2018, in a 48 hour period, I investigated 15 residential home fires in the city limits of Baton Rouge. In those 15 fires, nine people perished. Not one smoking, not one working. Smoke alarm was in those houses. And I said at that point, if I ever get the opportunity to make a change in this city and put a smoke alarm in every house, I'm going to do it. I wish I had the manpower to put a person in the 100 block of North Boulevard and work and walk each direction and go house to house. But right now, my men and women are making over 40,000 calls in a year, responding to true emergencies and training to make sure we maintain that class one rating and ultimately save lives. So what we've partnered with to try to touch every home is a partnership with the Louisiana State Fire Marshal's Office. Operation Save a Life, if you would. Next slide please. Right now is what we know out of three out of four deaths that occur, they do not have a working smoke alarm. We have to do better to educate our citizens of how to get a smoke alarm. If they don't know how. It takes about average two minutes for somebody to perish. Once they know their smoke, it takes them. If they're not out that house within two minutes, their chance of survival is very low. 60% of this reducing these were possible with a smoking working smoke alarm. So it's proven. If you have a working smoke alarm, you have a survival rate that is high. And that's what we're working towards. Next slide So this statewide initiative with the state fire marshal is a partnership that we have that they have gotten a grant to give us as many working, as many smoke alarms as they have,

as many requests that we get. We can go in and put them in, and it's working. In 2025, we put in 300, little over 300 smoke alarms, nowhere near enough. In the first two months we hit 96. If you watched the news or follow us on social media every day cold snap was putting them in, we was out there. And it's not just during the winter. We have these fires, y'all. These fires happen 365 days a year. We're going to continue pushing, but we need to help. We need to educate. It's a quick, quick thing. Next slide please. Of reaching out through our Community Connect program that we have invested in. You can go to our website, Baton Rouge Fire Department, log in, put in your information. We get it. We set up an appointment. If you live outside the city limits, it's calling your local fire department. This is a statewide initiative. If you don't have access to get to the internet, call 354 1400. Send that. Send your people our way and we'll come to them. Next slide please. What is a working smoke alarm do? It notifies you. It's very simple. They're free. They alert you. We can get you in and get you out. It helps with everything. The Community Connect program is something tht we just purchased. And we're, we're we're asking for everybody to join. It's a simple login. It gives us information about your home. Right now, as we talked about these inspections, we gather those points of contact. We know who to call if something happens. This community connect program, if you have an emergency at your home and you're not there, it alerts you. If you have an elderly person that lives at your home, we can have that information upon the dispatch. If you have burglar bars or if you have something in your house that we need to know about that's bedridden, that information comes directly to us upon the dispatch that saves lives because we know when we pull up, we need to get to that back corner, that home, because there's an elderly person in there. It's as simple as going to that website or the

Baton Rouge Fire Department and logging into Communityconnect. Next slide, please. It's very simple. As we go through the slides, special needs, if you have a special needs relative or somebody that knows that it helps us, the more information that you can give us, the better chance we have of survivable survival rate. Next slide please. And that goes back over how to sign up for the Community Connect. Again, we're out there producing these smoke alarms. We ask and beg. We'll come to any community event. We're there. We want to push this out there to everybody. Again, working smoke alarm saves lives. Thank you. Thank you chief. We're going to have a public hearing and then we'll go to the council. Anybody here wishing to speak on the report? Seeing none, Councilwoman Monroe. Thank you. Chief. The reason I did this was because I needed smoke alarms and because all my smoke alarms were down. And I talked to the the chief and all and they said, we're going to be there. So the great thing was, is they did go through my house. They told me exactly where they needed to be for, for the best, the best location for them to be. Also, in talking to other firemen, which my son is one in West Baton Rouge and he said the biggest problem they have over there as well is that they had fires and there were deaths because people id not have smoke alarms. So that was my whole point of it. And I think people forget that their smoke alarms out there available, which is very important. So I thank you, chief, for your information and what you do. Thank you, Councilwoman Adams. Chief, would you mind sharing those slides with the council? Yes, because I go to HOA meetings all the time. And and I can include that in along with the things I already

talked about, which will save you some steps, but maybe some of the bigger ones I'll let you know about and y'all can go. Yes, ma'am. We would love to do that and I'll have it in your inbox in the morning. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Awesome. And you don't mind if we share those on social media? By all means. And would you say that a house with a fire alarm is a healthy home? Sorry. I would say yes, ma'am. And it doesn't cost 66,000 either. I need chief. What would the fee be to go to one of her meetings with her to get zero? Can Kelly come to the podium? Councilman. Chief, along with the smoke detectors. Are they incorporated in carbon monoxide detectors, too? Are y'all doing those also? No, sir. This is strictly smoke alarms at this time. Thank you. Okay, Councilwoman. Yeah, chief. Great information. And I, too, like Adams, would like to have it. I'd also. And as a matter of fact, we have a flier up that we devised about. Yeah. Getting smoke detectors. And all of my seniors, we made sure of that. I'd like to know about this 100 block of North Boulevard. Expound on that for me, please. I was working as a firefighter in downtown here at station 12. I knew the block numbers of every part of the city. And the 100 block of North Boulevard starts the city. Yes. In the center of the city. Yes, ma'am. Okay. And so because that's in ten. I would just want to make sure is that something that I need to be doing or everybody on that in that block, everybody on, you know, on that 100 block has a.

Did you know this? Yes, ma'am. We're straight. Alright. That's all I need to know. Thank you chief. All right. Item 96. There's a recommendation to delete this item authorizing the mayor to execute a contract with the Lead Affairs LLC for event planning, logistics and support of employee B r job fair, and the amount of $44,152 for Workforce Investment Director. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Seeing none, we'll go to council. Is there a motion to delete? Motion by Councilman Gudes, second by Councilwoman Amoroso. Any opposition motion carries. We're going to take 97 and 98 together. These are emergency items. In accordance with ordinance 16442. These items must be declared an emergency by two thirds vote of the Metropolitan Council. A motion to declare an emergency. I need a motion to declare an emergency. Motion by Councilman. Second by council. Councilman Kenney, is there any opposition? Motion carries. Item 97 in accordance with Rs 38 2212 emergency purchase justification for EMS administration Building by the Purchasing Director and 98 in accordance with R f 38 2212 emergency Purchase justification for EMS administration EMS 11 Zachary Service Location 5650 Carpenter Road, Zachary, Louisiana 70791. By the Purchasing Director. This is just a notification for us. This is an acknowledgment that these were purchased by

emergency. That's what these items are. It's not. It is not approving. It is just the receiving the acknowledgment that these were purchased under emergency. Anyone here wishing to speak on these items? Seeing none, we'll go to council, have a motion. Motion by Councilman, second by Councilman Gaudet. Is there any opposition? Motion carries. All right. We have request to reconsider item 46 by Councilman Hurst. There a second, second by Councilman Don junior. Any any opposition to reconsideration of item 46. This is a condemnation. No objection. Item 40. What's what's your pleasure? 90 days, 90 days on item 46. Motion by Councilman Hurst, second by Councilman Dunn. Junior. Is there any opposition? Motion carries. Any other business? Councilwoman amorosa. Yes, ma'am. All council members have received. Jeff has passed out a packet there for the LSU Arts Museum, and it's called the. The palette Southern palette. And these are tickets. And it's March 21st. That's a Saturday from 6 to 10. And it's going to be great stuff. So you do have a ticket in your packet there and definitely would appreciate you all coming. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Yes. Hang on one second. Councilwoman. Doctor slaughter. This will be quick. We have some very good news.

I'd like to introduce our new IT director, aka Chief Information Officer Rizwan Ahmed. When Eric Romero said that he was retiring, we were all extremely sad and I was very worried about filling his spot because I think we were all so very pleased with what Eric did. We had already posted the position and Eric and I went through resumes and there was one that absolutely came to the top and was outstanding. This is Rizwan resume. He has been CIO at the state of Louisiana in 2006 2008. He has been over office of group benefits. It. He's. He's dealt with amazingly large budgets at the state. He had 320 employees and $850 million in his budget. And in the interview process, I said, really, you want to come here? We were like this big. So but that's okay. It's a it's a good gig. He has already come in and refined processes and has lots of recommendations. He's already gotten us some licenses in a negotiated deal with the state that we don't have to pay for. Every time he comes to my office, he has some good news that starts with we don't have to pay for this or we manage to figure this out. I don't know how long that's going to last, but but it's great for now. So you know, he is an award magnet. I'm not even going to go through all the awards that he has received. But between what Eric has started and what Rizwan is continuing, I think that our IT department and open data and some of the systems that you all have supported over the years, are going to continue to be national models. So please

join me in welcoming Rizwan. Thank you. So I'm assured, Eric. I don't want to really too much time and just tell you very quickly. I worked in Kuwait for 11 years and moved in Louisiana, became a citizen here in 1986. Since then, I'm here. I'm all my three children were born and raised here. They claim that I don't know how to speak English, but I mean, you'll be the judge. For as you know, Crystal already informed you what I have been through in this state and all that. I'm. I think I really, truly a public servant. Right from the day one I joined, you know, I've been really trying to do my level best to raise up Louisiana. Louisiana has got so much potential, so many things, but somehow we actually do not really project ourselves. I've been to a lot of different countries and giving speeches on different setup, and they were really Louisiana South, you know, but they have no idea the potential that we have no idea how good people they are, but we are very conservative in a sense. We don't want to boast about ourselves. We just want to do a good job. So I'm here, honestly, to make sure that we do a as best job as possible for our citizens of this beautiful parish. If you have any questions, I'll be more than happy to. But I don't want to be between you and a beautiful dinner that she's waiting for

you, and he'll probably kick me in the shins. We're about the same height, but he's working on building an internal AI team. So I know this was. You spent a lot of time talking about that last time. We don't want to over promise, but we are going to deliver real soon. So we're we're going to jump past a lot of other communities. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you. So, Councilwoman, you had an announcement. I. Oh, okay. True. Yes. Councilwoman. Amorosa, motion to adjourn. Hold on, hold on. Can I say one thing? We have announcements. That's fine, it's fine. Happy birthday, Rachel Lambert. Happy birthday. Happy birthday sweet. Happy birthday, Councilwoman Harris. Yes. District seven is hosting. It's happening to Spring Community Fest. Saturday, March 21st, 2026 from 10 to 12 at Belfair Montessori Magnet School. Please join us for music, games, giveaways, fun and food. And Peter Cottontail will be there. Thank you. Thank you Councilwoman. Anybody else? Any other announcements? Hey, you know, I was going to say something to the IT guy