Council Committee - Regular Meeting

this time. We will be having some names on those properties once we uh send it out to get them cut. So, those are on the cut list. Also, um as far as the the abandoned properties, we still working on those. If y'all have any more to bring up or whatever, what not, just get with me and let me know and I will check them out. What about that one on 14th Street? 14 on 14th Street. I have to get with him. That's That's another shed with the with the front the front just that. Yes, we talked about that. Okay. Um well, I I talked to Mr. Gry about um having a B for the Jacksons. I think um they've had a lot of time from my understanding. I'm not sure exactly how much, but I think it was in the previous administration. Um, and it has been brought to my attention um since January um that they need to uh report where they are. Um I think no, that's that's the one that uh the contract accident. Yes. Yeah. So, he's talked I think it's a um sibling something, but you know, like I told Mr. Gib, they need to come here to talk to the new council um to ask for if they need, you know, I'm not sure about the time limit, but uh it needs to be addressed addressed like I talked to them and like I said, the grass is high and I actually talked to them and they were saying it was under some kind of lawsuit or whatever. So, I don't know how long it's going to be with the lawsuit, but that's going to be

something that I bring to y'all attention or have their lawyers contact, you know, y'all let y'all know so we can move forward with that one. 14 Street that just recently. Oh, okay. So, that's going to be between the person or property and other property, too. So, yeah, I know what you mean. Thank you, Mr. All right. Have a good day. Item six, public works committee. Item one, call order. Item two, establish quorum. Item three, roll call, please. Miss Gordon. Mr. P here. Miss King here. Item four. Gordon. Mr. Here. hear from Chandler Smith, the superintendent for West School regarding the new contract site for Corn Elementary. Good evening. Good evening. Uh first, Mayor, Council, thank you all so much for allowing me to come speak with you guys tonight. Um I come this evening really to share some great news. Um, we have a lot of plans um that we just uh got approved, got all of our funding uh in order. Um, you know, all that that takes some time to get done. Uh, but I'd

love to be able to share with you all some plans that we have for the Port Allen area. Uh, so this is part of our strategic plan. Uh, we started this when I came on board May 1st of 2023. Um, really with a lot of goals uh, and strategies. First, um just so everybody's aware, we've made tremendous growth the last two years. Uh we've uh gone from a 79.4 to an 85.2. Uh and we're going to continue that growth. Um you know, here in the in in the coming months. So, uh as you know, the kids are taking LEAP testing now. Uh we're hoping to finish up next week and uh all all signs are pointing to to good growth there. uh we got our literacy results and we've grown 8% from last year of students who are reading one level or above across the district. So great things there. Um these are our goals as a as a school system. Uh first our number one goal is all about students and student academic growth. Uh number two is all about uh school safety uh student safety both emotional uh and safety and and well-being um physically. Uh, goal three is all about our staff, hiring highly effective instructional staff at all of our schools. Um, goal four, sensible spending. Uh, how do we do this within budget? Um, and goal five, uh, it's all about stakeholder communication and getting our message out and getting feedback from our parents and community members. So, uh, one of the the things that we wanted to tackle was, uh, con, uh, as you know, in the last bond issue, uh, a lot of work was done, um, at, uh, different ends of the parish. Uh, some of the sites received, um, some new buildings. Khan received a new multi-purpose and new uh front office, but when we had our academic buildings at Khan evaluated, uh

we had a lot of deficiencies uh and it benefited us uh and the kids uh to put them in new buildings. So, um when we when we started this venture, we looked at just con and then we said, well, it might be need to be bigger than this. Uh how are the students doing port? What are those facilities like? uh what can we do to maybe um consolidate some things? So, we started asking some questions and we said, well, you know, have we thought about combining these two school sites? Uh we had some success as a district with combining Deval and Chamberlain. Has anybody seen the new KU? Uh been in place for about 4 years now. Uh we've grown that school from a C school to a B school. It's a beautiful facility. Um, and we've had a ton of success by combining those two school sites. Uh, we also had a demographer study come in, uh, Mr. Mike Hefner, uh, to look at our population growth, uh, here in the district. These are the numbers he uh, he found. Um, over the next 10 years, um, West Baton Rouge will, uh, have an increase of students, approximately 750 students. our our issue or challenge that we found was that wasn't population growth at all across the parish, but rather on the south end uh and in the Irwinville area. So, uh we saw that Khan and Port Allen Middle are pretty pretty stagnant uh on their student population. Um the the population in the city of Port Allen is uh not seeing the growth that we are in other areas. So, we wanted to take that into consideration. We also did an organizational review that said uh schools that are less than 250 to 300 students. Uh it's really just not efficient for us as a school system to uh duplicate services at multiple buildings. For instance, every school

has to have a cafeteria. Every school has to have a nurse a librarian. And I could go on. Um, and we also wanted to figure out a way how could we offer some opportunities to our high school students um with rethinking and maybe reimagining what that Port Allen Middle campus could become. So, we started an early college program. Uh, so let me tell you a little bit about that. As you know, we opened up our Westpen Ridge Career Academy this year in October. Uh we have 237 students from both high school, Brley and Port Allen uh taking courses in culinary, electrical, welding, cosmetology, uh drafting, medical, uh EMR, EMT, carpentry, robotics, um and then also Ed Rising. Those are our future teachers. We're adding more courses for next year. We have 350 to 400 students signed up from both high schools to take courses at our career academy. It works great. We do an AM schedule and a PM schedule. Kids don't eat breakfast or lunch here. They do that on their home campus. They go there for classes and then they go back to their home campus for the the remainder remaining part of the day. Um we are also starting an early college program in STEM Academy. So again, this is going to function just like the career academy. They won't it's not a school, it's a program site. So they'll go take courses there and then go back to their home site. Um we're excited we're offering two associates programs. These students will leave with 60 college credit hours. That's that's amazing. And guess what the best thing is? If you're a parent, it's 100% free. We pay for all of them. So that with the savings of combining these two schools allows me to then hire dual enrollment certified teachers to teach at what will be the new early college and STEM Academy. turning that Port Allen Middle campus and for those history buffs the

the old Port Allen High School back to serving high school students. So, uh what's exciting here, we have about eight classrooms in that front building. Uh we're going to turn the library into a student center, student union, coffee shop, and it's going to be a place for our 11th and 12th graders to come take dual enrollment courses uh together, both from Brley and Port Allen High School. Currently, we have about 85 students in our early college program. Those are our freshmen. So, they're starting taking dual enrollment their freshman year uh in high school. Those students will metriculate on to their sophomore year. Uh and we'll add another cohort of freshman kids. Uh it's a lot. It's very exciting. Uh we'll be able to offer physics at this location. We'll be able to offer some STEM programming that otherwise might not be able to uh be offered at both schools independently. So for more efficiently, we can offer both uh at this school site. And then again, they'll go back to their home site, play sports, be in the band, do all the things that high school kids do. So what does that uh do for Khan? What will it look like? So Khan will then serve grades 3 through 8. 3 through 8. We'll still have Port Allen Elementary uh head start through second grade and then the students will metriculate to con be there and then metriculate to Port Allen High School. So this is uh if you look in there on um uh from you look at the multi-purpose building that front office uh this new wing is going to be the new elementary. Uh this is where grades 3 through 5 will be. It's going to be in two buildings. They'll be connected by an outdoor classroom space. Um, it's really going to be state-of-the-art. I'm very excited. New special ed classrooms, new classrooms with sinks and storage. Every teacher's dream, they just want storage. Um, but these these classrooms are going to be great. Uh, we have brand new furniture

all coming in uh designed specifically from professionals. Uh, the architect is the same uh group of architects that built Brley High School. Um, we selected WAC Construction as our contractors. Uh, again, the same group that built Brley High. Uh, great contractors. If y'all work with them, we're very excited. So, this is what the new uh front lan will be. Uh, the elementary there, Grace 35. We will also extend parking. When we have a parent dance, parking is uh, you know, it's it's key. We need more parking. Um, if you look at the campus, uh, as a whole, uh, this is kind of an aerial view. Uh, we're going to take the cafeteria and renovate it. It's actually a good building. We're going to renovate that. Um, and that middle building, I showed y'all the elementary. The middle building will be a brand new library and media center space, new band rooms, new art, new STEM. Um, really a lot of exciting opportunities for the kids. those buildings in the back there along Eddie Payne. Uh that's going to be the new middle school, uh grades 6 through 8 and a brand new gym. Um if you've been to a game at Port Allen Middle School, uh the locker rooms are really inaccessible. There is no concession. The gym uh the bleachers are wooden bleachers. They're it's not really a a legit size uh basketball court. Uh, so this really will give the kids a brand new uh, state-of-the-art uh, gym that they'll be able to use for PE, basketball, and other games. We're also going to be putting in a practice football field. Why do I say a practice? Because we are putting in turf at the high schools. And from a prior middle and high school principal, I know those middle school kids are going to want to play football on the turf on Thursday

night. So, uh I'm sure that this is going to be just a practice field and they'll be able to play their games on the turf at Portal High School. Uh this is just another rendering from that same uh viewpoint. Uh we're going to tear down those middle build the middle uh area. Those are the two current academic buildings. Uh that will also all become playgrounds uh and common courtyard space uh for the students. This is just one example of what the elementary will look like. Uh again with outdoor classrooms, enough restrooms, classrooms um for the students. We have about 200 kids on the elementary side and roughly that same amount on the middle school side. Uh so this will function with one principal and two assistant principles um at at this school site. Uh it's very exciting. We're we're very excited. I think it's going to really change the whole uh the whole area. Uh the mayor has been great. The chief has been great. We've been talking about this uh and we tomorrow night have a night uh again with our parents uh to to try to get them out to see and give us some feedback. Um how can we honor the history of con? How can we um you know what are some what some feedback they can give us on what to put in uh for the kids? But we have some really some neat tricks up our sleeves uh with the STEM space and some cool things that the kids I think are going to be very exciting. Um doesn't stop there. Uh we're going to do some upgrades at Lukeville. They'll get a new gym and cafeteria. They don't have a gym. Uh their cafeteria is about 70 years old, so we need to do some work there. Uh parking upgrade through the upper. We will uh do a new uh roof uh for the gym there. some various renovations throughout the site. The administration area will be updated. Uh Cord Allen Elementary, we're starting on that this summer. We have a new gym floor going in there and their their big multi-purpose

space, upgrading the cafeteria and kitchen, uh and a brand new roof, uh on that side as well. And then again, both high schools, uh we are going to be adding turf. And at Port Allen High School, we're going to be building a new uh athletic fieldhouse. Um that's that we're very excited about. I know it's uh it's long time coming. So, uh the kids are excited. We just got a new football coach. Uh and uh I know they're excited about to get started planning on that fieldhouse. So, a lot of projects in store, new LED lights. Um we're really trying to promote a lot more extracurricular involvement with our kids. So, I think this will help. um Port Allen Middle. Uh we are looking to uh I mean when we combine Khan and Port Middle, we're going to start a historical recognition committee. Uh we're going to ask for some volunteers for that. How can we honor Khan uh the history of Khan at the Khan site and uh can we build the architects are really interested in designing uh maybe a square or some type of courtyard piece uh that we could honor the history and legacy of K. Uh so we're really excited about that. Um, that was really it. So, I would love some questions and feedback if anybody has any. Um, Miss Rose and I went to uh the Legacy Nursing Home about a week or two ago, I think. Um, and the lady, she's new. Um, her name is Miss Sarah. Um, they've updated and and did a lot of renovations since I've last been there. And I think I've last been some years ago, my daughter was a part of the Beta Club. Um, but she's asking for the community's help. Um, so I was going to bring it under correspondence. I'm not sure if you'll be here at the end. So, one question she asked was about the

ladies there and the men getting haircuts and their hair done. So, I told her I would get with you um about the career academy. I told her about that and it was awesome. Um maybe that can be a grade or something or we making can see if we can you know integrate that some type of way with a class something for them to go um and wash their hair or cut their we can wash and we can that the girls the the students can style. They can't cut yet just for you have to be 18 and sit for the exam for that but we can and they can even do nails. So, uh, that might be something that they're interested in, but they have to be, um, I think she maybe 12th grade or something because they do have some psych patients there. And, you know, they of course don't want anything to happen. But most of the patients there that are psych patients won't be a part of that. But, you know, just for they'll have to get something signed, I'm sure, you know, consent. Yes, ma'am. But that was something I told her I will bring to your attention. I'll talk to Miss Bro, our supervisor of college and career and uh tell her if that's going forward that that be an option for the students to get some, you know, hands-on experience. That's a good option. Okay. Thank you. Thank you all so much for letting me present and I know meetings can get along uh go a long time. So, thank you very much for giving me some time. Good evening everybody. I won't be long because we have other things that are just a little bit more important, but we do want to announce and keep on your um on your agendas the things that will be going on within the next couple of weeks. Uh we know we have our family day in the park on the 24th of May. Uh we

will and we this year we get something new. We have a Miss Junth um contest which is an essay contest uh that will culminate and we will announce everyone next week the day that the winners will be announced and we hope that all the council members will be able to attend. We do know it's going to be on a Sunday and we'll have that information by next week and of course Junth will be the weekend of the 21st and 22nd of June. Real a lot of exciting stuff. wait till we sign the mayor signs the contracts with the entertainment before we announce that. But hopefully in the next one or two days that will be done and I'll take any other questions that you might have at this time. Okay. Call the personel committee to order to establish a quorum to have a roll call. Please here one Mr. here. Okay. Item number four, discuss Chief Mitchell's recommendation to hire the following. Russian Juno, step 110, grade G and Charles Williams, step 110, grade G also. Yeah. Yeah. I'd like to amend the uh step three because they actually post. So it actually be 112 instead of 110 but it's still a difference about 65 65 but it's 112 due to them being post offices. Uh they wasn't able to be here but they'll be here next week. One of them is still current working the matrix yesterday which I found out Charles had took the

matrix just yesterday and he passed. So, but other guy um he took it today. So, so the correct grade will be on next week's agenda. There's no no issue with it. And they'll give you an introduction. They both season officers. So, they'll tell they'll tell y'all a little. Okay. Okay. Item number [Music] five committee call to order establish roll call. Miss King here. Mr. Mr. H here. Miss Josie here. discuss 2024 20 24 25 on per state law. We're supposed to have an art done of our finances every year. State law says that we have 60 days anytime up until 60 days after the fiscal year ends. Our fiscal year ends June 30th. That doesn't mean we have to wait until our fiscal year ends to sign this engagement letter. One of the findings last year in our order was that it wasn't filed timely enough. It needs to be filed by December 31st so we can get the ball rolling. We can get our audit cuz they don't want to work during Thanksgiving and Christmas. We don't want to work during Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays to get this stuff done. And the states making more and more regulations. It's becoming more and more burdensome to put all things together. So, I'm asking that you put this on the council agenda for y'all to approve next week so that the mayor can

sign the engagement letter so that come July 1st, we've done all our preliminaries with the auditors. They can start doing some things even though the hard fiscal closeout doesn't occur till September 30th. They can test procedures. They don't have to wait for our financial statements to be done. They can start coming in checking the ethics certificates and the sexual harassment certificates, all these other things. They don't have to wait. But if we have this engagement done, they can start July 1st or work us in that many other clients since they've merged with another company. So they've got more clients and more responsibilities, too. So, and Tanny of Eric Printo does plan on being here next week if y'all have any questions that y'all can ask him. I'm asking to have that as a agenda item for next week's council meeting for the council to approve. Okay. Any questions on that item? Okay. Item number five, discuss 2025 fallen mileage adoption. Traditionally, the city has waited into August, September to do their mill adoption. State law says it has to be into the assessor's office by June 1st. Our assessor has been very kindly waving that requirement. I would like to have a very cordial working relationship with our assessor. Uh we don't have to roll forward. It's a simple resolution since we're going to keep the millage adoptions the same as what they were last year. So we don't have to go through the entire advertise advertising multiple times just one time per city ordinance just to put it out there. So it would be the same rates as it was last year. So there would be no tax increase for anybody simply just adopting the same tax bill from last year. The only ones that would see the

increase would be those I think in the subdivision who didn't have a house this year on that property net will now have a house on that year. So those so I'm asking to put that on the agenda so that we can get it to the assessor's office as state law dictates by June 1st. did that. Item number six, discuss police department and vomage election. This is a voter approved uh millillage that goes on for 10 years. Um it expires at the end of this year. So it will not affect the 2025 taxes. It would affect the 2026 taxes. is a very lengthy process. Um to make the October election, it had to go before the bonding commission. The bonding commission needed the application last month. So, we need a resolution first from the council to call for the election. You have to advertise before y'all can do that. So, we will not be able to have this election in October as I had planned. So, our next available election is in November. So, I just wanted to update y'all on that. and our police department and I've already talked to M Chief Mitchell about this election. Uh varying uh municipalities around here the adarium taxes that are up for renewal are coming are new ones are not passing. So for funding for our police department, it would be very important when we get the word out that their five mills only brings in about 125 to $150,000. So it's not that much burden, I think, to property owners. Item seven, discuss 2024 25 budget

amendments for all funds. uh as one of the findings in the audit um one of our funds was above the 5% threshold for expenditures the section 8 fund and in preparing the budget for this upcoming fiscal year. One of our other uh major funds I'm not quite sure Mr. Tommy H uh Tommy was with Faul and Winkler will be here next week to explain all this since he prepared the budget um to be in compliance with state law to introduce the ordinance next month to vote in June on the amendment so that our funds are all in compliance with state law that they're all within the 5% no more than 5% above for expenditures and no more than 5% below for revenues. Budgets are just a plan of what we think are going to happen throughout the 12 months. Things change. That's why the uh state law gives us the budget amendment process to amend our budget and we would like to do that to be within compliance so that we don't have that finding on our audit for art. So we would like to have that as an agenda item next week. Item eight, discuss 2025 2026 proposed budget. Um the mayor and myself met with Mr. Tommy Faulen Winkler two weeks a week ago. He's working on the final numbers to give to y'all next week. Um everybody we met with all the various departments. They've had a lot of wishes of our wants or needs. He's going through that trying to evaluate which one's the best, which one's not, because all can't get what we want, trying to stay within our budget. But per state law, we need to have a budget adopted by the end of this fiscal year to start and it needs to go through

as a ordinance, which requires an introduction and then a separate meeting for the vote. So, we would like to have this on the council agenda for next week to actually introduce the ordinance in the the actual proposed budget, not that it would be finalized, it's the proposed. There could possibly be some changes between May and June, but we would like to have that on the agenda for next week as well. Item number nine, discuss update state and local physical recovery funds. This is the 1.7 million that we received through ARPA. That grant is still not closed down. is still on go ongoing as far as reporting. I found out near the end of April that we needed to report uh on their port on April 30th. When I went in to do the reporting, brand new at all this, I found out that we had not completed all the reporting requirements through that portal in previous years. So, we were out of compliance. But per the grant that if if we completed everything by April 30th for this year, we would be back in compliance. I reached out to Falcon and Winkler since I didn't know 500 plus pages of federal guidelines to complete all this. They helped me complete this. So by the April 30th deadline, so just wanted to keep y'all up date because had we not completed by April 30th, we would have been in jeopardy of having to return that $1.7 million to the federal government. Item number 10, 2025, Louisiana Community Development Walk Grant. Mr. Ericall had come before us for y'all gave him approval for him to reach out to this grant. So, he applied for us on city's behalf and we were awarded that grant. And the grant

amount is 1,117,96 for sewer system upgrades. It is a Louisiana community development block grant which comes from the federal government. Um, as you know, the federal government seems to be cutting grants left and right. So at this meeting that we went to Monday, they asked us to contact our United States senators and United States congressman to say that we do need this funding. While the president may have excluded from his budget, he did that when he was president his first term. Congress has always put this money back in because congress ultimately just like you as the legislative branch ultimately controls the purse strengths. So to contact your representatives and senators that this grant money is very important. Since it is a federal grant, there's a lot of stipulations involved with it. Unlike the ARPA grant on that state where they gave us the money first and then we can submit it. This money they're not going to give to us until we incur the expense. It's so once we incur the expense, we'll get the invoice. We'll submit the invoice saying we need to pay this vendor. They'll give us the money back and we have within three days once we get the money to pay whatever. So we have to have an expedited process. There's a resolution that and Mr. Eric's company uh professional engineering consulting will be helping us manage this grant. He's working on a resolution that we have for y'all next week where they'll give the mayor the authority to do everything that needs to be done including opening up a separate bank account for all these things to go through uh paying the vendors without coming before y'all since we need to pay them within 3 weeks and we just give you an update when that occurs. So we would

like to have this on the agenda for next week that resolution so that we can participate in this grant. Any questions? Item 11. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening council. Um so the only thing that I have um like I told Mr. Um, Challenge Smith, uh, we did go to the nursing home. So, they are asking that, uh, we participate. Um, we pop in, um, the residents, you know, they were happy to see people. Um, some don't have family. They were explaining to us. Um, and it's hard. you know, nursing homes aren't the best uh you know, to to go to, but um they are asking for more participation because they've gotten such a bad rep in the past. Um so, you know, we vowed that we would try to go at least once a month over there. Um I think next week is um patient appreciation or uh week. Um I think next week she sent me. So if you can pop in um they are asking for different things. I think socks, blankets, um you know, different things. So as the year goes on, we can get together to try to do some kind of drive or something to bring to them um to get to them maybe by the holidays or something. But if you just have time, some of you can pop in and and uh they would really appreciate that. Um, the other thing, um, I reached out to, uh, the council members separately, um, and then I talked to our attorney's office. Um, June 9th will be

the first town hall meeting that I will hold here at 5:30. Um, that's the Monday before council meeting. Um, I campaigned on that. Um, I hear the the citizens. I hear the public. So, we're going to try the first one. uh we're going to have the same requirements and restrictions that we have for council meeting. So, um again, it'll be June 9th. Um we'll see if it's needed monthly or we'll do quarterly, but we'll figure that out, but the first one will be June 9th here at 5:30 um in the the council room. Um I think that's uh that well Adrian and I attended the the workshop Monday um for the grant. It was very informative. It is a lot. Um and we are asking for the resolution not to hide anything. We will still bring everything to let you know what we're spending on you know what we've paid but because of the 3 days we can't you know we can't have a meeting um outside the meeting. So, um that's just the the best way we thought um to get that done. So, uh no further. That's not the security. Oh, is that what day is it? 27. Okay. So, the cyber security that's um something that they added in our audit. Um, so we will have our first cyber security mandatory May 22nd and it'll be at William uh Community Center. What time? 11:00. Okay. So, it'll be at 11:00 and it's kind of similar to our we're going to do a similar to our Christmas mandatory sexual harassment, but this is something else that they've added uh with the from the auditors that you have to have cyber

security training as well. So, we're going to just do it global. We've never had to do it. No. So, this will be our first year um doing that. William and Lee Community Center on May 22nd at 11:00. So, if you can't make it, we're going to treat it just like ethics. You'll have to go on and get your hours yourself and submit your um paperwork to Miss uh Lynette. The midweek. Okay. You have your certificate on my phone. Okay. Just send it to us. Okay. That's it. That's it. Okay. All right. That's it. One other thing. Our water upgrades came out. The water system on Monday. Mhm. We're at 99 out of 100. Okay. Show improvements over the last two years. I saw 97 years ago to 93 last year to 199 this year for very period cover. Okay. And I I um I I talked to Daryl um in the roads and drainage and u with Mr. Hubble's um suggestion they've been utilizing the back truck more and this time we had no issues. We only had two I think last time. Um I went was coming down the street. Greg was coming up. Mr. Hubble was coming down one way out. So we we rode around and we, you know, made sure everything the first time. So the rain that we had, I did the same thing this morning and it was fine. So I do appreciate them um cleaning the drains, you know, being proactive. Uh cuz he had them on Jefferson cuz I think they had some issue the last time as well. So he had them spread out doing different. So, I I do appreciate that as well as BJ's crew. Make a shout out to Dale Lewis. Um I was

at a week last week and uh over here on Avenue 8. We had a city fence that's been on that servitude for a long time. It's about a 10ft section. Anyway, she asked me about it and uh I called Daryl when I got back to work and he went out there with the eight guys that afternoon and took care of him. The lady called me. I said, "Well, thank Daryl Lewis cuz he's the one that did it." So, if you don't mind, pass it on to a shout out to I will and the crew. Definitely will. All right. Thank you. Thank you.