Council Committee - Regular Meeting

City Council committee meeting June 4, 2025 5:30 p.m. Each person decided before entering the chamber which agenda item they wish to come in. If they are not seated in the chamber when the agenda item is heard they will notify an officer the council chamber to address that agenda item public safety committee of the flag of the United States of America and to the stands nation indivisible Item two, we establish a quorum. Item three, roll call. Mr. P here, Miss Joseph here. M Gordon here. Present. I am for police department. Chief Mitch here. How y'all doing today? So for the Mon for the Mon, we had 269 calls which uh we had 241 calls, 19 uh we assisted a police fire department 19 times. We had two harassments, 13 suspicious persons, one robbery, one civil matter, one drug related, five traffic stops, one lost and found, one animal call, we assisted and one assisted person calls. with a total um we had a total arrest of 33 with uh seven disturbing police by Fistic Encounter, one of an officer, one flight from an officer, one aggra aggravated battery, I'm sorry, two aggravated battery,

uh was that seven simple batteries, two domestic abuse battery, one aggravated assault with a firearm, one domestic abuse aggravated assault, one simple assault One simple criminal damage to property. One unauthorized entry of inhabited dwelling. Three remaining after being forbidden. Simple burglary. One at uh one simple robbery. Six death thefts. Illegal possession of stolen. One supervision of a minor. Two one home invasion. Uh two traffic related incidents. Uh two drug related and three fugitive wars. We had 19 traffic crash, one private property, and 42 traffic D. Chief shot fire. Did y'all arrest anyone or had a suspect in I just um somebody called anyone want to check the cars around? So, we hadn't got the shots fired area yet. Yeah. Not not just yet. We still working on it. We slowed getting the processes done on it. We be almost to the finish line. That's okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Agenda five, nuation report, Mr. H. Good evening, council may gu for the total month of May, I have a total of seven cases. I have five still open. Those are actually on the cut list. U as of right now, we're working on uh getting those yards cut. And like I say, I was telling a couple of yall like today I actually got a couple of uh complaints about some old yards. So I have about 20 of them that I'm actually working on now. So uh they will be on the dates before Monday. I have your

list um for for this month, but it's going to be on the June's report, but I I have those those that y'all talked about and everything. I will have those um on the next list and try to get those done soon as you. And what about the Ardan Street situation? What's that? The um dumpster. Oh, the dumpster. I talked to the guy and the the guy um he actually told me that it was in between some kind of dispute right now. So he actually called the dogs and people that come and get it. They never came and got um but it it's it's the real guy. They say they sold the property to somebody that rene Okay. So they have to go back and find him to gain prop or access back to the property to get the dumpster move as soon as they get a you know get a chance to. Okay. Thank you. Back in March we had about eight uh commenations. Yeah. Well well those they said I made a move on. I I'm had to get with the Paris to have the go get now we go to the Paris and get the structure the the structural report for us not well yeah I thought he was he's not third coach third coach okay ready to get him to Lance, if you give me a list, we can we can take that. Okay. Yeah, if you want to email me a list of the properties. Okay, I got

Thank you, Mr. Right. Also, we'd like to recognize the chief of a couple of your um officers for the talking to councilman fire street certific uh Monday afternoon through the observance of two of our police officers. They observed smoke coming from a house on Fourth Street. And also, unbeknown to them, the house very just a few feet next door. There was a lady in there and she was unaware of what was going on. You possibly not only prevented the house from burning down, but you probably pre prevented a fatality through your observant of what you did. And I'm just we hear so much negativity now everywhere. This is a positive and y'all brought it about and we are I am extremely proud of what y'all did. And uh I we do have some uh special recognition plaques from the mayor, the city council, and all the citizens of Port Allen. take a picture. Okay. Come on. Okay. The first one says certificate of special recognition. This certifies as a M. Garden is awarded this certificate of special recognition for exceeding expectations in her duties. Given at Fort Allen City Hall, June 4th, 2025. Mayor Terasc. Thank you. Next one. The certificate of special

recognition. This certifies that I haven't got your name yet and I interviewed you. Kaisen Clark. Kaisen. Okay. I got Clark's awarded this certificate of special recognition for exceeding expectations in his duties given at Fort Allen City Hall June 4th, 2025, 2025. Signed by Mayor Ter City. Next, these were two supporting officers. Kevin's not here. Okay. Certificate of special recognition. This certifies that Eric Celeststeine cop is awarded this certificate of special recognition for exceeding expectations in his duties. Given at Port Allen City Hall, June 4th, 2025, signed by Mayor Jerry Patan. And this one goes to Kevin Bzon. says the same thing. He couldn't make it tonight. And uh Chief, thank you for insting community in these officers. It should show up. You saw that he already had public works committee call to order. Except the corn roll call, please. M here. Mr. Payne, here. Miss King here. Item four, adjourn. Call the order stat. Roll call. Mr. Jones present. Miss Gordon here. Mr.

Here. Item number four, discuss the revision of the preliminary PL of Westside Cross. The uh I'm Jim Tatum. I'm with Tatum Engineering. We're we're the engineers representing Westy Development, Westy Crossing Development Project. Uh we came before the uh the planning commission recently and unfortunately a quorum was not available at that particular meeting. So no vote was taken but uh what we presented was an updated preliminary plat. And uh the changes that we've made on it are all very minor, but we wanted to make certain that the planning commission and the council was ma were made aware of the uh of the changes and uh so I can kind of run through those and outline them. I sent a list of uh of those changes and you may have them uh to Lance and uh but briefly I'll go over kind of the high points of it and basically what it boils down to is that initially we had anticipated that the development would start at Court Street and work north and finalize up to what we call the Northline ditch. Now, this is about from North Street to Rosedale Road. This is about halfway. We don't uh we don't have a connection. We don't have any farmage on Rosedale Road, but we are providing a couple of stubout streets so that if at some point in the future a connection can be made, there's a way to tie this subdivision and the city of Port Island together. Uh the most notable change is an extension of West View Crossing Parkway, which would

if at some point in the future Louisiana Avenue was extended, it could tie in at this point. then you would have a connection, you know, really from LA1 all the way through into Court Street. Uh that we know that's that's down the roadways, but we wanted to plan for that. So, we modify the uh layout accordingly. Uh the uh second point here is that rather than the development progressing from south to north, we've gotten this first phase completed. These three filings are done. houses are built, folks are living out there, and there's a a new group of lots that are uh this group in in this area that are closest to Court Street that are uh the construction will begin on them shortly. And uh the next phase of work will be what we're calling the second filing phase one. That'll go to contract shortly and we'll see work start on it. Also, as you may have seen if you've traveled out there recently, the the turn lane project is well underway. Uh the road base has been prepared. Today they yesterday and today they actually uh completed installing the guard rails. So, uh good progress is being made on that. And we were able to coordinate with the DOT on this these road improvements. And so we'll have the same contractor, subcontractor, Barry Construction, will do the asphalt overlay on Court Street all the way from 415 to Highway 1 and at the same time include our project. So it it it'll delay us a little bit, but it's really it'll end up being a better job because you'll have one contractor and you'll have one overlay project instead of breaking it up into two separate contracts, two separate contractors. And

so that's going to portionally timing on that worked out. And then uh we're going to emphasize developing the subdivision on the eastern side of the Exxon pipeline rightway that runs through the site. You can see from the southwest up to the northeast, there's a 30foot pipeline corridor. It's got five Exxon pipelines in it. And uh we had not or I should say I did not properly anticipate the uh uh challenges associated with working through the pipelines. And so rather than fighting Exxon and trying to get on the west side of the pipeline right away, we're going to continue our development on the east side and work to the west side in the future. Uh the uh there was a minor change in the configuration of this pond to help with some street alignments. Uh there was a uh transmission pole that was in the uh energy uh line running through there that we had to reconfigure streets to get around a uh a power pole in the transmission line. Uh let's see. Turn. Oh, the uh one other thing that's going on right now, currently the sewer treatment plant, which is privately owned and constructed, paid for by Westview, is in its second phase of development, its first expansion phase, but it's second phase of development. And uh that will create enough capacity to build out this second and third filings. And that's currently underway. We anticipate that being completed by the end of July. Uh to date, uh there are about 120 houses built out there and things are

moving forward. Uh we've got 63 more locks that came on line with the third phase. Uh we're going to continue. Nothing's changed on the plans and uh anticipated preliminary plan development. Nothing's changed in terms of we're going to stay with curb and gutter streets just like what's out there, sidewalks just like what's out there, and underground utilities. So, it'll continue to be a nice subdivision. Uh on the west side of the Exxon pipeline there, this plan does not represent any changes other than the we reumbered some lots, but as far as the configuration, street alignment, there's no changes. Uh we're in full compliance with the ordinance. We're not asking for any waiverss or variances. This was just a uh uh an effort to come before the planning commission and the council to make you aware of some minor adjustments to the preliminary plan. So I'll be glad to answer any questions or address any concerns you may have and ask for your support on the approval of this preliminary plan. What was the the original plan? What was the original plot was uh great? You can't see much difference. I mean, it's very very close. And in fact, we've uh we came before the uh the planning commission in in July of last year with some minor changes and that was approved by the planning commission. So, as we progress through this project and and let me let me add this. This isn't the last time you're going to see me up here talking about changes to the preliminary plan. I mean, it's it's it's no different than

building a house or building this building. how many, you know, you get well into it and you realize, well, you know, that wall outlet should have been over there, so you got to move it. And that's that's the sort of thing that we're doing is is making uh minor adjustments like that. But this is the current latest approved preliminary plat. And uh the uh again the uh the changes, excuse me, sitting back there looking at changes. You can't even see the changes. And uh and they're that minor. So again, if you had any specific questions or concerns of it, I would like to address them. question. I think at the planning commission meeting you had a question about the uh about the Rosedale Road location. Yeah. Okay. And that's that's why I wanted to make sure that uh everybody understood that Court Street's down here. The northern limits of this project fall about in here, which is a roughly a half a mile off of Court Street, but then the Rosedale Road is another half a mile. And there's a several property owners between us and Rosedale Road. But, you know, who knows, 10 years from now, there may be a a connection maybe there. And we're providing on our plat. We're providing a couple of, in fact, there's one here. If that property to the west develops, there's a street tie-in location here. We're showing one to the north, which would go through the Le Moy property. And then we're showing this stub out to the right where if Louisiana Avenue ever extended, there'd be a way for the streets to connect.

Thank you. So like make that an agenda item or make a mark. No, we can make it a writing down. Okay, I got it. I'm sorry. She knows what to do. I just did it. Okay. be up for next week. Next week 5:30 next Wednesday. Correct. Okay. Wonderful. Thank you. Item number five, update on the community development activities. All right. Madam chair, members of the committee, members of the council, other elected officials and guest evening. uh big smile on my face because we're winding down the fiscal year of the city. So this is our kind of last events and activities we have going on for the fiscal year even though we know we have a lot of stuff going on in the new fiscal year. So we'll we'll we'll also remind ourselves of that and keep a breast. Uh but uh as we get uh to the end of of this fiscal year, our big event that's coming up are our Junth uh activities. And just to remind everyone on June 20th, we will host our inaugural Miss Junth scholarship reception. And that's going to be from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at the Williams and Lee Community Center. Uh this is the uh culmination of a essay contest uh that was chaired by our committee chair um Mrs. Joseph and we're excited to see our winners and hear the essays and I think the young ladies will also be presented doing the

other events and activities of Junth. On June 21st uh we'll kick off at noon with a lot of food fun and entertainment. Uh on that day we'll of course have our um DJ music as well as two live band. Uh one is called a new and up andcoming band called the River Dogs. And the other one we got, you know, you save a little money and spend a little money. We going to kick off with Rocking Dupy uh that evening followed by our fireworks display. That's on that Saturday night. And on Sunday the 22nd, uh we'll also kick off at noon uh with our with our entertainment. We'll have our senior lunchon at that time and the entertainment will be by Dela Band and we'll close out with homeboy Tyrene. Uh that event that day will close down at 6 p.m. Uh I'll entertain any other questions on 8:00. And that's when you are present. before that's something y'all have to tell us. And now that I yan, huh? Y'all have to tell us. We can put them on program anytime you want to bring them up and present them. All right. All the personnel committee to order could establish a forum. Could we have a roll call, please? Mr. H here. Miss Gordon here. Mr. P here. Further. Okay. We don't have any business, but uh Charlene's giving me a note and said we need to take a picture with our officers before we get discussing the budget if that's okay because that may be lengthy. So, uh if y'all will come up, we're going to take a picture. Where's Celest?

Chief Mayor Chief, let's make it quick. Rose [Music] [Music] photographer. Smile. Thank you. Number four, Journey. Finance Committee call to order establish quorum roll call Miss King here Mr. here. Miss Jones here. Discuss 2025 2026 proposed budgets for all city funds.

Adrian B. I have nothing to discuss tonight. Tommy Lerna asked me earlier in the week. I have any questions. Had any questions to give them to me and I said no. But this is gives a chance another chance for anybody in the audience who wants to comment to comment for our finance committee for the three of y'all. If you don't want to discuss since technically y'all can't discuss since there's three of y'all y'all would have a quorum outside of this. So this gives you an open forum chance to discuss if you want. I will say that we received within the last week or so Louisiana Risk Management, the one that carries our liability insurance coverage policies that from July 1st through June 30th, they indicated in that policy uh through our renewal that for our any of our vehicle liabilities, it will be incur a $10,000 deductible. the the number of claims that they've gotten across municipalities that for the vehicle liability for the deductibles is now a $10,000. That was my reaction when I saw that. So, please be careful. You don't know that the police officers have all the units and I think u I don't know about the other department Mr. Lewis Mr. Bradley and Mr. Again, this is not a $10,000 deductible just for the city of Port all all the so number of claims. So, it's not necessarily that Port Allen had an excessive number of claims. It's throughout their entire pool there was an excessive number of claims and that's how insurance

works unfortunately. Okay. So, anybody have any questions, any comments, anything that y'all want us to look into that we can have, we know on the budget for next week. Comments. No questions. Looking to more information for next week so that Mr. Thomas is here to further explain it. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Number five, discuss cost associated with Stewart High in 11:31 Avenue C by Harry Brown. Good evening, council. Yes. Um, so this was brought to us um several sewer issues around the city. Um being that I come to the meetings um before mayor um I remembered um kind of conversations that were had um when I was the payroll clerk uh I had to attend the meetings also. Um so it was brought to my attention by one of our former councilmen to look into the minutes to see about this. So um 1151 Avenue C um which is the um home that Mr. Barry Brown and his wife owns on Avenue C. Um it was connected to his neighbor's home um which is Mr. Dogen. Um so um I've heard they had some issues in the past and were connected found out that they were connected um once they did renovations and and those types of things. So um I did make copies of the minutes that I found. Um I didn't make it. I just made it of the last meeting. Um it was two sets of well

three sets total of minutes that I found. Um we had another issue um that happened in 2020 that um were kind of similar. So we pulled those minutes and you know my motto if we did it before then we should look into it for the next customer that has the the same issue. So, um, 729 Avenue B and 309 Whitehead. I'm not sure. I know Mr. Huggle, you were on the council. Um, I'm not sure if anyone else miss that time, but um, it was brought in July of 2020. Then it was brought back in August of 2020 kind of negotiating amount that we could kind of satisfy for the the customer um between the customer and the city. So um here we are in 2025 and we have something similar to the same uh same thing. Um, I have the other minutes, so if y'all want to look at those. Um, but the cost at that time was approximately $12,700. Uh, and then I they had a cost on here for $13,490. Um, both were shut down apparently. Um, so then we they came back and we came to an agreement in September of 2020 for the homeowner to pay 2,300 towards the cost and the city would absorb the rest. So I have a bill um that Mr. Brown's amount was $7,600. So um not putting a a figure on it. um wanted to bring it to the council for a vote for next week to see um what

we can come up with to help the the homeowner. Um like I said, similar situation. Um they were tied in together. Um had to be split because of something with the the neighbor. It was on the neighbor's um actual property. It's not new. Um you know, it's existing from what was already there. So, um, like I said, I do have these if you would like to look at it. Um, I can make copies of the first two because I I didn't make those. I just voted where it was voted. Make copies of what was voted yes. So, um, I'm just asking you to make this an agenda item for next week for some type of conversation. I have a question. Mhm. um for that job. Is this on the city because we responsible for it or we just we weren't responsible for the other one either? I'm just saying. So we just want to help them out with the bill and not just pick up the whole thing. That's what you're asking for basically. Okay. May help help me understand what's is it um help me understand. The neighbor basically cut him off. Um from my understanding um because it was tied to tied in together. So how many years the house been there? H how long it been connect since the house been there? Decades. How many years? Decades. But the connection was done way after that because the man added on to his home then he connected. Oh, okay. So he stopped the flow of their home with with his. Okay. Could he did that legal? Was that legal? I don't know. That's that's not entirely what

happened. So, so, so he he he the line runs north and south between the two houses. Mhm. But it's on his property line. Okay. Harris line came out perpendicular and fed into that line. Harry was trying to make repairs. He was barred from entering the neighbor's property. So it was a technical cut off but not actual cut off. Okay. Because he was doing renovations. He needed to upgrade his his piping but he wasn't allowed to connect back to the line cuz the line is actually on the other piece of property. That's the facts. So and so he had to bring another line up along his property line all the way to the main in the street. So basically again you asking us what percent that we want to pay him for his expense. Correct. Basically I'm asking yes for something that has been done in the past. Okay. And Mr. Brown, what percentage are you looking for? I can tell you before cuz I've looked into it. it was around 64% of for the other person which it was higher. So I'm not asking for that. Um I'm just bringing it to the council because it was brought to many so it's up to you to decide how much if you want this going to be a issue. This sound like this piping issue is is all around the city. Like basically like we have other sewer issues but most of them are new tieins so they are different from this situation. I looked into that problem

going from this on because the the way that they laid the pipes years ago it wasn't on the citizens is actually been on the homeowners. Yeah. Yes, I can tell you of one other, but I wouldn't bring that here cuz I'll be in the newspaper. This my house. I ain't actually going to put it on the homeowners either. Sound like it's been years ago when they start building homes. Well, a lot of the homes in this city were built by the same builders as part of larger projects. And that was a common thing back then. Okay. No, no, no. The city, the city's responsible for the main lines. Most of our city mains run in the middle of the street. Homeowners are responsible for time. Now, that's the black black letter law. However, homes change hands. Things change over time. No one is It's not Everybody doesn't know. We have the majority of ties in this city. we we don't know where they are because they don't have cleanouts. Okay. So, so that's the problem. So, so what we began probably 5 6 years ago is when we have an issue on a property and we and we locate it, we mark it with GPS so we can find it going forward. But this is just one of those situations where I'm sure he had no idea his line came out the side of his house and went across the property line. I understand that cuz Mr. Doan has that tissue too. That's who we learned about Mr. Doin. I'm talking about the other doin. Mr. Ed Doan. No problem. And that and that was the

next point. It's it's Yeah, I understand. There a lot of lines like that. You just you won't know until a problem occurs until somebody does some renovations and then Pandora's box becomes you know reality. Okay. Stop. I want to make this a Y. Okay. Number six. Ajourn. Okay. So um the correspondence um first um we want to acknowledge Miss Pearl Matthews for 102 years of age and Miss Thelma Pan for 100 years of age. Um, I think the council on aging u recognized them this past Friday. [Music] And um I think they were thinking miss from the school. But um so we want to thank Miss uh Charlene Gordon, our council woman mayor promp for uh presenting those proclamations that were signed um and delivered u to the council on Asians for for those ladies. Um, pray they live to see some more years. Uh, I think they're pretty held in. Yeah, I saw the pictures. Good. So, um, I want to say that Monday, June 9th, uh, 5:30 here. I think I sent to the council members separately, um, that we are having our first town hall meeting. Um, the meeting will be here. So, it is open for the public. It'll be from 5:30 to 6:30. Um, I think we had a flyer

circulating and it had a misspelled word on it. It has been fixed and corrected. Everyone makes mistakes. So, what is that, Mayor? Ma'am, it's Monday, June 9th, 5:30 to 6:30. It's open to the public. That'll be our first uh mayor's town hall meeting. It'll be here on the third floor. Okay. Okay. Um due to the Junth holiday following on Thursday, June 19th, city hall will close at noon that day and remain closed that Friday. So we will um observe that Thursday half a day and and stay closed Friday. And the same for the 4th of July. 4th of July falls on a Friday. So in our ordinance, it says that city hall has the Thursday automatically and we will be closed through that Friday as well. Y'all have any else? Close all day. Closing at noon. Yes. Okay. Ajourn.