ACADIA PARISH — Earlier this month, the Acadia Parish Police Jury submitted a Legislative Cash Request, asking the state for help addressing critical infrastructure, maintenance, and security needs throughout the parish — all state-mandated responsibilities that fall on the parish.
Specifically, they're requesting assistance with expenses concerning the parish correctional facility, road maintenance, pipe replacements throughout the parish, and courthouse security.
"What I did and what the police jurors did," said Acadia Parish Police Jury President Beau Petitjean, "we came up with a list of things with the cost, and a breakdown on how it's going to affect the parish in a positive way to alleviate funding issues."
Petitjean describes these cash requests as a Hail Mary. If acquired, they may bolster whatever capital outlay funds may be awarded.
He says the police jury is taking inventory of parish expenses and cutting back where it makes sense, doing whatever they can to avoid raising taxes.
He went on to say that it's been nearly half a century since taxes were raised in the area.
"40 years later, I'm in office and we're functioning, this whole parish, on a 40 or 50-year tax," Petitjean continues, "and the cost of a mile of a road went from 50 years ago, let's just say $150,000 a mile. It is a million dollars a mile to do a road."
He says the old taxes just aren't covering costs.
"It's our job as elected officials to try to figure out how to build new revenue. Just in Acadia Parish, we're doing it with solar, with methane, with renewable energy, but also make cuts that people want to see."
The parish says they are in no way planning to raise a tax at this time, saying that it would be their last resort.
Instead, they are finding new ways to bring in money— one way being to make the parish airport more profitable.
"So we're trying to build a fence to protect the runway, so that we could start landing planes, maybe selling some fuel, and he [Secretary-Treasurer Corey Vincent] is out there clearing a piece of where the fence is going to be. He's clearing a piece that we would have had to pay extra for the people that are coming to do the fence to clear that area."
