The St. Martinville City Council is weighing its options for the water and wastewater facility, following the resignation of the superintendent.
On Monday, Superintendent Kirk Lasseigne notified the city of his resignation with his last day being Friday.
The city council held an emergency on Wednesday afternoon.
“We are in an emergency situation. It’s after 4 o’clock, the day before Thanksgiving,” said Councilman Mike Fuselier.
The water and wastewater facility needs to be managed by a certified inspector seven days a week, or else the city could be fined.
“You have to take samples 7 days a week, in both departments. So it’s not a lot of time on the weekends but you do have to take samples and make sure that there’s no alarms going off or no issues that happened at night like if the electricity goes out, somebody has to be on call,” said Councilman Craig Prosper
The problem is they only had one person working every day that was certified to take those samples, that person was the superintendent.
3 groups made their appeals to the council to take on the operation until a permanent solution is found.
Mayor Melinda Mitchell had been talking with an Alexandria-based company called Cenla for a few months to try and alleviate some of the pressure from the superintendent.
The council ultimately voted to bring them in temporarily.
“I think we need to give them an equal fair share all the way around,” said Mayor Mitchell.
“Down the road, yeah, but we don’t have the time to go back out for bids on this. We need to have someone ready on site by Saturday,” replied Councilman Prosper.
The council decided that Cenla will start on Saturday until they can reconvene to put together the scope of duties needed to operate the facility. They will then send the job out for bid where the three companies can properly submit their proposals. However, they’re unsure if that job will be temporary until a new superintendent is found or if it will be used permanently just for the weekends.
