Lafayette Mayor-President Josh Guillory is looking to move his first ordinance forward.
Tuesday night during a joint city and parish council meeting, both councils unanimously approved Guillory's ordinance to split public works into separate departments. One will be for drainage and the other for traffic, roads and bridges.
Guillory said his plans for splitting public works will not cost the city or the parish any extra money. The funding will come from eliminating four vacant positions.
"This is all about efficiency and transparency. These two new departments, drainage and traffic roads and bridges, we will have someone waking up everyday and that will be their priority," Guillory said.
Guillory's administration lowered the public works director's salary and they're also eliminating four vacant positions to pay for the two new directors.
"When you run a business, you have to find ways to do more with less and that's what we're doing with this reorganization," said Guillory.
During the meeting, Chad Nepveaux, the interim director of public works answered questions from the council. He assured services will not be effected and the departments will continue to work together.
"Those lines of communication will remain in tact," Nepveaux said.
The councils are satisfied with the information they received tonight.
City Council Member Nanette Cook said, "We're so backlogged. I did not want to cut any services that needed to be provided to take care of those things."
Andy Naquin who is also on the city council said, "Rather than take a shotgun and just shooting and hoping we hit something, we can now focus on drainage problems and we can focus on bridge problems."
The council will consider final adoption of the ordinance in two weeks.
