BATON ROUGE — Overgrown grass and weeds along Interstates 10 and 12 in East Baton Rouge Parish are the result of a failed Metro Council contract renewal, according to city-parish officials.
The city-parish maintains rights-of-way along the interstates and gets reimbursed about $418,000 a year, under a cooperative agreement with the state Department of Transportation and Development. Mowing and cleaning costs more than $1.1 million, leaving local taxpayers covering a gap of around $700,000 every year.
That financial gap prompted the Metro Council to vote against renewing the contract. The substitute motion to approve the item failed, and the original motion to delete it passed, leaving the grass to keep growing…