Here is a selection of items on the agendas for this week’s meetings of the City and Parish councils. To see the full agendas, check out the links below:
Parish Council
Resolution
Millage Renewal. Early voting has already started in Lafayette for two parish millages on the Nov. 15 ballot. The millages failed on the ballot in March, but the council quickly voted to put them up for a vote again in November, stressing the importance of the roughly $24 million the millages collect annually for drainage, road maintenance and public health. The council discussion is part of a larger education campaign aimed at helping the millages pass this time around, divorced from a set of unpopular state amendments that dominated the March ballot.
Final Adoption
Voter Precinct consolidation. AB Rubin, in his role as parish council chair, is proposing the closure of four polling places, moving those voters to four bigger stations instead. The four precincts up for closure — 61, 129, 130 and 131— serve fewer than 300 registered voters each, putting them below the legal threshold for keeping them open and allowing the parish to close them by ordinance. If passed, the ordinance would not change polling locations for the Nov. 15 election, only for elections to follow. Voters can check their current precinct here.
Precincts impacted
- 61: Lerosen Preparatory School, precinct 59
- 129: Evangeline Elementary School, precinct 12
- 130: Heymann Rec. Center, precinct 60
- 131: Broussard Elementary School, precinct 98
Introduction
No Significant Items
City Council
Discussion
Parade Route. City Council Chair Kenneth Boudreaux wants the Boulet administration to reconsider changes that would reroute Lafayette’s Mardi Gras parades through Downtown. The councilman has called on his constituents to come out to the meeting to share their thoughts on the changes. The decision to switch the route was made by the Mayor-President’s office last week without council approval, with the mayor’s office arguing the decision is not within the council’s purview. The new route will take the main Mardi Gras parade route down Jefferson Street for the first time since the 1990s.
Final Adoption
Bertrand Drive next steps. The city is taking another step forward on its plans to overhaul Bertrand Drive, including the intersection with Johnston Street. The ordinance gives the city right-of-way for the revitalization project, from the Johnston intersection to Theater Street, allowing the city to take private land either through a cooperative basis or the expropriation process to finish the project. In addition to revamping the intersection, the revitalization includes adding sidewalks to Bertrand and moving highly visible light and phone poles.
Introduction
Rezoning. Lafayette continues to rezone some of the oldest parts of its urban core. This includes a proposal by the city’s community development and planning department to rezone properties in a triangle shape squeezed between Pontiac Point and Louisiana Avenue, as well as between Surrey Street and East Simcoe Street. The rezoning will take land exclusively zoned for commercial purposes and open it up for more mixed-use, which is already happening in some of the locations. Many of Lafayette’s urban commercial properties have become residential in the last few decades without the zoning to match. These administrative rezonings are an effort to catch up to buildings’ actual use and open up other parts of the city limited by commercial-only zoning for residential uses. The result would be a rezoning of almost all properties in the triangle, except for a few on Eighth and Ninth streets that have been exempted.
More annexation. The city council is introducing two separate annexations, both set for residential housing. The annexations take land previously in the parish and allow the developer to annex the land to hook up the homes to Lafayette Utility Systems, a money maker for the public utility. These annexations include a single-family acre lot on Sweet Rita Road and a large lot on Tarpon Street, set for development. On Tarpon Street, the developer, Stillwater Development LLC, is planning 118 homes on a 19-acre property.
Joint Items
Final Adoption
Lake Farm Road extension. Lafayette secured $2.5 million in state funds, previously budgeted in 2023 for other road projects, to extend Lake Farm Road to Verot School Road. Now, LCG is set to receive $2.43 million of those funds to start the project, which would see Lake Farm connect from Settlers Trace Boulevard to Verot School Road. Currently, the two are only connected by two major roadways with heavy traffic. LCG is matching the $2.43 million in grants with $833,333 of its own funds, mostly from bonds and appropriating that money to the public works department for the project…