CITY IN CHAOS By John Michael Lockhart While the Port Allen Fire Department is set to take possession of a new $305,000 heavy rescue vehicle on Tuesday, they won’t be able to use it. That’s the word the city’s mayor and council received from Fire Chief Rick Boudreaux at last Wednesday night’s public safety committee meeting. “With no approved budget, we now have spent every penny we have. All we can do is store it until we can afford to put insurance on it. “Also, it is not covered in the station. The truck is not covered by the building’s insurance,” Boudreaux said. Boudreaux said he made a partial payment in July to cover the other trucks but that the insurance company was not willing to extend anymore insurance. The impasse is a result of the City of Port Allen operating without a budget, according to Boudreaux. “Had the budget have been adopted earlier this year, it would have been okay. We’re just kind of stuck until we move this forward,” Boudreaux added. Port Allen has been operating with neither an approved 2013-14 budget nor city attorney since July 1 and that’s not expected to change at this week’s regular council meeting. In addition, Mayor Demetric “Deedy” Slaughter also confirmed that she has continued to receive a salary of $84,960 per year even though state District Judge Alvin Batiste Jr. ordered her salary reduced to $65,000 on July 2 until the city’s budget had been properly amended or she returns to his courtroom and requests a court order for the higher amount. As The Riverside Reader reported exclusively last month, just one day after Batiste ordered Slaughter to follow the law, the mayor snubbed her nose at the court’s ruling and issued a directive to a city employee to continue paying her salary and car allowance at an amount than is greater than what has been set in the city’s budget. Though the issue of her car allowance did not come up at last Wednesday night’s meeting, The Riverside Reader has received documentation that the mayor continues to receive approximately $1755 more per month than she is entitled to under the court’s ruling. The mayor’s salary has been one of many hot-button issues that has faced the city and kept Port Allen in the headlines this year. As has been the case at nearly every committee meeting and regular council meeting since Slaughter fired the city’s CFO, every Baton Rouge television news station was present to record the unfolding drama at the council meeting. Last month, some of the mayor’s infamous quotes even made it on the nationally syndicated, Houston-based Michael Berry radio show. Freshman councilman Garry Hubble, who chairs the personnel and finance committee, was the first to address the salary issue, which was covered by three items on his committee’s agenda: 1. Discuss introduction of an ordinance in reference to administration procedures regarding setting salaries of elected officials of the city of Port Allen and other related matters. 2. Consider introduction of an ordinance to fix the compensation of the mayor, council members, clerk, and chief of police as required by Louisiana Revised Statute 33:404.1 for the municipal officers for the City of Port Allen. 3. Consider introduction of an ordinance to amend Ordinance Number 6 of 2012 to amend the 2012-2013 budgets of the general fund and the water and gas fund to reflect the mayor’s salary at $42,480 in each fund for a total of $84,960. “In accordance with the July 2 ruling, I think that we need to go ahead and set up a separate ordinance on setting the salaries of all the elected officials in the city so that from this point on there won’t be any question what the salary issue,” Hubble said. Ray Helen Lawrence responded to Hubble’s proposal by asking the mayor, “how do you feel about that?” The mayor noted that Hubble’s proposal was the same as the next item on the agenda. Councilman Hugh “Hootie” Riviere told the council, “the judge couldn’t have been more clear; he couldn’t have been more specific” in ordering the council to pass a stand-alone ordinance to set salaries in his July 2 ruling. Riviere and Hubble were sharply critical of the mayor for failing to follow the law in the hiring of new clerks in the utility department. In the past few months, the city’s utility department has experienced a complete exodus with two of the three clerks already having quit and the third expected to leave this Friday. Riviere read Section 2-134 from the city’s Code of Ordinances which states that prior to hiring any employee, the mayor shall first advertise the position, present the name of the employee to be hired, provide the rate of compensation to be paid at the time they’re hired, show the amount of money that is available in the budget in the department and certify the person meets all of the qualifications for the position that is to be filled. “Section 2-134 was completely ignored in this whole process and as far as the council is concerned, we were left out of it. “I don’t know if there were background checks on the people that were hired; I don’t know if there were drug screens,” Riviere said. “Was any of that done?” he then asked. Slaughter contended that she had acted properly because she had made a phone call to each councilman individually and blamed the mass exodus on the employees themselves. “There was friction on that first floor between those ladies since I stepped into office. At that point, I had to get someone in here,” Slaughter said.
Posted on: Sun, 11 Aug 2013 19:42:43 +0000
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