Many hoped the “new” Iberia Parish Council that started its term in January, with eight new faces among its 14 members, would have a new approach to parish business and a new more progressive attitude about ideas that might make things work more efficiently for Iberia Parish Government.

The council is getting a lot of grief from locals about Parish Council members getting health insurance, despite that most consider it a part-time position and despite that no one can point to the official act that put the benefit in place.

But good for this new council, and especially good for new Councilman Paul Landry, who wants to discuss reducing the size of the council from 14 representatives down to nine. Landry has put the issue on the agenda and it’s to be discussed at the council’s executive committee meeting tonight. Hopefully it’ll get a positive review from this new council and be put before the voters.

Voters got the chance to vote on a charter amendment in October that would have reduced the number of council members, but it also would have significantly raised council pay and allowed for insurance and retirement benefits.

Landry said that proposal was intended to fail. “That was put together by a couple of people (council members) who wanted it voted down.” His proposal would only address the number of council seats.

Landry is right when he says a smaller council makes sense. Besides making it easier to conduct business with nine members instead of 14, Landry is right when he points out, “We are asking parish employees to do more with less. We are asking the parish president to do more with less.”

Reducing the council to nine seats would mean five salaries saved at $600 per month and maybe another $500 a month for health insurance premiums, so potentially more than $65,000 a year available for other purposes.

One of the reasons we’re told that we need more council members is to provide access for constituents. Landry says if the Iberia Parish Council had nine members each would represent about 8,000 people. By comparison Landry pointed out, “In Lafayette, each councilman represents 26,000 people” so Iberia’s council member to constituent ratio would be less than a third of that.

And Landry noted how with email and text messages, cell phones, iPads and other modern communication systems, “… we can handle more people.”

 Having nine members instead of 14 should make it easier to make decisions, like needing a majority vote of five out of nine would seem easier than getting eight out of 14.

And yes it also means a bloc of five votes can block an issue where now it would take eight, as some would suggest is a bad thing. But five out of nine is 55.5 percent while eight out of 14 is 57.1 percent, so the proportion for action or to stop an action is really close.

Let’s hope this new council will finally put this before voters and let them decide if nine council members instead of 14 doesn’t make more sense — this time without also adding in a big pay raise and benefits to the proposal that muddies up the primary issue to be decided.

will chapman

publisher