Controversial amendments voted down at IPC meeting

Published 6:00 am Thursday, October 26, 2017

Wednesday night’s executive committee meeting of the Iberia Parish Council included an hour-and-a-half long discussion about sending recommendations to the Home Rule Charter committee and five substitute motions amending those proposals.

After all that talk from IPC members and confusion overall, it was unclear what the state of the proposals was by the end of the evening.

On the agenda were three proposed changes to the Iberia Parish Home Rule Charter that were recommended to the council by the Iberia Parish Ad-Hoc Charter Committee, which spent the past several months coming up with suggestions for changes to the home rule charter.

Several recommendations were made for changes to the home rule charter, but it was suggested council size, council pay and parish president pay be pulled out as separate ballot items if it goes to an election.

“We don’t want all those changes to fail by bringing a whole new charter and failing because the people didn’t approve all those items, because we need these changes,” Councilwoman Natalie Broussard said.

The first recommendation for reducing the Iberia Parish Council from 14 members to nine members was the most contentious. The issue is a long-standing one for the council, and most members had well-staked out positions. The second would give the parish council a raise and the third would give the parish president a flat salary of $120,000.

Council members went back and forth on each issue every few minutes, but most of the talk lingered on the council reduction proposal.

Council members Lloyd Brown and Eugene Olivier were opposed to the idea of a council reduction.

“What are we after? Are we after reducing the council or are we after saving some money?” Brown asked.

“I think it would be more efficient,” Councilman Paul Landry said. “Why don’t you put 25 people on one football team? It’s too much.”

Councilman Brian Napier asked to combine the proposals so that should the raise for the Iberia Parish Council go through, it would be tied with the reduction in council size.

“If one fails and the other passes, are we good with that? I still say we go to reduction, that money is following,” Napier said.

“My opinion is that the voters deserve to say how they feel on each of these issues independent of each other. If they vote to reduce and not to increase the pay, that’s the voters’ decision,” Broussard said.

The recommendation was that the pay would be doubled for the IPC, with council members earning $12,000 per year and the chairperson earning $14,400 per year.

“It’s not a raise. We’re just combining the insurance compensation with the salary,” Councilman Eugene Olivier said.

After 30 minutes of conversation, Landry made a motion to table the discussion for two weeks, which failed. Olivier then made a motion to delete the council reduction proposal, with the intention of tabling or passing the rest to full council. That also failed. 

Broussard then made a motion to move the council reduction recommendation forward, so that more discussion can be had on the other items. That motion failed as well.  

Broussard made another motion for a vote on the council compensation proposal. That motion also failed. 

Broussard made a final motion to table the parish president’s pay to the next committee meeting. As expected, the motion also failed.

After five substitute motions were put to the floor and failed, the council took a short break to mull over what its options were, since law stipulates that only five substitute motions can be made for an agenda item. Since there was no vote made to move the proposals forward or even table the proposals, it appeared the three recommendations were killed Wednesday night. 

The council then went to the next agenda item of approving the rest of the home rule charter as its own agenda item. Councilman Michael Landry moved to table the motion for two weeks. That motion passed unanimously, to some applause.