FRANKLIN — The St. Mary Council Chair and Vice-Chair seats will continue to be held by one of the parish’s three at-large members, after an ordinance to open the jobs to one of the nine single member district members failed Wednesday night.

The ordinance, if approved, would allow all 11 of the councilmen to be considered for the two leadership seats, instead of just the three at-large members, a 40 year old practice that dates back to the beginning of the parish charter.

Councilman J Ina, who represents Franklin, authored the resolution.

And before voting, Council Vice-Chairman Dr. Kristi Prejeant-Rink questioned Ina as to why he brought forth a charter change on the council’s leadership, when there were so many other suggestions the parish charter review committee suggested, some of which she said would have made the parish more complaint.

Ina fired back, “Well why didn’t you bring forth any ordinances to recommend changes, if you were so concerned about them? The charter report has been completed since March.”

“This was what I felt I needed to do,” he said.

St Mary Parish President David Hanagriff said he was in favor of Ina’s ordinance because in this past election year, 3 at-large councilmen were elected and none of them had prior government experience. The three at-large members are Prejeant-Rink, Dean Adams and Gwen Hidalgo.

“I’m in full support of this – it’s a great change to the charter,” Hanagriff said.

“One reason is because since we fought to put term limits on the council, we didn’t realize we could have lost a lot of seniority.”

“The other reason was that we had three brand new councilmen win at-large seats and none of them have had experience in running a meeting. And we are still working with that.”

The ordinance however, failed, with Adams, Prejeant-Rink, Hidalgo and single member Councilman James Bennett, who represents Morgan City, voting no.

No one spoke after the vote, however, Ina appeared to want to leave.

But Councilman Rev. Craig Mathews threw a punch, before the meeting ended. Mathews represents the Four Corners, and Glencoe areas.

He said how disappointed he was in the decision that was made, “because I live in a parish that has such antiquated and unjust laws, and it is obvious by the decision that was made tonight, unfortunately, things will never change.”

After the meeting, Ina said all he had wanted to do was to bring the measure before voters on a ballot, for them to have a choice in deciding who should be in council leadership.

“Instead, we have four councilmen who made a decision for 30,000 voters.”

“I want to apologize to the people of St. Mary Parish, because we were unsuccessful. However, once again, it’s the usual politics in St. Mary Parish. It’s almost like the elite are scared of the outcome voters will give them.”

“The elitists power in this parish will continue to fight to hold on to control,” Ina said.

Council Chairman Dean Adams said he disagreed with Hanagriff.

“I beg to differ with Mr. Hanagriff, I have volunteered and served on various boards and commissions and I have had leadership roles in running a meeting.”

“Do you know what’s sad? As Council Chairman, I can’t get freely get any documents on parish business, without asking continuously. Most recently, I decided to type up a public records request to get information on a particular issue, and then I got what I needed,” Adams said.

Prejeant-Rink said she voted no to the issue for two reasons – one it would have cost the parish $38,000 to put item on a ballot, “and at this time, we can’t afford it.”

“The other reason is that in our eyes, we’re at-large councilmen, and therefore we represent the whole parish The Council Chair and Vice-Chair seats are leadership roles for the whole parish. Decisions that represent the entirety of the people.”

She said the charter recommendation list was somewhat extensive and was under the impression after discussions, that smaller groups were needed to form, in order to discuss the matters, saying the suggestions were too much to discuss at one public meeting.