Will a desk on a sidewalk get votes to fix New Iberia roads?
Published 3:15 pm Thursday, December 1, 2022
- Mayor Freddie DeCourt speaks to one of the last residents questioning him about a road tax proposition Thursday morning. DeCourt put on a three day Q&A session in front of City Hall to better understand why a road maintenance tax rededication failed during the Nov. 8 election.
After asking voters to come out to the front of New Iberia City Hall this week to discuss the failure of his road tax initiative, Mayor Freddie DeCourt said he got exactly what he wanted.
“I love this town, if you ask for something you get it,” DeCourt said Thursday morning.
The mayor estimated about 60 people turned out between Tuesday and Thursday to speak to him at his desk, which was pulled out to Main Street in order to invite the public to discuss why a proposition to rededicate a sewer debt millage to road maintenance was narrowly voted down.
DeCourt said that of the people he talked to who voted against the proposition, many were confused by the wording on the ballot and thought the initiative would be giving a new tax to New Iberia residents.
“Most people were cooperative,” DeCourt said. “Some people who came said they wouldn’t vote for anything and they came just to tell me that.”
The mayor estimated about 30 people turning out to City Hall Tuesday to speak to him, 20 on Wednesday and a healthy amount of people ending the experiment Thursday morning.
“I’d say it went really good,” he said. “I think I turned a lot of people, a lot of them thought it was meant to be a new tax.”
“One guy told me that I make everything too complicated, and another guy told me I was too nice, so it was very interesting,” he added.
If the proposition had passed, the city would have been able to use $750,000 for 20 years total. DeCourt said after the Nov. 8 election that the wording of the proposition could have played into the negative votes but bringing his desk straight to downtown New Iberia was a way to better understand and hear solutions about the city’s road problems.
Road maintenance has been one of the most often cited issues in New Iberia for years, and after DeCourt seemingly found a way to begin to correct the issue without additional taxes was introduced at the ballot, the mayor said he was surprised to find that the initiative failed.
The mayor said that he wouldn’t be giving up on finding a way to provide stable funding for road repairs as well.
“This was really fun for me, I might do this again every once in a while,” he said.
