‘Junior high drama’

It was standing room only Tuesday night as the largest crowd in at least four years of Lincoln Parish Police Jury meetings gathered to express frustrations with the jury on two hot-button issues.

A tepid meeting agenda concluded with a rousing public comment period as citizens sounded off on a behind-the-scenes attempt to secure Parish Administrator Doug Postel’s resignation, as well as the ongoing process of selecting and paying for a provider for rural emergency medical and rescue services.

Nearly 100 people packed the Jack Beard Room of the Lincoln Parish Library, spilling into the lobby even after additional seats were provided. The crowd gave rounds of applause after many of the public commenters berated jurors for what one described as “junior high drama.”

Though it was not directly addressed during the jury’s agenda, the bulk of the public comments centered on events surrounding a private meeting two weeks ago in which District 8 juror Skip Russell asked Postel to resign, saying he was acting on behalf of other jurors who had decided it was time to “make a change.”

Russell said at the time a group of jurors and concerned citizens had more than 20 “job performance issues” over which they intended to remove Postel from office.

The nature of those issues has not been revealed, Postel has not resigned, and the topic did not make Tuesday’s agenda.

That didn’t stop attendees from addressing it.

“What happened with regard to Mr. Postel did not conform to normal employment practices,” said Bill Jones, a local lawyer and former state legislator. “The jury has mishandled this matter terribly, and it has shaken the public’s confidence in the jury, which I hate.”

Jones is also a jury-appointed member of the Lincoln Parish Library Board of Control.

“The jury by law can only act as a complete body, in the open, in a public meeting,” he said. “It has no business acting in secret through individual board members.”

The situation came to light when four jurors — T.J. Cranford, Logan Hunt, Glenn Scriber and Matt Pullin — wrote a letter to Russell saying they had not been informed of his meeting with Postel ahead of time and had not been told what the allegations were.

“It is wrong to exclude some jurors from jury matters,” Jones said. “It is wrong to bring unsubstantiated allegations against a jury employee. It is doubly wrong to misrepresent the facts to a jury employee or to the public.”

James Skinner, a pastor at The Bridge Community Church in Ruston, admonished jurors for their hesitation to address the Postel situation once it became public knowledge.

“I feel like I’m watching a junior high drama,” Skinner said. “You’ve got teams and schisms, you’ve got bullying, you’ve got people talking behind people’s back, and then when things come to the light, there’s crickets, there’s ‘no comment.’ “Y’all need to work this out. Be the adults. Have courage. Do the job you were elected to do.”

The parish administrator is the jury’s top hired position. He or she hires and oversees all other police jury employees, from the highway department to solid waste.

The jury hired Postel, a former higher education administrator, to the position in the summer of 2020.

In his monthly report given directly before public comment Tuesday night, Postel told jurors he would be arranging individual meetings with each one of them “to sit down and discuss with me personally anything that might be on your mind about the police jury, how we may do anything different or better, or anything I might do to improve my performance.”

He also thanked those who he said were present on his behalf.

“The overwhelming support that has been poured out to me in the past two weeks has been stunning,” Postel said. “I’m a very blessed man.”

Some commenters also turned their ire to the jury’s rejecting an earlier proposal from the Ruston Fire Department for EMS and rescue service for 2023, as well as the lengthy process to come up with another solution.

“When the ambulance vote came up, some of you voted ‘no’ and haven’t talked to either fire chief, anyone from Pafford, or our sheriff, the four people who handle our first responding,” local restaurant owner Chris “Moose” Garriga said.

“So to hear all the stuff about ‘the city held us hostage’ — the city gave us a brother-in-law deal. The hostage-takers are sitting around these tables.”

The ambulance committee expects to receive and review the latest contract proposals at a meeting this morning before potentially making its recommendation to the jury next week.

The “brother-in-law deal” Garriga mentioned refers to an original $120,000 offer from the city made to jury leadership in early 2021 that never made it to the full jury for a vote. Garriga wasn’t the only one who expressed disappointment on that front.

“If I’m understanding this straight, we blew a deal of $120,000,” said local radio personality Rick Godley.

Comments on both topics were punctuated with applause from what appeared to be the vast majority of the record crowd. Multiple commenters suggested some jurors should be voted out in next year’s elections.

Jurors are under no obligation to respond to public comments and did not do so. President Richard Durrett reminded commenters that the period was not a question-and-answer session.

After the meeting, Postel said he hopes the situation surrounding his employment won’t stand in the way of progress for the parish.

We have a lot of important business to do for the citizens of this parish,” he said. “My hope is the jury can find a way to cooperate with one another and work with those of us in the administration offices to move forward with the goals we have and get some things done for the people of Lincoln Parish.”

Some commenters, like frequent attendee Bill Smith, seemed skeptical progress would be made anytime soon.

“This might be a pretty good time to start sending some of the jurors home when they can’t sit down and look out for what’s best for this parish,” Smith said.