Previewing next police jury term

Whether it includes two new jurors, or eight, or somewhere in between, come January a new term will begin for the Lincoln Parish Police Jury.

When it does, several ongoing topics will carry over from the current term and will, in all likelihood, have to be addressed by the newly formed jury some time in the next four years.

Returning jurors who avoided drawing an opponent in last week’s election qualifying and candidates hoping to win a contested seat have both pointed to some of these topics as priorities for the next term and cornerstones of their campaigns.

Other issues haven’t received as much recent buzz but are nonetheless waiting in the wings to be resolved.

Today the first in this series will summarize three of those topics.

Further reading: Part 2 and Part 3

Administrator selection

After serving as the jury’s top staffer for nearly 11 years from 2009 to 2020, Courtney Hall came out of retirement in January to fill the gap as interim following the contentious dismissal of previous administrator Doug Postel.

The jury hasn’t indicated exactly when it will seek its next permanent administrator, but that would almost certainly come during the next term.

The administrator is in charge of the parish’s roughly 150 employees across all departments, from highways to solid waste. He is the chief executor of the jury’s decisions — what they vote to do, the administrator sees it done.

The jury hasn’t had to fill the position very often, as Hall, Richard Durrett and Reagan Sutton each served for more than a decade.

The next administrator appointment would be the first to fall under a new hiring policy the jury passed in 2020 — just a matter of weeks after confusion and disagreement over the selection process dominated the meetings that led to Postel’s hiring.

The policy requires the jury to, after casting a vote to hire an administrator candidate, offer that candidate the position, including a salary, in the same meeting.

That came in the wake of Postel being hired and assigned a salary over the course of three separate meetings, during which time the jury performed an about-face from an initial vote for another candidate.

“Everything will be taken care of in one night” then-Personnel Director LaTonya Lacey said when that policy was passed.

The current jury term has lacked continuity in the parish’s administrative office. In addition to the transitions from Hall to Postel and back to Hall, the jury has had four different treasurers in this four-year term.

Ambulance funds and future

After a lengthy search for emergency medical and rescue service options for parish residents outside of Ruston that spanned most of 2022, the police jury inked a new contract to continue receiving those services from the Ruston Fire Department — at a much higher price than it had previously paid.

This year the parish paid Ruston $645,604 and will be expected to cover that plus an inflationary increase each year. That compares to the $30,000 the parish had been charged for nearly 30 years before re-negotiations began in 2021.

For 2023 that new cost was absorbed into the jury’s general fund, largely by canceling some planned shifts between funds.

For the future, the jury hopes to cover the cost with earnings from investing the proceeds it gained when selling Lincoln General Hospital.

A bill carried on the jury’s behalf won easy passage through the Legislature this year and will greatly expand the options the jury has to invest that money.

It’s unclear whether those proceeds will be enough to offset the increased ambulance service cost.

Aside from the funding source, the new jury will also likely be tasked with re-upping or re-negotiating a new contract for those services before the end of the term.

The current contract with the city of Ruston runs through 2027 — the last year of the next jury term.

The jury will have to decide whether to stick with Ruston — if that continues to be an option — turn rescue services over to the parish fire department and woo a private ambulance company, or find some other solution.

Some who supported sticking with Ruston throughout the debates of 2022 said they would like to see the parish fire department eventually get the rescue contract, but only after it is better equipped.

Time will tell how the situation changes when the issue next looms.

Health Hub

One topic that has lasted through practically the entire jury term is finding a new location for the Lincoln Parish Health Unit.

Jurors first discussed relocating the health unit out of its old and out-of-code building in 2020. After considering and discarding ideas to use existing parishowned facilities, the jury received donated land from Northern Louisiana Medical Center and decided to construct an all-new facility.

The “Health Hub” complex would house the health unit, the nonprofit Health Hut, the Humanitarian Enterprises of Lincoln Parish (HELP) and the sewer district office.

Located on Mills Avenue just northwest of the hospital, it turned out some of the Health Hub property footprint actually includes several slivers of private land.

Finding and negotiating with the landowners was a lengthy process that concluded this summer.

Eyes are on the Thanksgiving season as the potential start of construction, meaning the project will certainly extend into the next jury term.

The jury originally planned to spend some $8 million in American Rescue Plan Act COVID-19 mitigation funds it received from the federal government to construct the facility.

But the latest price estimate was $8.7 million, and the final, total cost isn’t yet known.

Any cost overrun may be up to the next jury to make up, as well as overseeing the facility’s actual opening.