Utility rates, lawsuits among 2022 city of Ruston newsmakers

Editor’s Note: There may not have been worldwide pandemics or major natural disasters this year, but 2022 still saw its own share of significant news in Lincoln Parish.  The Ruston Daily Leader is recapping major stories of the year. Today we continue with a wrap-up of headlines featuring the City of Ruston. We also take a look back at some of the top stories from the Lincoln Parish Library.

Ruston residents will begin 2023 feeling the effect of action taken by the Board of Aldermen in 2022. Effective New Year’s Day, utility bills will increase by an average $26 per month.

Roughly $20 of that will be reflected in electric charges and approximately $6 in water charges. City officials said the rate hikes, the first in a number of years, were necessary to generate enough money to shore the utility system for the next half century.

The utility rate hikes were among a list of newsmaking items last year that also included the formal opening of Ruston’s first municipally owned gymnasium, a breach-of-contract lawsuit against the company that built Phase I of the city sports complex, the donation of the former Federal Building to the North Central Louisiana Arts Council, breaking ground for the longawaited new animal shelter, an election that really wasn’t, the door continuing to revolve in the economic development office, and a sex discrimination suit filed against the police department.

Here’s a look at each item.

Sports complex lawsuit

Though the city filed suit against Womack & Sons Construction Group, of Harrisonburg, in October 2021, the case didn’t see any court action until 2022.

In January, Womack asked the 3rd Judicial District Court to dismiss a breach of contract suit, saying the city’s agreement to a change order in question constitutes its acceptance of any additional costs and time for the project.

But the city said Womack should be forced into a full-blown trial.

The city is seeking approximately $1.8 million in damages from Womack stemming from a change order made to the sports complex during construction in 2019. At issue are alterations that had to be made to the synthetic turf base system on several baseball fields after water was discovered underneath the liner and ground pumping Womack installed.

Ruston contends it was forced to sign a change order fixing the problem so it could meet its contractual obligation to host the 2019 Dixie World Series.

After a hearing in June, District Judge Tommy Rogers took under advisement Ruston’s request that Womack be compelled to take the next step toward trial.

“It’s no secret that project was a mess,” Rogers told the attorneys for both sides. “Everybody in Ruston knew that.”

In July, Rogers allowed Woodard to begin discovery — a pre-trial procedure in which each party can obtain information from the other — and set another court date for November.

During the November hearing, Woodard argued the city learned through newly obtained depositions that Womack knew about the leakage more than a month before the project architect and city did and sat on the information.

Rogers repeatedly quizzed Woodard about the change order, saying it altered the original contract, and that the change order then became the contract.

“You shouldn’t have signed a $1.7 million addition if you felt like you were overpaying because of their mistake,” he told Woodard.

Because the project was completed in accordance with the change order “there can’t be a breach of contract,” he said.

But instead of ruling, Rogers again took the matter under advisement. As of yearend, no decision had been handed down.

‘Wow factor’ venue opens

Also in January, Ruston opened what Louisiana Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser called a “wow factor” sports venue — the 62,470- square- foot gymnasium that was the final piece of Phase II portion of the sports complex.

The $12 million activities center is the first gym the city has ever owned. The facility can host a variety of events including basketball, volleyball, wrestling, tumbling, dance and cheerleading, plus has a 4,000-square-foot room suitable for corporate meetings or community gatherings.

Ceiling-mounted retractable goals and netting allow the sports arena to be converted into roughly 50,000 square feet of convention or trade show space.

“This is a wow factor,” Nungesser said. “We’ve had great success with volleyball, Olympic trials, basketball, boxing, golf. This facility is going to take us to a new level.”

Work begins on shelter

After six years of waiting, work began in the summer on Ruston’s new animal shelter. The project, initially part of the Moving Ruston Forward initiative city voters OK’d in 2016, had stalled as the city dealt with the aftermath of the 2019 tornado, Hurricane Laura the next year and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The $2.7 million facility will house the city’s animal control department and is designed to focus on care and adoption of the animals.

The 6,000- square- foot building features kennel space that can be doubled with the drop of guillotine doors; a cat condo with glass walls so people can see the cats; and a play yard for prospective pet parents to get to know potential adoptees.

There are also isolation kennels and a place to treat animals that need to be ridded of parasites or that need to receive other aid not requiring a trip to a veterinarian.

With its bright green front panel and stylized cutout of a dog and cat, the shelter will sit on a highly visible 1.5-acre tract on Farmerville Street that’s part of the old municipal airport site.

NCLAC gets Federal Building

In July, the Board of Aldermen agreed to give Ruston’s historic downtown Federal Building to the North Central Louisiana Arts Council.

The 113-year-old brick and limestone structure located at the corner of North Vienna Street and East Mississippi Avenue, will be used as a community arts center.

The city bought the empty building from the federal government in 2016 for $236,000 with the intention of turning into the same kind of arts center NCLAC envisions. But the projected cost of renovations, plus other more urgent projects, bumped that plan and the city decided the best way to save the building was to donate it to NCLAC.

For more than half a century, the Federal Building housed the Ruston post office. In 1961, the post office relocated, and two years later, the building became a federal office building.

With the change of mission, all the old wood and post office trappings were either ripped out or covered with modern features like drop ceilings.

In 1992, the federal government donated the building jointly to the city and the Lincoln Parish Police Jury.

Until sometime around 2015, several joint government agencies and the LSU AgCenter were housed there. But when the agencies relocated, the Federal Building was up for grabs.

That’s when the city bought the building, fearing if it didn’t, the building would go on the auction block, and potentially, its place in Ruston’s history would be gone forever.

The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Revolving door

The door to Ruston’s economic development office kept revolving in 2022. In August, Phillip Smart resigned after only nine months on the job to take a position with a Bienville Parish-based bank.

Smart was appointed to the Ruston job in November 2021 after serving in similar positions in Arcadia and Minden, but he never moved from Minden to Ruston.

In an interview with the Leader shortly after his appointment, Smart said he didn’t plan to move to Ruston at the time. He said his family wanted to stay in Minden in their home in the city’s historic district; the house has since gotten an HGT Hometown Kickstart makeover.

In July, when he qualified to run for a seat on the Webster Parish School Board — while still employed by Ruston — Smart said he’d tried to move to Ruston but had been unable to find a house that suited his family.

In September, and for the second time in 10 months, Jade Sumrall West was hired to replace Smart.

West is former project manager with the Hattiesburg- based Area Development Partnership. Prior to that, she worked for the Baton Rouge Area Chamber of Commerce as an economic research policy analyst.

The Ruston job is her first as a solo economic director.

Ruston has had four economic development directors since 2020.

Election that wasn’t

2022 was a redistricting year for Ruston, but that and the municipal elections that would have been on the fall ballot were uneventful.

The redistricting plan made only slight adjustments in two of the five board districts and shifted only 113 people. Aldermen approved the change early in the year so that it would clear the necessary state and federal hurdles in time for the October primary.

But Mayor Ronny Walker and all five aldermen went in unopposed for the second consecutive election cycle. However, Ruston’s Board of Aldermen will have one new face. Republican John Denny will replace now-retired Ward 4 Alderman Jim Pearce.

Pearce, who’d been on the board 24 years, announced in May he wasn’t seeking reelection.

Police lawsuit

In October, city police Sgt. Kayla Loyd filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging she has been passed over for promotions, harassed, put down in front of other officers and the public, made to use inferior equipment, and wasn’t afforded training opportunities equal male officers because she is female.

Loyd also claims RPD retaliated against after she asked Mayor Ronny Walker for help. Loyd is asking for a jury trial. She’s seeking $100,000 — half for compensatory damages, lost wages and legal fees, and half for what she calls “irreversible damage” to her career, humiliation and “the extreme and unnecessary anxiety and stress” she has endured working with now-Deputy Chief Henry Wood.

At yearend, the case had not been fixed for trial.