To you fellow East Natchitoches folks, I am seeking the seat for District 3 Parish Council, and would appreciate your support, and vote. PM for more information. Thanks.
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To you fellow East Natchitoches folks, I am seeking the seat for District 3 Parish Council, and would appreciate your support, and vote. PM for more information. Thanks.
Good luck to you my man!
I know you are running as a public servant and not a politician. Thanks for that. Hope you are able to make a difference for the people.
I assume "parish council" is what some of us call police jurors?
Did you know...
if you qualify to run for any office and you're registered in a political party, you have to pay a fee to that party. Have to! Keep in mind that political parties are private organizations. No freedom of choice there.
If you think, well then, I'll just register as an "independent." Fine, but you have to pay the fee to the Independent Party. Say what? I thought being "independent" meant NOT being affiliated with any party. The whole point of being independent! Not anymore.
To avoid any and all party connections requires you to register as "No party." That is until some genius gets the law changed such that "No Party" is considered a party! :icon_roll:
I wish Franklin Parish would change to Parish Government from the Police Jury System.
Every small, rural parish in the state would benefit from going to parish-wide government instead of separate parish and town governments, if that's what you're talking about. Savings in personnel and some economies of scale. Shrinking tax bases and population are a real problem.
Leadership in small towns vs. leadership in the rural areas...let me know how that turns out.;)
Voting bases control the towns that are going down the crapper. As you know, they'd be electing the parish wide leadership where now they only get one or two police jury members in most parishes like Richland (Delhi and Rayville).
KSDAWG, I figure Franklin Parish would be much worse off with parish wide voting rather than zoned police jurors. Y'all did the smart thing years ago with school consolidation. You may not have it great, but you have it much better than Richland, Morehouse, and the river parishes.
Just to clarify a bit, converting to Home Rule Charter at the parish level is not the same as consolidating municipal and parish government, ala Baton Rouge, Lafayette, et al. The basic difference in many of these parishes is simply that instead of having to use the generic, one-size fits all, charter, the parish is allowed to create and tailor the form of government to fit its own needs. In many if not most cases, you still elect members from Districts, just as you did with Police Jurors. Another major difference is the power of the head of the Jury. In most of the parishes retaining the Police Jury format, the President of the Jury is more of a figure head, than a true executive. Since most parishes have a Jury President that is part time and mainly just a presiding officer, the really power rests with the full-time administrator, often called the Secretary. Under most Home Rule charters, the elected Parish President is a full-time executive running the parish and answering directly to the voters. Rather than an employee who answers to the Jury. Notice a lot of "mosts" and "somes" and "manys" in my comments. There are as many variations on parish government as there are stars in the sky, but there are some basic similarities. After teaching Louisiana government for nearly thirty years, I never understood why North Louisiana was so reluctant to convert. To my way of thinking, a charter customized to the needs of your parish will always beat the generic. But it has been slow coming up here.
Natchitoches has separate city and parish government. The city has a mayor and city council, the parish a president and parish council.
Currently 3 of 5 parish council are former police jurors who want that system back. To the end they have blocked everything the president has tried to do hoping the system fails and voters will want the PJ back. They even bullied the measure back on the ballot, set for a parish-wide vote March, 2020. In the meantime, all 3 are up for re-election in October and for the first time, all 3 have challengers. Hopefully the voters in those districts will vote them out.
Should have learned a long time ago, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. This page summarizes the PJ/Home Rule situation and gives you a list of who has what.
https://www.lpgov.org/page/ParishGovStructure