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?
Natchitoches, like 36 other parishes, has dumped the old police jury system in favor of the president/council system.Originally Posted by PawDawg
I grew up with Rick Nowlin, parish president. Good luck with your campaign!
Rick is supporting my campaign...and thanks.
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!
Not that I'll ever run for office (I won't) but that's why I registered "No Party" a couple of years ago. After being in the Republican party since I was 18.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!
Good luck to you!
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.
School consolidation actually destroyed our parish. All the communities that invested in their local schools never bought in and moved their kids to private or out of parish schools. A large portion moved out period. Towns like Baskin, Gilbert, Fort and Ward III all had a school to rally around and once that was gone they dissipated. Richland has a fractured school system with two good schools, one ok and one bad. My wife teaches at Mangham so our kids are there and they have a lot of what I had growing up in Baskin. Mangham is top notch. They just did 12 million in renovations including an indoor football facility and locker rooms that even TECH would kill for. Delhi Charter is a good school but out of reach of the School Board, so they have had the Feds called on them many times.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.
Parish wide voting would be ok here in Franklin. You have two factions now. Winnsboro City and the Rest of Franklin. If there were a consolidation, a lot of redundancy would be replaced with newer and more important stuff. The reason it won't happen is as you discussed. City vs Parish. The City has shrunk and the parish has grown, but its still an everyday fight. I would say voting base is 67% Parish to 33% City.
How was the parish school system going to maintain all the community schools. You had C class schools in Ft Necessity, Baskin, Ward III with 1A schools in Crowville, Wisner, and Gilbert. The towns were dissapated long before the schools shut down. That was due to changes in the Ag industry, not school consolidation.
Richland Parish is in a mess with Mangham being the only bright spot. Even Mangham is requiring their HC/AD to teach classes now. The guy who put together all the great things you mentioned, Tommy Tharp, left because of the new demands put on him by the Richland Parish School Board.
Winnsboro has gone down hill over the past 30 years. Again, the Ag industry is the reason as it is with all the small towns in the region we both grew up in.
IMO, one of the exceptions is and has been Oak Grove and West Carrol Parish. Do you know what they don't have that ALL the other regional parishes have an abundance of?
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.
God created the world in 6 days, but it took 6 and a half in North Louisiana.
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