At the corner of Michigan Ave. and N. 11th St. in Port Allen sits the Stone Square Lodge #8.

It is a private property at 812 N. 11th St., meaning the city is not responsible for the property’s upkeep, but a closer look reveals new concrete poured. It’s wraps around the building on the front and the side.

The purpose of the new pour? ‘Sidewalk improvement’ according Port Allen Mayor Richard Lee.

KIRAN: Did the city pay for the work done at Stone Lodge?
MAYOR: Yes, it did.
KIRAN: Do you know how much?
MAYOR: $25,000.

That breaks out into two separate checks paid out by the City of Port Allen --- $16,332.50 spent on the job itself. That includes the flat work, two catch basins plus building up curbs for about $2,500. Plus, there’s another check for $8,850 to purchase all the concrete for the pour. That’s a total of $25,182.50 for the entire job. KIRAN: This is a parking lot. That’s not sidewalks.
MAYOR: If you look at it, it’s sidewalks and drainage. It’s got two drains here and a third drain here and the rest is….
KIRAN: The rest is what?
MAYOR: Is the project….is part of the project.
KIRAN: There’s a car parked here. This is a parking lot. This, the old photo shows the sidewalk right there as well as a drain so why did you put in a parking lot on the expense of the taxpayers?
MAYOR: The project started off as a sidewalk drainage project and as we started the project to put the structure, it came out that we had to alleviate a problem because the building that is there, it has a low floor elevation and it’s kind of even with the (---) that comes in even with Michigan so once the contractor got to the point where it might be more harm than none to do a halfway job, we went ahead and completed the job so that it’ll be more efficient for the building because we didn’t want that area where the building sits to flood so we wanted everything to drain into the two drainage sheds on both ends of the roadway for proper drainage.
KIRAN: Has Stone Lodge flooded before?
MAYOR: It hasn’t but it does hold water and if you, back in the past especially the 11th St. side, where the sidewalk comes to the road, it has water there on the road and the two drainage that they have on 11th street and Michigan St. were below grade so we had to raise those two drainages up, which he wanted to make a complete job instead of doing a half job, where later on it would cause more damage so he went ahead and completed the whole project.

quote:
KIRAN: Are you a member at Stone Lodge? MAYOR: Yes. KIRAN: Does that have anything to do with spending $25,000 of taxpayer dollars? MAYOR: No ma’am. I’m also a member of the KC hall. I’m also a member of Holy Family Catholic Church and what I do here as mayor, it has nothing to do with my memberships with those organizations. ? KIRAN: Do you admit this is a parking lot? MAYOR: You can call it what you want but I mean, in order for you to complete that project and that’s what I told you, if I hadn’t did that, we’d probably have more damage from flooding and then probably got sued because of water getting in the building so I took the advice of the contractor that was there. If you want to do it, this is the way to do it and we did it and I made that decision.

He be witch hunt