re: Among those you know, is the City of St. George issue partisan?

Those I know that live in Baton Rouge, are against it. Those I know that live in St. George are for it. Both have good arguments. I live in Baton Rouge, but am registered to vote in Ascension Parish and I am pro St. George. However, I have serious reservations about the people behind much of the initiative and the proposed budget.

short term, better schools are a driver for more growth. Section 8 expands in Staring and into Bluebonnet neighborhoods leading to more blacks moving in. Schools stay great for a while. More blacks move in as neighborhoods adjacent to Section 8 decline. St. George Police crack down on crime in those neighborhoods only to be hit with a DOJ racial discrimination lawsuit. St. George PD backs down, crime overtakes much of the areas between Burbank and Perkins with the exception of Highland. Leads to split St. George between whites and blacks with white neighborhoods having high enough property values to keep the blacks out. To keep the schools good for most of the city, the school district basically segregates out the black neighborhoods, DOJ intervenes and basically takes over the city. City death spirals 15-20 years after its inception.

Or, the new city council takes a proactive approach to zoning making new Section 8 housing very difficult to build adjacent to affluent neighborhoods, slowing the growth of slums. Improving schools boost property values in St. George, landlords realize they can make more money with upgraded units rented out to high priced renters rather than Section 8 money, urban blight is reversed and the good school district is maintained. Better school board management and administration maintains great schools even for Gardere students. People's taxes increase to pay for it all, but they are happy with the increased superior services. Peasants rejoice

Prarieville doesn't have a lot of voice on the council. As it always has been, the power base is on the West Bank. Also, most of the main roads in Ascension are state highways so all improvement plans have to come from DOTD. When the Parish offers to pay for upgrades, DOTD tells them no. When DOTD designs something stupid that makes no sense and the Parish recommends a different solution that wouldn't be much more expensive but would actually freaking works AND offers to pay for it, DOTD shoots them down.

Where the Parish has been incredibly stupid and shortsighted has been in improving High Schools (Teacher's Unions stand opposed to improving existing schools as they'd rather build new ones and create more beaurocracy and administrators), drainage (opposed by the Army Corps of Engineers at every turn), and sewage (lack of funds).

However, as far as zoning goes to make Ascension better for its citizens and improving the kinds of developments that can be built, they have failed miserably as D.R. Horton practically owns this parish.

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D.R. Horton practically owns this parish.

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Completely agree.

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In fact, all of the moves by the Parish (and they tried the loop and will try it again as a massive land grab) are to make building houses on family land essentially impossible for citizens by zoning any land not owned by developers as rural which takes a huge amount of road frontage and a ginormous pad of earth to get a building permit approved. Any land developers own gets zoned in such a way that they can fit 5 spec-houses/acre and jam in apartment complexes like they're using astroglide.

They want to make it only possible to buy homes from developers and eliminate all competition (aka corner the housing market) while scooping up massive swaths of land to be bulldozed "for the loop" only to sell them back to developers at reduced market value (due to the ridiculous zoning), change the zoning, and then develop the crap out of it around all of the interchanges, the locations of which they've already determined.

It's a huge con job and there's very little the citizens can do to stop it. At least Martinez has announced that he isn't running for re-election.

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That's ridiculous, but I am not the least bit surprised. To compound all of this, they use old farm roads that splinter off of a Two lane highway, splinter off those splinter roads to build subdivisions, and all of that has to funnel to that two lane highway at rush hour. It's absolute insanity. I mean, NO plans in the slightest. "Just build it quick and we will think about it later, or better yet, hand it off to someone else to deal with. How about our kids and grand kids? Yeah..."


But in all honesty, why would that mentality be any different from the debt we are in as a country. Kick the can is our middle name I suppose when you really get down to it.

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nope, too busy getting paid under the table. Who doesn't love sweet, sweet money?

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True... That's all it really is. " just as long as I get mine"