re: Baton Rouge is in trouble...

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Baton Rouge is in trouble.

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Blame her

If anyone thinks that Sid is actually making these decisions, you are fooling yourself. Sid is just a figure head and a puppet. Between him and Broome, he was the less of evil; however, he is not ready to manage this type of deficit he is facing.

The dirty secret is St George people were for it because it would have freed up money to pay off the debt owed to St George. A deal was made between BR and St George. We can settle this today if you accept this amount of money and support THRIVE. You will get the money after THRIVE passes and the $50+M from the library hits the general fund account. St George was willing to take a bit less to get the money now instead of fighting it in court or risking a BR bankruptcy proceedings where they might get pennies on the dollar.

Ooops. Didn’t pass.

The library was the fatted calf brought before the public for slaughter.

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Or maybe it was the fact that the City/Parish was funneling tax revenue from the unincorporated area that is now St. George to finance services in the City of BR, and instead of admitting that St.

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EBR's consolidated government was basically using unincorporated St. George as a colony to generate tax dollars to handle expenses outside of St. George - usually in the city of Baton Rouge. Most of us saw the argument that Broom's people made of "it will hurt the taxpayers of St. George" while also arguing that it would hurt the city of Baton Rouge as being insulting and massively inaccurate. The way they presented their arguments seemed to be presented in a way that masked their reliance on unincorporated St. George for tax revenue.

I'd like to see St George split away more even though it could be more costly for them. Things like their own school district, their own council on aging, and possibly their own city police network. But it will ultimately come down to how frustrated the locals are with the services provided by EBR and the confidence they have in the people put in charge of those services. Schools probably have the most immediate support.

St. George desperately needs to internalize the land use and planning functions within their borders. Right now that's a parish-owned responsibility. That's as big of a threat to their long term viability as Zachary's school district having coverage outside of the city of Zachary's zoning control - which enables developers to build higher density housing than the school district can handle and that the city would not allow if they had control over it.

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as Baton Rouge becomes worse,

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This is going to happen no matter what. St George not happening wasn’t going to stop it.

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North Baton Rouge is Baton Rouge.

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Somewhat of a crazy idea a few weeks back. In some states, I've seen voters elect to dissolve a charter for municipal school districts.

If the governance structure changes in EBR.....I wonder if Baton Rouge will attempt to reformat or even dissolve their own city police to push those costs back to the parish and reduce their own tax burden. I think the voters can potentially do that in Louisiana, but it would probably have to also be approved by the state legislature.

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This is going to happen no matter what. St George not happening wasn’t going to stop it.

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I think if St. George becomes a successful city that is a relatively desirable, affordable place to live......it could be a lifeline for East Baton Rouge and everyone in East Baton Rouge as it would boost or at least preserve the parish tax base. That in conjunction with better drainage infrastructure and flood protection in the region could help keep East Baton Rouge viable and even a growth area (even if the city of Baton Rouge screws up).

East Baton Rouge will eventually run out of developable land that isn't prone to flooding. There is simply less room to grow there, but the growth potential that does exist is largely in St. George, Central, and Zachary. Not in Baton Rouge.

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The sheriff is elected directly by the people so I’m always in favor of sheriffs over city police.

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Me too. Law Enforcement is too important IMO. And I do think that East Baton Rouge especially is so inter-twined that there is viable interest in the shared success of every municipality. People often live in one city but work in another. So the justice system, decisions on major pieces of infrastructure, and major drainage plans probably need to be kept at a parish level. There is some bad blood now, but St. George needs Baton Rouge to at least be viable, if not successful. And Baton Rouge needs St. George, Zachary, and Central to help position the parish for sustainable growth.

I could see a scenario pretty soon where Baker might try to dissolve their school district and push that back onto EBR Parish. They are struggling in a lot of ways.

A move like that would need some kind of transition period and a method of EBR parish and Baker agreeing to a fair way for the parish to take some of the debt service, assets, and liabilities from the dissolved school district. It's complicated but it's been done before in other states.

We might see it first with some rural fire districts in Louisiana (outside of the BR metro).

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New Orleans should De-Annex New Orleans East too

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Making NO East it’s own municipality would go a long way in cleaning up NOLA corruption. Everything east of the industrial canal in Orleans Parish would be it’s own city. Make the old Holy Cross the seat of government.

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St. George desperately needs to internalize the land use and planning functions within their borders. Right now that's a parish-owned responsibility.

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This is not correct.

SG has its own planning & zoning, and its own permit department.