lurker4yrs

I’ve been lurking in here for years but have never felt the need to comment so badly. Normally someone says what I’ve been thinking but after reading 7 pages of comments, not one of you have.

Here are my concerns:
1)Within the last year the tax payers renewed a millage to improve the recreation department. “Recreation reimagined” was NEVER mentioned when we went to the polls. We were under the impression kids would get new goals, new floors, new balls but not this.
2)The Lemon playground is in the Shrewsbury neighborhood. This is a low income neighborhood with a good bit of crime. Even if 50 kids sign up, that’s amazing! It keeps them busy and off the streets. If you pull up the census data for this area, there’s over 500 kids. Imagine if more of them signed up.
3)The parish has built many other “grand ideas” with our dime and it’s turned the parish into landlords. For example:
-The landfill. Not until both sides of the river started to stink and the LDEQ got involved did the parish admit they were in over their heads and really start making changes. It ended up costing the tax payers over $6m and 15 more months of really bad odors to make those changes because it was such a mess. While cleaning up their mess they realized “we don’t know what we’re doing; we should not be in the landfill business!” So they have River Birch managing it for them. Actually, the council just gave it to them for the next 10yrs. Don’t worry though we still own it. The parish has become landfill landlords.
-The Jefferson Parish Performing Arts Center. Don’t even know what that price tag ended up being but again the parish said “we can’t manage this, we’re in over our heads.” Now the Jefferson Performing Arts Society (JPAS) manages it (which is a private organization not associated with the parish like so many people think). Tax payers can rent the facility (they paid for) from JPAS but the starting price is $20k. If you need lights or audio you must use a JPAS employee for an additional charge. Oh, and you can only rent it 3 months out of the year, the other 9 months is reserved for the JPAS performances. The parish has become a performing arts center landlord.

Here’s where it gets interesting. A few months ago a sign appeared at Johnny Bright tennis courts saying the courts are reserved Monday-Sunday from 8-3 and then again in the evenings (forgot the times). After looking at the JPRD catalog, the evening court times were obviously for the kids but what’s going on during the day? Turns out a coach who’s been fired from every other tennis club in the city now has a sweet new gig with JPRD. He teaches the kids tennis for an hour three nights a week for free and gets to use the courts for his own private lessons during the day. He does not give the parish any portion of his private lesson profits. This coach has also been bragging to anyone who will listen in the tennis community that he convinced JP to build “him” a 16 court tennis mega-plex at Bright. We all thought it was crazy talk given his record but turns out that is part of CLS’s plan.

Why is this a problem? Because this group of active, old women go to play tennis on Monday morning like they have for years and now they can’t even though it was built with their tax payer money. Isn’t that the whole point of these playgrounds? To be accessible to the public?

My biggest question is what’s going to happen with these “grand ideas” a few years after they’re built? Are they going to become the next JPAC or landfill? Where the parish owns them, the tax payer paid to build them but now they’re controlled/managed by someone other entity and the tax payer has no access to them? Let’s be honest, the equipment CLS is talking about bringing into tumble complex will not be allowed to be used by the public. These will go from community parks, playgrounds and fields to locked up buildings we never get to use.

I understand the low enrollment issue. I am not opposed to change. I am opposed to using tax payer money to build a facility that can’t be used by the general public.