Keeping pace with infrastructure needs and preparing for future needs are the most obvious challenges that affects everyone. Making Lafayette the place that people want to live and where businesses want to locate begins with a low crime environment, so making sure our police department is manned properly is a must. As our population increases, our public safety needs increase. If we don’t build and man more fire stations, our fire rating will drop, causing insurance rates to go up. But, the greatest challenge will be how to fund those and other important issues, especially when more and more of our local tax dollars are going to the state. To meet these challenges, we must have a council that works together, along with the administration, for the betterment of our entire community.

First, Lafayette needs to begin looking at transportation needs from the perspective of the major metropolitan area we will be in the not-to-distant future. Beyond building roads, we need strategies that will take vehicles off our streets. Things like light rail must be in that mix.

Second, we must get LUS out of the coal-fired power plant business before it strangles businesses here.

Third, we must open participation in our community to all members of the community, not a small clique.

My record speaks for itself. Several years ago, as a member of The Citizens Advisory Committee, I brought up the fact that I thought we should have green area between roads and sidewalks. That has resulted in roads being built more like Camellia Blvd., rather than like Ambassador Caffery. I have been very supportive of planting trees in medians as well as preserving green space when able. But, obviously the most exciting project that we will have done, is preserve The Horse Farm, for ourselves, and generations to come. Again, we must have a council (who ultimately make the laws) that will participate in the governing process and work together as a team, for the good of everyone in Lafayette.

LCG must take an active and direct role in the transformation of the Horse Farm into a park. It must also work with local communities to develop and plans for parks in their jurisdictions.

We must also look for opportunities to develop parks in areas that are not yet heavily populated.

Again, my record speaks for itself. I am about to sign a contract with the consultant that will spend the next year or so, developing Lafayette’s comprehensive plan. For the last two years and again this year, I have added funding to the budget ($1.2Million) for a comprehensive plan. Fortunately, several on the council agreed with me, that we needed to plan for the future. I also had letters sent out to all of the municipalities in Lafayette Parish, giving them the opportunity to join us, thereby giving them a chance to plan and use their money much more efficiently. I still have hopes that will happen. I also have demanded that we do everything possible to involve the entire community, or at least those in the community that care enough to be involved. This is a very important project for the future of our parish.

Lafayette needs to put the abundance of bandwidth that we have to work in opening up the development process to the entire community. Too often, highly paid consultants are brought in to provide a patina of professionalism on what was an already decided plan.

Physical access to meetings can be constrained by work and family demands. Using technology to expand access to the process would ensure broader participation as well as results that would be more credible and actually have a chance of 'sticking'.

The city-parish president should be the chief economic development officer of the parish. But, in this new tech-driven era, the focus should be on developing internal mechanisms that will more readily enable us to export our culture to the rest of the world. We can do that by recording, tagging and storing the arts in Lafayette and making them available for resale to the entire world. That would enable us to broaden our reach and maximize the investments in technology we have already made.