– The St. Martin Parish Council’s combined Public Works and Administrative/ Finance Committees considered a request from Councilman Vincent Alexander to use funds from the old Hospital Service District No. 1 savings to pay for a grant to find a way to expand water service from the Cecilia Water Corporation to residents in Anse La Butte.
Alexander, whose District 7 comprised a small part of the hospital district, said that he had agreed to vote with District 8 and 9 council members Ben Clay and Chris Courville after they requested the money from the fund, which the parish acquired when the hospital service district was closed several years ago, to improve Paul Angelle Park and the parking lot there in Cecilia.
Alexander said he agreed to do that because people in his district also use the park, and he wants to work with the other council members.
“I want to work with the entire council as a team,” Alexander said. “I’m not asking for a refund. I just want to let them know that some of the funds allocated for (District 7) went to Paul Angelle Park and the parking lot.”
But Alexander said the ordinance that abolished the Hospital Service District split the assets up. St. Landry Parish received St. Luke’s Hospital in Arnaudville, while the hospital funds went to St. Martin Parish.
Grant
Alexander said the ordinance passed by the St. Martin Parish Council abolishing the hospital district said that the approximately $844,000 the parish received should go to service the “health and wellbeing” of parish residents.
He contended that providing potable water to Anse La Butte fits into that description, whereas work on a baseball and recreation park does not. He also said he feels a third of the money should go to his district, which would allow for hiring of a grant writer to seek grants for expanding water service from Cecilia to Anse La Butte by digging beneath Ches Broussard Road.
But Council Chairman Chris Tauzin said that the parish is prohibited from using public funds to aid private businesses, which the Cecilia Water Corporation is.
Alexander had asked Parish President Pete Delcambre at a previous meeting if the parish could hire a grant writer for that purpose. Delcambre said the parish could use a grant writer, perhaps one already employed by the parish in its contract with Sellers & Associates engineering firm, but that the parish would have to check the legality of it first.
Courville also told Alexander that though there are three St. Martin Parish districts that the hospital service district included, it was not an even split among them. The other two districts each provided a much greater proportion of the tax funds to the service district than the small portion of District 7 that was included in the service district. And no residents of Anse La Butte were among those paying taxes to the service district, he said.
Alexander continued to push for funds to be used to help provide water to Anse La Butte residents, though other council members noted that the parish has deliberately gotten out of the water service business, including working to promote the consolidation of the St. Martinville, Catahoula and St. Martin Parish Water District 4 and Industrial Park water districts into St. Martin Parish Consolidated Water District 4, an independent entity.
Delcambre said he would work to see if anything could legally be done to fund a grant writer to address Alexander’s concerns.
