Issue comes up after discussion on department presentations
– A discussion of the St. Martin Parish Government’s administrative department presentations at Parish Council meetings grew into a heated confrontation between Council Chairman Chris Tauzin and Parish President Pete Delcambre after Delcambre said he felt that he and Public Works Department head Jason Castille were blindsided by questions about maintaining laterals in wetlands at the council’s July 7 meeting.
Tauzin asked that a discussion about the laterals scheduled for this past Tuesday’s council meeting be deferred indefinitely, but did go ahead with a discussion of the administrative department presentations.
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“I think it’s unfair to use a platform and then to bring up a discussion that we are not prepared (for),” Delcambre said. “I want to be totally transparent and give a total and definitive direction and knowledge and information to the council, and to the public, as this is a public meeting. But I’m not able to, nor are my directors or supervisors, if we don’t know what’s going to be presented.”
Delcambre said that such discussions could be put into the agenda as an item with some description so that “for lack of a better word, I don’t feel, and my directors and supervisors don’t feel blindsided by what we’re being presented with. And that’s where I’m at.”
Tauzin said that the presentations were begun under the previous administration and are supposed to be informational for the council and the public.
“I don’t know if we’ve tried to put any director or anybody on point or anything,” Tauzin said. “I mean, we were just basically doing stuff that we’ve been doing for previous years through previous administrations.”
Clash
“I’m going to disagree with you, Councilman,” Delcambre said, then quoted a series of emails he and Tauzin had.
Delcambre said that in recent months he’s seen presentations on the agenda that he had not been notified of beforehand, but had let that go. After being notified of the request by Tauzin that the Public Works director give a presentation, Delcambre said he replied to all the council members that the presentations were getting longer and longer and felt that a presentation of the department, its overall functions and goals could be done in a 10-minute presentation.
Delcambre said that at the next meeting, on July 7, Tauzin brought up the issue of wetlands, and then requested a position from the parish attorney on the issue, which resulted in a six-page position on the wetlands issue being given to Delcambre.
“So again it appears that you’re using this platform, you’re bringing issues and concerns that are piggybacking onto a public works department to open up a platform and at that point in time, Mr. Jason, myself, no one in the administration, had any information to be able to answer your questions or to be able to give any kind of valid response to your questions,” Delcambre said. “And I’ll piggyback, Mr. (Chris) Courville then has documentation of a statute, a partial documentation, so this tells me there was some premeditation where this, Mr. Jason’s presentation, was going to go. And I don’t feel that that’s respectful of the Department of Public Works last month or myself in that, for lack of a better word, we’re being blindsided by a position that you want immediate answers to that I’m not prepared to give. And I don’t think it’s fair. And I don’t want this to continue. I did, in these emails, address that.”
Tauzin said he thinks the council clerk does an excellent job of letting Delcambre know before meetings who the council wants to bring in to discuss their departments, and that he feels nobody has ever been targeted by anyone on the council.
“We’ve had discussions with Mr. Castille about why we weren’t digging in wetlands, and he told us that the administration had decided that we couldn’t dig in wetlands,” Tauzin said.
Tauzin said council members had shared with Castille that they felt the Army Corps of Engineers guidelines would allow digging of laterals in wetlands if they were previously maintained.
Tauzin said that if the council can’t have administrative department representatives speak at the meetings and have questions asked, he’d like to know who can be brought in, or if Delcambre is saying that is done, that’s fine.
Delcambre said that the straw that broke the camel’s back was piggybacking the discussion of the wetlands lateral issue onto the public works presentation. He said he felt that a lot of the information given during that discussion was incorrect, and that parish attorney Lee Durio had clarified some of that in his opinion.
Cuncilwoman Carla JeanBatiste explained where the idea for the presentations began and how a list was developed for which departments were brought to the council meetings. Delcambre said that he thought it was a good program and he thinks it’s good going forward but doesn’t want specific questions about things not related to the presentations without previous notice.
As Delcambre continued, Tauzin interrupted to allow council member Corey Melancon to speak.
“Excuse me, can I continue?” Delcambre asked.
Tauzin called on Melancon again, and Delcambre again asked if he could continue.
“I heard what you said three or four times,” Tauzin said. “You’re just repeating yourself over and over on the same thing. We have other council members that have (questions about) what we’d like to discuss.”
Melancon said he enjoys the presentations and sometimes he has questions and sometimes he doesn’t.
He added that if one of the department heads is asked a question and they say they don’t have an answer, that’s okay.
Courville said that he agrees that someone coming before a board should be given a fair shake. But he said nobody was trying to set up the public works director with questions about digging in the wetlands. He said he had looked into the Corps of Engineers regulations regarding digging in the wetlands while researching beforehand, not in preparation for the meeting.
Tauzin said that Delcambre had refused to allow one person to give a presentation to the council as requested long before any of the discussions that Delcambre disliked.
“So for you to bring yourself and accuse me or the council, whoever you want to accuse, of using this as a platform, you stopped this way before we even got it started,” Tauzin said. “You were the first person to say no. And we had never attacked anybody. It was just the same thing that we’ve been doing for years and years.
“I don’t think we ever had a platform. I think you had it in your head that there was going to be a platform, but I have no idea where you got that from because we’ve never had a platform. We’ve never attacked anybody.”
The question about the wetlands came up because council members had been communicating with Castille about the wetlands and wanted to know where things were with that situation.
Tauzin said that targeting people has never happened in the 11 years he’s been on the council.
He said it was disrespectful and inconsiderate for Delcambre to say that the council was targeting anyone because he felt that has never happened.
“Can I speak now?” Delcambre asked, then continued when Tauzin said he could. “Thank you. I mean, you used the word targeting as if I said that. I never used the word targeting. I never used the word ‘putting into a bad position.’ I think you’re using subjective words to describe me, and I will digress to where we started with this. This is an overview of a department, okay? If you have any areas or issues over and above the overview of the department, I think that out of respect for myself and anyone else that’s at the podium, that we be given some additional direction as to where this may go.”
Delcambre said he’s not saying he doesn’t want any questions to be brought up.
“That’s not what it sounds like,” Tauzin said.
“Well that’s not what I said in the email, was it?” Delcambre said.
Tauzin said he wasn’t talking about that, but about what it sounded like Delcambre was saying. Delcambre again asked if that was what he said in the email.
“I’m saying I have no problem with questions,” Delcambre said.
“Mm hmm,” Tauzin said. “I have no problems in answering departments or answering positions of departments,” Delcambre said. “What I’m saying is, in the event that there is something of a substantive issue or something that is out of the realm of just a general overview, please let myself or the director or supervisor know so that we can prepare ourself to answer in a qualified manner, because it is a public meeting.
“You know what you want to ask. We don’t.”
After more verbal jousting where the two said they disagreed with each other, Tauzin said, as Delcambre took a drink of water, “I know I don’t agree with you, because let me tell you what. You pulled this stunt way before when we asked … and you can smile and take your little squirt of water and do whatever you’ve got to do, it doesn’t bother me.”
“You’re getting personal,” Delcambre said.
“Yeah, you do whatever you’ve got to do, but let me tell you something, when we asked for the project manager for a job (to give a presentation), you stopped it,” Tauzin said. “So you had intentions from day one to stop certain people from coming up here. I can’t tell you what any of these council members are going to ask. I can’t tell you what I’m going to ask. I’m not Jesus Christ and I don’t claim to be. And I don’t know what the answer is above, what’s going to happen next. All I know is that we’ve got to listen, we take in the information. If we’ve got a question, that’s what we’re here for. We’re here to ask questions, (provide) checks and balances and answer to our constituents, and that’s what we did.”
Nobody put Castille in a bad situation or disrespected him, he said.
“At the end of the day, everybody in here, including yourself with your little smirk, you know, be happy all you want to be, but let me tell you one thing, at the end of the day, all you have to say is, ‘I don’t know,’” Tauzin said. “Just admit it. ‘I don’t know.’ Or ‘I’m not prepared to answer that question.’ Because you’ve done it before. ‘I don’t know. I can’t answer that question.’ That’s fine. We can’t hold you down and tell you you’ve got to tell us.
“But we’ve got a right to ask questions. Everybody on this council has a right to ask questions. We’re all elected by the same people that live in the same parish that expect answers, just like we expect answers. And if we can’t get answers, we need to ask the questions. And there was conversations before about the wetlands prior to this.”
