Inside Report for April 8, 2008

• By KEVIN BLANCHARD
• Advocate Acadiana bureau
• Published: Apr 8, 2008 - Page: 7B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

At least one member of the Lafayette City-Parish Council, Chairman Don Bertrand, thinks the city-parish shouldn’t wait any longer finally to fund a comprehensive plan for the parish.

A council-formed committee of volunteers called Lafayette In a Century met over a two-year period to come up with a list of wide-ranging recommendations on how Lafayette can better manage long-term growth — from new land-use rules and development regulations to drainage solutions and road funding.

Those recommendations languished for years until the Lafayette Planning Commission adopted them as a comprehensive plan  late last year.

Problem is, the plan is just a thick stack of paper. It carries no weight of law — just suggestions, possibilities, ideas.

It will take manpower to craft those recommendations into actual public policy — ordinances and regulations that need debate and eventual approval by the council.

Bertrand said he thinks it could take as many as 15 full-time planners to effectively implement and maintain the plan.

Exactly one city-parish employee is devoted to the comprehensive plan — other cities with similar plans have dozens of staff people. “We’re way understaffed,” Bertrand said.

Last year, the planning commission — for the first time ever — proposed funding of $1.4 million to help hire those people.

The proposal — which came late during the budget process — never made its way to the council. A similar proposal could come this year, but whether the funding will be available is another question, Bertrand said.

By the time the City-Parish Council gets its first look at the budget this summer, it will already bear the stamp of the administration’s priorities. Those priorities — such as road work or employee pay — will be hammered out soon in preliminary budget meetings with city-parish departments. It’s a juggling game every year, deciding which squeaky wheels get grease and which will have to wait.

With pressure to spend money on politically popular measures, a potentially unpopular measure such as a comprehensive plan could fall by the wayside.

Unpopular, you ask? Who isn’t in favor of planning for the future?

The answer to that lies in the details. The comprehensive plan calls for some form of “managed” growth. A government manages growth by restricting — either directly or indirectly — some types of activities.