Ascension Parish seeks opinion in pay dispute
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GONZALES — Ascension Parish President Tommy Martinez said Wednesday he has asked the District Attorney’s Office for a legal opinion on whether a firm can be paid for work performed under a task order when it does not have a master contract with parish government.
Tuesday, the Parish Council’s Utilities Committee refused to pay the URS Group $54,000 for inspection work on the Hillaryville sewer project last year.
The Utilities Committee members agreed URS did satisfactory work, but they voted not to pay the company because it was operating under a task order and not a master contract, which is called for in council regulations.
Martinez said Wednesday the “procedure doesn’t give us a way to pay them. I have no mechanism to pay URS even though they did the work and did a good job. That is why I asked the district attorney this morning to give me a decision. We want to do the right thing.”
The contract problem arose last year when then-Parish President Ronnie Hughes vetoed the council’s renewal of URS’ contract. The council then issued a task order for URS to continue the inspection work.
After voting not to pay URS, the Utilities Committee agreed to give Glenn G. Shaheen & Associates Inc. $42,000 to continue the inspection to enable the sewer project to reach completion.
Earlier Tuesday, the Recreation Committee voted to hire Percy & Company Inc. to conduct a door-to-door survey in the parish to determine what type of recreation residents want and whether they would be willing to pay for it with increased millage or sales taxes.
Eric Poche of the SJB Group presented the committee with a proposed recreation plan at the Lamar-Dixon Expo Center if parish government buys the facility that it now leases.
The plan, which would cost approximately $20 million, includes soccer and baseball fields, basketball and tennis courts, swimming pools, a skate park and camping grounds, among other amenities.
Regarding purchasing the expo center, Recreation Chairman Oliver Joseph said the time is coming for the parish government to make a decision on what it intends to do.
“The bottom line is money. We need to bring it to the people to vote on,” Joseph said. “We’re coming to a point where we’re going to have to make a decision soon on Lamar-Dixon.
“I’m going to do a public opinion poll of between 400 and 600 people (to sample residents’ attitude toward paying for the facility). We need to know by July whether to put it on the ballot (Oct. 4),” Joseph said.
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