Parish budget debuts today

• By RICHARD BURGESS
• Advocate Acadiana bureau
• Published: Jul 29, 2008 - Page: 1BA - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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LAFAYETTE — City-Parish President Joey Durel’s administration is set to present its proposed budget today, the first step in weekslong vetting by the City-Parish Council before the start of the next fiscal year Nov. 1.

The budget will be presented at 5:30 p.m. today in the auditorium at city-parish government’s main office on University Avenue.

The meeting is open to the public.

The administration is traditionally mum on the budget before introducing it publicly, but some council members are expecting to see the benefits of a relatively healthy local economy and cautious spending in prior years.

“This council may have a little more to spend than previous councils,” City-Parish Council Chairman Don Bertrand said.

Bertrand said he hopes to see more money for road and drainage projects.

“What could we do for those priority issues?” he said.

Based on talk from the administration in the past few council meetings, the budget is likely to address pay raises for city-parish employees and set market-based pay rates for certain professionals, such as the engineers.

“We’ve been losing engineers and we have to do something to keep them,” Bertrand said.

Bertrand also expects to finally see funding for staff members to implement a comprehensive plan for Lafayette.

The plan is a collection of recommendations for guiding growth: rules on land use, regulations for commercial and residential developments, road priorities, drainage plans.

Those recommendations have existed for years on paper in want of staff to develop laws and regulations to implement the comprehensive plan.

“We have to put some planners in place. We have to have people on board to do that,” Bertrand said.