District 9 hopefuls oppose bond issue

• By JEREMY HARPER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Sep 15, 2008 - UPDATED: 9:50 a.m.
• This is the seventh in a series of stories about the candidates for the 12 Metro Council seats in the Oct. 4 primary. Due to coverage of Hurricane Gustav, the Metro Council stories are not being published in chronological order.

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

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

Two candidates, Joel Boé and David Fa-Kouri, are running for the Metro Council District 9 seat now held by Darrell Ourso in the Oct. 4 primary.

Ourso is not seeking re-election, so he can pursue professional interests. Fa-Kouri ran unsuccessfully for the District 9 seat in 2004, losing to Ourso. This is Boé’s first time as a candidate.

For this story, Boé and Fa-Kouri, both Republicans, were asked about traffic, crime, economic development, taxes and fees.

Both candidates said they oppose Mayor-President Kip Holden’s $989 million bond proposal for capital improvements, which is on the Nov. 4 ballot.

Instead, both said, they would scrutinize the city-parish budget for any surplus funds that could be used to fund some of the projects in the bond proposal that appear to have voter support.

Boé, a project manager for Performance Contractors, said he would like to see the bond proposal split up to allow voters to decide which aspects of the plan they want to support.

He said he expects voters to reject the plan, which would increase property and sales taxes in the parish to fund a wide variety of capital improvement projects.

“I certainly agree that every part of the bond proposal is needed, and as a citizen of Baton Rouge I would love to see all this come to fruition,” he said. “But how it’s financed is the most difficult part to swallow.”

Boé said that if the proposal is rejected, the Metro Council should take more time to get input and build support for a new capital improvements plan before it is voted upon.

Fa-Kouri, an entrepreneur and owner of multiple businesses, including a mortgage firm, said he is opposed to raising taxes to fund new projects.

“Growing our tax base is more important than growing our tax rate,” he said.

Fa-Kouri said the best way to expand the tax base is to encourage families to return to the parish. The best way to do that, he said, is to improve the parish school system.

“The reason they’re living outside of the parish is because they can’t educate their children in a quality public school system,” Fa-Kouri said. “We cannot keep letting our East Baton Rouge Parish school system hurt the parish.”