07/11/06     

River politics gets rocky: Pleasure or protection?: Agency that oversees Vermilion split
Claire Taylor
ctaylor@theadvertiser.com

 

P.C. Piazza/ppiazza@theadvertiser.com Boat captain Eddie Latiolais brings a group of summer campers into the landing at Vermilionville after a 30-minute tour last week.

When Lafayette Parish voters on July 15 renewed a Bayou Vermilion District tax, few were aware of the turmoil in the organization, including the departure of Executive Director Kerry Collins a month earlier.

Internal strife has been growing at the Bayou Vermilion District since the board resumed management of Vermilionville from the Vermilionville Living History Museum Foundation in 2002. That move set the stage for a power struggle between the executive director of Vermilionville, Cindy Trahan, and the executive director of the Bayou Vermilion District's river operations, Collins. The two executive directors dueled over funding for their respective divisions. "The amount of back-and-forth fighting over monies by our two executive directors was war," said board member George Bentley.

At a March 11 board and staff planning retreat, some members said they needed to address how revenue is divided between river operations and Vermilionville so that both are given fair treatment. One said tax dollars allotted to Vermilionville are "minimal."

Others cautioned that the board and tax dollars should follow the mission for which the Bayou Vermilion District was created, which they believe is to clean up the river and provide a place for residents and visitors to enjoy its natural beauty. Collins' growing impatience with the board and its direction over the past six months is obvious in tapes of the meetings and written documents.

At a Feb. 22 meeting, Bentley read into the public record an e-mail that he said was sent by Collins. In the letter, Collins wrote: "All of the above adds up to an organization confused about its purpose, blind to its direction, and in mortal combat with itself. The board would better serve the citizenry and the employees of BVD by acknowledging its role to bring the BVD to its current sad state rather than calling for a round of applause for itself."

After reading the e-mail into the public record, Bentley tried to terminate Collins, to no avail. He tried again unsuccessfully at a March 11 meeting to terminate Collins. The only record of that discussion is a tape of the meeting. The tape was not transcribed into written minutes. The river operations executive director conceded defeat.

In a May 29 letter to Chairman Edmond Mouton, Collins said he was resigning as "the result of harassment and open hostility of two board members toward myself. The mission of the district is the only thing the board of commissioners should be concerned with at meetings. Perhaps with my resignation the board will find it easier to focus on that mission."

Collins' resignation and scathing criticism left the board concerned that word would leak out and voters would reject the tax renewal July 15. The board met in special session June 7 to discuss the possible fallout. They even considered asking Collins to remain on staff until after the election "in an attempt to not shed any bad shadow on the district" before the election, Mouton is heard stating on a tape of the meeting.

New board member A.J. Leblanc didn't like that idea, stating on the tape, "If you keep this man, it's going to hurt us and it's going to hurt this tax. ... This letter is going to float around here, and the tax is going to fail because of this letter." Collins has declined to discuss his departure from the Bayou Vermilion District, saying he left to pursue other interests.

'Pie in the sky?'

More than 20 years ago, Lafayette Parish civic leaders developed a master plan for improving the water quality of the 33 miles of the Vermilion River that run through Lafayette Parish and for creating places where visitors and residents could enjoy it.

The master plan envisioned multiple riverside parks, boat landings, a canoe concession, a family entertainment center, an equestrian center, specialty and craft shops, an amphitheater, trails, excursion boats and commercial development around the former Trappey's facility. Projects in the plan were estimated to cost more than $200 million in 1985 dollars, including $11 million in public projects, $31 million in public/private projects and $158 million in private projects.

The state Legislature created the Bayou Vermilion District and voters approved two property taxes to generate money for projects in the master plan. Twenty years later, a great deal of litter and obstructions have been removed from the waterway and pollutants like fecal coliform are less prevalent. The district built boat launches, fishing piers and a gazebo on the river and the 23-acre folk-life museum, Vermilionville.

The master plan was intended to serve as a general guide for long-range development of the river. Many ideas in the master plan never came to fruition. Now the board of directors is considering making changes to that plan. "There's some pie in the sky in the plan that we'll probably never achieve or address," Mouton said at a March 22 meeting.

River or Vermilionville?

The Chamber of Commerce, headed by Robert Cole, a former Lafayette attorney, in 1983 established a task force to develop the master plan after visiting San Antonio. Cole commended the Bayou Vermilion District for making the river clean enough for boating, swimming and water skiing. The cleanup led to private developments like River Ranch on the riverfront.

"When I first came to Lafayette in the 1970s, it was not a very appetizing river," he said. "It was polluted. It didn't smell very good. People don't remember these things. Many things have been done." Not all components proposed in the master plan were intended to be funded and built with public tax dollars, Cole said. Some things, like an equestrian center and golf course, were concepts planners hoped the private sector would undertake, he said.

Some on the Bayou Vermilion District board seem eager to divert more tax dollars to Vermilionville than to river operations. Bentley said he'd like to see the river operations staff, which cleans litter and debris, increased and work five days a week instead of four days.

But, Vermilionville also needs more funding, Bentley said. The board has tightened and cut all it can at Vermilionville, which features 150-year-old houses that need maintenance. "The board was so slanted to pro-river all the way and to hell with Vermilionville that we backed Vermilionville into a corner," Bentley said.

Carroll Spell, who has been on the board nearly eight years, said taxes that fund the district are for all operations in the master plan, including Vermilionville.

Vermilionville generates about 75 percent of the funds it needs to operate, Spell said. The other 25 percent is a subsidy from the Bayou Vermilion District's capital budget, not from river operations, he said. Not all agree that Vermilionville should receive more money.

"I think the voters would be disappointed," said Lafayette resident and Sierra Club member Harold Schoeffler, who was on the task force that generated the master plan. "That wasn't the intent of the plan. The focus was not on tourism. The focus was to restore this natural treasure and everything else will fall into place."

Changes coming

Spell said changes that are coming to the Bayou Vermilion District focus more on management than finances. A committee is working on a new organizational chart that proposes a single executive director with four coordinators reporting to that person. The committee was appointed about two months ago and has met only once since Collins' resignation. They presented a proposed restructuring last week, but no action was taken by the board.

Mouton said he is working to make board members and staff view Vermilionville and river operations as one entity. The money will go where the money is most needed, he said. One day that may be Vermilionville, the next it may be river operations. "I'm trying to become a peacemaker in that I'm trying to instill in these people that it's not Vermilionville and it's not river operations," he said. "It's the Bayou Vermilion District."