BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – Three candidates for East Baton Rouge mayor-president spoke at the Louisiana Engineering Industry Mayoral Forum on Tuesday, October 8.
One of the candidates, Ted James, criticized incumbent Sharon Weston Broome on her implementation of infrastructure policies.
“Way too often there’s policy on that doesn’t work with the folks have to effectuate it in actual practice,” James said. “So in the policymaking, we need to be as intentional as we are right now.”
Candidates spoke on issues like flood preparation, transportation, and making government contracts more available to minority groups.
Incumbent Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome highlighted what she was able to get done during the past 8 years.
”Harrison lateral box culvert, Hundred Oaks and Broussard, Groom Road storm system improvements, Water Creek Bayou, Ward Creek, Jones Creek, Dawson Creek, South Flannery Road, and the list goes on and on and on,” Broome said.
Conservative candidate Nathaniel Hearne joined Ted James in his criticism of Broome.
”We have a $1.3 billion budget,” Hearne said. “We don’t need new funding. We need funding allocated in the correct manner and put in place and effectuated. We have engineers and companies here in town know how to do the jobs, that know to get the work done.”
When Broome took office, she found that the vast majority of these contracts were not going to minority contractors and created a program to address this disparity called the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program. It’s something that all candidates praised but stressed quality over quantity.
“Trust God. Everybody else bring the data so this administration has been extremely data driven so let’s talk about the data,” Broome said while defending her record.
James said the Baton Rouge area needs to be thinking about the future and proposed expanding access to broadband internet on top of needed road improvements.
”There’s a Baton Rouge out there that we deserve we deserve to live in,” James said. “That we deserve to raise our kids in. The longer we wait for that Baton Rouge the last time we get to spend living in it.”
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