When Mayor-President Monique Blanco Boulet took office, she inherited more than half a billion of infrastructure projects in various stages of development. Superparks. Mega drainage projects. A new jail. A new city courthouse. A new performing arts center. And more.
These projects were half-planned and partially funded, at best. And as the dust settles on former Mayor-President Josh Guillory’s “new pace of government,” it’s clear that none of these projects were actually feasible as originally proposed, even if money has already been spent on them.
In fact, in Boulet’s first proposed budget, there’s no more money at all for many of the legacy infrastructure projects advanced by the Guillory administration and previous councils, leaving their fates uncertain.
So let’s take a look past the headlines of what was promised to understand where things actually stand with these projects and what their future may hold.
Bayou Vermilion Flood Control
Cost: $100 million
Promise: To prevent flooding by digging giant ponds and removing spoil banks.
Reality: About $70 million has been spent. Laws were broken. Property owners’ rights were violated. None of the major ponds at Homewood Drive or Coulee Ile des Cannes are currently functional. There remains scant evidence these projects will prevent any homes from flooding.
Outlook: The state is still holding back $27 million in reimbursement until the ponds are operational. It’s estimated to cost another $10 million to $20 million to do that, though it’s not clear where the funding for that will come from. No additional funds were proposed for it in Boulet’s budget.
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The state’s current problem with reimbursement is that the more than 2-year-old detention project still isn’t functioning.
Meanwhile, the City of Lafayette is still losing roughly $1 million per year in lost interest revenue from the no-interest loan the parish gave itself to front the capital for this project because of Lafayette’s broken form of consolidated government.
Litigation is still pending that could result in millions of dollars of damages. And even if these projects are ever finished and clear of legal hurdles, it’s not obvious what utility — if any — they will ever bring to Lafayette.
Parish Jail
Cost: $100-$150 million
Promise: Build a new jail outside of Downtown without raising taxes through a public-private partnership.
Reality: While LCG picked a location and a development partner, and the state budgeted $35 million in capital outlay, no deal has been presented. Given obvious financial constraints —parish government could not afford its part of the deal — it doesn’t appear that the public-private partnership proposed by the Guillory administration can avoid the need to use more local dollars than are currently available to build a new jail.
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A long-shot bid to use private funds for a new jail is effectively dead, as a new M-P finds fault with her predecessor’s plan to pay for the deal.
Outlook: The need for a new jail hasn’t gone away. The parish isn’t going to magically find an extra $100 million lying around. Because it hasn’t had enough money to just properly maintain the current jail. And parish voters haven’t shown much appetite for seriously considering new taxes for anything. So the only real hope at this point seems to be for the state to step up and provide even more funding in a future budget.
Performing Arts Center
Cost: $100-$150 million
Promise: To build a world-class replacement for the Heymann Performing Arts Center at the UL Research Park site.
Reality: This project appears to be back to square one after leaders spent much of 2023 scrambling to pick a site in time to take advantage of Lafayette’s legislative clout.
The state has pulled back on its initial funding commitment, and both UL and LCG appear to be willing to go it alone.
Boulet has proposed spending almost a million dollars on renovating the existing Heymann Center in next year’s budget. And a new committee has been convened to examine options that include renovating or expanding the existing facility instead of moving it.
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A new study contracted by the Heymann Commission will look at the current site, examining updates to the historic facility or new builds on that site.
Outlook: Again, the need for a new performing arts center hasn’t gone away. Though the question is thrown wide open on the best path forward. Either way, we’ll need to secure funding. Unless the philanthropic community steps up to start driving this, it’s likely going to take many years for a real plan to come together.
Superparks
Cost: $50-$100 million
Promise: World-class facilities to attract tournaments to Brown Park and Moore Park, and a new multi-use indoor sports facility for tournaments and radically transforming Heymann Park with a giant outdoor pool and amphitheater.
Reality: It’s not clear if the indoor sports complex and the Heymann superpark upgrade were ever more than headlines. There’s still about $3 million in the budget for an amphitheater at Heymann Park that was secured years ago, but otherwise there’s never been any other money identified for either of these projects.
Brown Park was pitched to build eight baseball fields for $12.5 million, but in reality that plan was going to cost $30 million. Instead, the city is spending $15 million to build five fields. And LCG staff has acknowledged that there was not yet a plan for how to cover the increased maintenance costs. A similar downsizing has happened with the promised soccer facilities at Moore Park because of cost overruns.
Outlook: I don’t think we’re getting either the indoor sports complex or the radically reimagined Heymann Park (plans are being finalized for the amphitheater), as I just don’t see how the city can afford those projects. And the increased maintenance costs for Brown Park and Moore Park will likely take money away from the maintenance of the city’s other two dozen parks.
City Courthouse
Cost: $20 million
Promise: A brand new city courthouse and city marshal complex along with a new apartment development.
Reality: While $9 million was appropriated to renovate the old Lemoine building Downtown into a new city courthouse, actual cost estimates came in significantly higher. Plus, the cost of tearing down the old city courthouse and destroying the value of that property hadn’t been factored in. This project still has $9 million in the budget, but the administration has paused it.
Outlook: Boulet wants to pursue a development partnership with Rock’n’Bowl owner Johnny Blancher, who would have acquired city property to build apartments in the original deal. But she is not interested in giving up the city courthouse.
Lafayette needs a better infrastructure strategy
What these examples really highlight to me is just how bad Lafayette is at infrastructure planning. After years of doing too little, the last administration flipped that paradigm and attempted too much.
Public infrastructure cannot be driven by the desire to get headlines about cool new things.
I am the type of person who believes in the value of investing in forward-thinking infrastructure, but those decisions must be backed by sober-minded analysis of the basics, like whether any given project is financially feasible, delivers a sufficient ROI or is the highest and best of use of those dollars at that particular moment in time.
We wasted literally tens — and it could have been hundreds — of millions of dollars over the last four years on infrastructure projects that were not properly planned or thought through. We’re now paying the price for unfinished work, unfunded maintenance liabilities and the opportunity cost of wasted time, money and political capital.
Rather than gnash our teeth about a past we can’t change, let’s use these mistakes as learning opportunities so we don’t make the same bad decisions again in the future.