St. Charles Parish (LA) sending large group to convention

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By Matt Scallan
River Parishes bureau

A year after St. Charles Parish residents complained about the size of the parish’s delegation to a national convention in Hawaii, the parish has reduced its contingent to this year’s event - but not by much.

Eighteen parish elected and appointed officials are scheduled to attend the National Association of Counties convention in Chicago this month, down from 22, who made the trip to Honolulu in 2005.

Six of the parish’s nine council members, Ganesier “Ram” Ramchandran, Clayton “Snookie” Faucheux, Barry Minnich, Lance Marino, Desmond Hilaire and April Black are scheduled to attend the event, along with a dozen administration department heads and staff members, at an estimated cost of $37,000, according to the parish’s public information office.

The delegation is substantially larger than others in the metropolitan area.
A proposed ordinance to limit the number of St. Charles council members who could go to the convention in any given year, was soundly defeated in 2005.

Destrehan resident Carolyn Schexnaydre, who protested last year’s trip with a sign in her front yard, said she’s not surprised that last year’s uproar didn’t change things.

“They don’t care what we think,” she said.

But parish officials said the conference is too important to miss, despite the political heat.

“It’s a very valuable experience. You get to talk with people who are dealing with the same problems that we are,” Faucheux said.

Faucheux said at last year’s convention, he found out about a federal program that helped pay for the refurbishment of the parish’s oxidation pond.

Ramchandran, who chairs a work group on coastal wetlands, said his yearly attendance gives the parish a say about legislation that the national group proposes for Congress.

“This is where we can influence what happens in Washington,” he said.

Richard Duhe, who said he is skipping this year’s convention because it doesn’t fit his schedule, said the gatherings are valuable, especially for newer council people.

“There’s a boot camp for them that’s very helpful,” he said.

Topics this year include the interoperability of emergency communications between agencies, public-private development partnerships and “creative approaches to balancing budgets.”

Parish spokesman Steve Sirmon said he and other department heads scatter to check out the goods offered by vendors who show up at the meetings.

“You’re not going to get these people to come to St. Charles Parish. But they’re all there at the convention,” he said. “You get to look at what’s on the market.”

Sirmon said the parish got ideas on how to improve post-Katrina communications from the 2005 convention.

The roster of vendor booths at the convention site, Lakeside Center at McCormick Place, includes organizations ranging from Waste Management to Wal-Mart Watch.

Sirmon said he’s heard that other counties around the country have gotten political flak for sending large delegations to the annual convention, especially when it’s held in an exotic location.

“I hope New Orleans doesn’t suffer from this kind of thing,” Sirmon said. “When they had it here ( in 2002), everybody, thought it was a great thing.”

NACo spokesman Jim Philipps said the convention normally draws between 3,100 people and 3,300 people no matter where it’s held.

“From our perspective, there’s no fluctuation in the numbers based on location,” he said. “Our mission is that when people leave the conference, they feel that they have benefited, and that they can take the information we’ve given them back to their counties and use it.”

In St. Charles, 17 people attended the group’s 2004 convention in Phoenix, and only five went to the 2003 confab in Milwaukee.

Parish officials said last year that turnout for the Milwaukee event was unusually low because many officials canceled the trip to monitor Tropical Storm Claudette, which was in the Gulf of Mexico.

“If we see something like that now, a lot of people are going to stay home,” Sirmon said.

Council Clerk Barbara Jacob Tucker said she is scheduled to attend classes toward becoming a certified municipal clerk, and the staff member accompanying her is the person in charge of the council’s filing system.

Tucker also said the information she gets at the conference will help her complete the council’s disaster recovery plan, which is focused on protecting critical documents.

One director who isn’t going is Michael Henderson, the parish’s new planning director.

Henderson said his department is spending its travel and training money in preparation for the implementation of the new building code that will go into effect in 2007.

Neighboring Jefferson Parish is sending one person from the administration. The number of council members and staffers was not immediately available Tuesday, from the Parish Council. St. Tammany is sending three council members and no one from the administration.

St. John the Baptist Parish is sending eight people to the convention, including five Parish Council members and three members of the administration, including Parish President Nickie Monica, Chief Administrative Officer Natalie Robottom and Monica’s administrative assistant. Council members Cleveland Farlough, Lester Rainey Jr., Sean Roussel and Ronnie Smith will also attend.

Asked why more people from St. John aren’t going, Robottom said “We don’t need that kind of grief.”