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While the city of Central’s split from East Baton Rouge Parish was relatively painless, the divorce of the two school systems has been expensive and ugly. A separation from BREC, if it happened, would probably be less like the former and more like the latter.

House Bill 792 by Rep. Bodi White, a Republican who represents part of Central, would remove the fledgling city from BREC’s taxing authority and create a new entity to govern parks and recreation within its borders. The House Committee on Municipal, Parochial and Cultural affairs is scheduled to address the bill at 9:30 a.m. Thursday.

White says Central residents have needed better facilities for years. Central has more than 1,000 people playing on 93 baseball and softball teams that share 10 diamonds. They could also use a soccer field, a second football field and maybe a covered track, among other requests.

“[BREC] might do it one day, but they’re tired of waiting,” White says. He says about 80% of Central voters went against the most recent BREC tax renewal, showing the level of public dissatisfaction."

But it’s not just about facilities. It also is about having control over local tax money; specifically, about 14 mills, generating over $1 million annually from Central residents. White mentions the Blackwater Conservation Area at the end of Blackwater and Hooper roads, which BREC doesn’t own but operates as a cooperative endeavor with the city-parish and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

“They told me they spent a million dollars to put two ponds in there. … It’s good, and I guess one day it will be real nice, but that’s not what people asked for out there. They’ve got plenty of natural areas,” he says. “For a million dollars, they could have done a lot of work on some parks out there.”

Central Mayor Shelton “Mac” Watts also expressed a preference for having local control over local money, and says the BREC commission historically has not represented the Central area very well.

“We feel like we’re not getting our fair share from BREC,” Watts says. He says what Central really needs is a large sports complex. BREC officials had hoped to buy enough land for Central to have a sports facility in conjunction with a community park, but it wasn’t able to purchase a large enough plot. Watts says Central has plenty of open land for purchase, and says BREC could have purchased relatively cheap land years ago if Central had been more of a priority.

“I hope it doesn’t come to a court fight,” Watts says. “If it does, we’ll face that when it gets here.”

But if White’s bill passes, avoiding court might be difficult. Perhaps the most pressing question: What happens to BREC parks within Central? White believes the new Central recreation district could take those parks with it when it leaves.

“Those parks belong to the public,” White says. “Just like Baker and Zachary and Central, when they got their own school system, those schools belong to the public and the people in those areas that paid for them. This precedent’s already been set.

“They purport to take over the management and operation of the BREC facilities within their city limits. Now, the question is, how do they do that? BREC can’t give them that property,” says Murphy J. Foster III, BREC’s attorney. “Once BREC owns a piece of property, it is then BREC public property. The Louisiana Constitution absolutely prohibits them from donating it.” BREC says it owns nine of the 12 parks in the Central area.

If BREC chooses not to sell the property, and Central can’t expropriate it, then it stands to reason BREC isn’t going to turn over the management and operation of its parks to the city of Central or some other entity, Foster says. And that’s only one of many practical, legal and constitutional issues that Foster says would come into play but aren’t addressed by the bill.

“I don’t know who drafted this, but it doesn’t look like a whole lot of thought went into it,” he says.

As the bill reads now, the new district would be governed by a five-member board appointed by the two state representatives and one state senator that represent the Central area, the mayor and the city council. The bill provides a stopgap funding measure for 2008 and 2009, whereby the district could levy up to 14 mills in Central without voter approval, before a local tax election in 2010.

Of the 14.463 mills BREC collects from parish residents, 9.16 goes to the general fund, 2.05 to capital improvements and 3.253 to pay off the Imagine Your Parks bond issue, approved in 2004. BREC could legally continue to collect the bonded portion from Central until the bonds mature in 2025, according to bond attorney Richard Leibowitz. However, Central city attorney Sheri Morris says Central might be able to negotiate with BREC to keep some of that if it isn’t needed to pay off the bonded debt.

BREC doesn’t break down its numbers by municipality, but officials say their estimates show the Central area contributes about $800,000 for general operations, while BREC spends about $1.7 million for services to the Central area. That includes the operation of parks both inside and adjacent to Central’s borders, and Central residents’ share of the cost of special facilities like the Baton Rouge Zoo, Bluebonnet Swamp and the various golf courses which are not located in Central.

BREC had hoped to buy land for a community park and sports complex, but haven’t been able to purchase a plot that’s large enough. By law, BREC must get two appraisals for a prospective land purchase, the appraisers must agree on the land’s value, and BREC cannot pay more than the appraised value. But land prices in the Central area are in flux, and many landowners feel their land is worth more than its appraised value. And they’re often right; one site BREC had to walk away from was appraised at $5,000 an acre but later sold for twice that amount. BREC is currently looking at a 33-acre site for a community park in Central, and a separate site for a sports park.

“We really intend to fulfill our commitments to all of East Baton Rouge Parish, including Central,” BREC Superintendent Bill Palmer says. The delays are all about acquiring land, and do not reflect a lack of urgency on the commission’s part, he says.

BREC was set up in 1946 as a parishwide district to provide not only local parks, but also the special facilities, summer camps with accredited staff and other programs that a smaller entity wouldn’t be able to afford.

“Once you go to breaking up the system, then you get into an issue of how you continue to support all the special facilities that everybody in our region uses,” Palmer says. On the flip side, if Central residents stopped paying taxes for BREC’s operations, BREC would likely start treating Central residents as if they were from outside the parish. For example, East Baton Rouge residents get to register first for summer day camps, while folks from other parishes have to wait, then pay an extra $20.

“This piece of legislation kind of came out of the blue on us,” BREC Commission Vice Chairman Bill Benedetto says. “We thought we were making progress and working hard to get these things done.” He says he’s always willing to sit down with Watts, White, or whoever to try and reach some sort of compromise. For now, BREC is moving forward with its plans for the Central area, with the understanding that those plans might have to change if Central truly wants out.