Armed with several questions on the boundaries and location of the proposed Transportation, Technology and Innovation District, the Metro Council on Wednesday deferred voting for two weeks on a resolution that would have formally announced Baton Rouge’s intentions to be a vital cog in the creation of smart car technology.
While saying he supports the resolution, Metro Councilman John Delgado asked for the deferral to get some questions answered. Other Council members chimed in with their own questions about the structure of the proposed district before the council unanimously agreed to defer the item.
The resolution will formally put the Capital City in the conversation as a landing spot for both fledgling companies and national corporations looking for a place to manufacture and develop smart car technologies.
“When you think about where the industry is headed, it’s very much in the direction of autonomous vehicles, electric vehicles, connectivity between sensors and lights and vehicles,” says John Snow, the vice president of Emergent Method who has consulted the city-parish on the initiative. “So by bringing in some of these companies, you’re creating jobs, you’re creating economic activity.”
The district, which would not be for taxing purposes, would focus on downtown as well as two development-ready sites certified by Louisiana Economic Development in the Baton Rouge Aviation Business Park and LSU Innovation Park.
Snow told the council those sites were chosen for specific reasons. Both of the business parks have built-in incentives that can be used to lure businesses, while downtown Baton Rouge was chosen because of its urban environment.
“From the perspective of being able to test different technologies, implement them in unique ways we felt would be exportable to other mid-sized cities, we felt the downtown area was a very likely choice for folks,” Snow says.
Councilwomen Tara Wicker, Donna Collins-Lewis and Chauna Banks-Daniel all asked about expanding the district into parts of north Baton Rouge. Collins-Lewis asked about including the Louisiana Technology Park, while Banks-Daniel inquired about the possibility of adding a certified site on Groom Road to the district.
Snow says the plans for the district call for starting with the aforementioned areas, then expand to other parts of the city. He adds that LSU, Southern University and Baton Rouge Community College are all listed as assets for companies to use. He agreed with Councilman Buddy Amoroso, one of the sponsors of the resolution, that Southern could be added to the map.
“It’s really taking assets that already exist in our area, pulling them together and using them as a marketing tool,” Snow says.
The resolution is the result of the work Baton Rouge leaders did when they put together the city’s entry for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s $40 million Smart City Challenge. Cities from around the United States had been challenged to create a first-of-a-kind city that uses data to shape how people live and move about. Through that lens, leaders examined ways to incorporate technology to help solve Baton Rouge’s notorious traffic problems. Baton Rouge was not chosen, but the ideas developed from those meetings continued to move forward.
The council also created Amoroso’s technology committee that will advise the city-parish on new technologies and make sure Baton Rouge does not fall behind other cities.
Also at Wednesday’s meeting, the council approved 8-3, with Councilman Ryan Heck not voting, to add a 2.25-mill property tax on the Nov. 8 ballot for the nonprofit East Baton Rouge Parish Council on Aging.
The Council on Aging asked for the tax to help expand the programs it offers for seniors in the city-parish.
A homeowner living on property valued at $100,000 with a homestead exemption will pay $5.62 annually if the millage passes, while those living on property valued at $200,000 with a homestead exemption will pay $28.12 annually.
—Ryan Broussard
