The city-parish has appropriated $100,000 in BP settlement funds to the East Baton Rouge Redevelopment Authority, a move designed to help keep the agency afloat through the end of the year, according to Chief Administrative Officer William Daniel.
At its meeting Feb. 10, the Metro Council unanimously passed a resolution by Councilmember Chandler Loupe to provide $100,000 for the RDA from the city-parish’s share of BP settlement funds, which totals $1.71 million. According to the language in the resolution, the appropriation was made at the request of the Mayor Kip Holden.
Daniel says Holden was behind the move because he wants the RDA to remain sustainable through the end of his term.
“So he gave them that money to make sure that happens,” Daniel says. “Then the next mayor can deal with what the future of the organization is going to be.”
In the fall of 2014, the RDA’s then president and CEO, Walter Monsour, said the agency needed to identify a permanent source of funding and was running out of money. At the time, Holden objected to giving the agency any more funds from the city-parish, and questioned what the organization has done under Monsour, who resigned in late 2014.
The RDA did not receive any money from the city-parish in 2015 nor was any appropriated initially for 2016. Two weeks ago, Holden told Business Report he did not have any plans to fund the agency and had not spoken to anyone from the organization in months.
Daniel, however, says, the plan to send BP funds to the RDA had been in the works for several weeks prior to the Feb. 10 council meeting.
Loupe tells Daily Report this morning that he and Daniel began talking about potential ways to help the RDA early this year, and says the idea to use BP funds came up in a conversation between the two of them. He says he wanted to help the agency because it provides a badly needed function in the city-parish and needs to remain in operation.
“I wanted to throw them a lifeline,” Loupe says. “Regardless of what happened in the past we need them going forward in the future to clear adjudicated properties and put them back into commerce.”
—Stephanie Riegel
