While Mayor Sharon Weston Broome, multiple members of the Metro Council and many influential members of our community regularly—and passionately—say they’re opposed to the City of St. George incorporation effort, Business Report Publisher Rolfe McCollister says many of those same people are lending credibility to the breakaway city cause.
The latest example, according to McCollister, is the Metro Council’s recent vote to levy a dedicated property tax that benefits the “corrupt and incompetent East Baton Rouge Council on Aging” with an estimated $8 million annually for the next decade.
“As for those wanting a new, independent suburban city, who can blame them for their freedom calls after the spectacle that was the Metro Council giving its blessing—and our property tax dollars—to a horribly mismanaged agency that doesn’t actually answer to the public,” McCollister writes.
Noting Broome—“who never stops vowing to unite our divided parish”—neither attended the June 14 Metro Council meeting nor stated her position on the matter, McCollister says the mayor’s “silence and refusal to take a position in many of these public debates is troubling.”
“Many people I hear from love their hometown and support the greater good. But here’s the bottom line for the mayor and the Metro Council: When citizens and taxpayers can’t count on their government to provide safe streets and good schools, or to protect their tax dollars from waste, abuse and corruption, then they get angry and look for alternative solutions,” McCollister writes. “Zachary wanted its own schools. Central was forced into forming a city to get its own schools. More importantly, they want to control their own destiny. If those who chant “One Baton Rouge” while fighting the creation of St. George didn’t step up and speak out to clean up the corruption at COA, then don’t be surprised when the petitions come out again and people start signing.”
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