Newly elected Ascension Parish President Clint Cointment is calling on the parish council to put off Thursday’s scheduled vote on a new 30-year deal to finance, build and operate a $215 million regional sewer system.
The deal—a public private partnership between the parish and the privately owned Ascension Sewer LLC, which was created and is largely owned by Baton Rouge-based private equity firm Bernhard Capital Partners—has been in the works for nearly a year.
But Cointment says he and some of the newly elected members of the parish council have questions about the deal and don’t think it should be approved by the outgoing council, which leaves office at the end of December
“We’re going to be the ones who have to work with this deal that was brokered with zero input from us,” says Cointment, who finished first in the October primary with 42% of the vote and avoided a runoff after the second-place finisher dropped out. “The process is broken. We should have some say in this deal. It’s our turn.”
Cointment’s concerns center on issues raised in a recently released report on the deal by E&Y that says rate payers will have little say over rate increases and suggests the parish is ceding much of its leverage and control to Ascension Sewer.
The report notes, for instance, that “ … there is currently no detailed mechanism … in the agreement for determining how rates are set or adjusted. …” and also that “ … there is a high degree of uncertainty now as to how rate changes will be determined and proposed in the future.”
“We need to hit the pause button,” Cointment says. “We need to do our due diligence and look at this deal more closely.”
But Ascension Parish Director of Infrastructure William Daniel, who has spearheaded the deal, says the outgoing council has been studying the proposal since May and a majority supports it. He argues that the multiple, disconnected systems that currently serve the parish are ineffective, causing public health issues and will ultimately need to be replaced anyway.
“The long term prospect of not doing this deal is that starting in January, we would need to charge $90 a month to every household in the parish just to break even, best case scenario,” Daniel says. “Worse case, the feds could come in and order us to build a sewer system.”
Daniel acknowledges rates will go up under the new plan but says they would anyway.
“I think it’s a really, really good contract,” he says.
Cointment says he understands something has to be done to address the problem in the rapidly growing parish and says the Ascension Sewer deal may be the best solution.
“But we don’t know yet and we shouldn’t be in such a hurry to push it through,” he says.
Ascension Sewer’s Jeff Baudier says he feels the company has been transparent and given the parish council all the time and information it needs, but he understands the concerns and wants to make sure everyone is “comfortable with the deal.”
“We’re not opposed to giving them more time,” he says. “We’re going to follow the guidelines of the council as to how much time they need to fully consider the proposal.”
