With last year’s Miss USA pageant bringing in revenue—as well as valuable national and international exposure—for Baton Rouge, the event was a big success for the city and everyone expected an encore when it was announced that the pageant would return, says Business Report Publisher Rolfe McCollister.
“But no one expected Donald Trump to run off the TV networks, sponsors, judges and co-hosts from this year’s event,” McCollister writes in his latest column. “Regardless of the fiasco and difficulties created by Trump, the 51 contestants are here in our city along with their families and friends, and we need to welcome them all and deliver another wonderful experience with the best in Southern hospitality, including great food, good times and lots of smiling faces. Our reputation is still on the line.”
With Baton Rouge in the spotlight, McCollister says there will be plenty of time after this weekend’s pageant to discuss the funding agreements the city and state made with pageant officials to bring the event back to Baton Rouge.
“But this week, the show must go on and our community must rise to meet the challenge as the world watches,” writes McCollister. “We want them to know Baton Rouge is a class act that can rise above the circumstances and show them all a good time—and put on an outstanding pageant on July 12.”
Also in his new column, McCollister touches on a recent nationwide report by The Associated Press showed the average travel time to work for the Baton Rouge metro area was higher than the national average at 26.9 minutes.
“That’s almost an hour a day. The report said we have 360,000 commuters, with 85% driving alone, 9% in a carpool and just 1% using public transit,” McCollister notes. “Of course, much of this ‘traffic problem’ is not an infrastructure issue but a school issue. So many people commute from Ascension, Livingston, Central, Zachary and West Feliciana because of schools for their kids. If they could live in town near a great neighborhood school, they wouldn’t be spending an hour on I-10 or I-12 every day.”
Baton Rouge has talked about everything from a new bridge and loops to the closing of the Washington Street exit on I-10 as possible solutions for decades, McCollister says.
“But we’ve never made a decision,” he writes. “There are lots of ideas and opinions, and I am not sure what the solution is. Our elected leaders—and residents—have made this bed over decades, and now we are lying in it. And it is very uncomfortable. But as Baton Rouge continues to grow, the problem grows with it—and I expect the commute time will, too.”
McCollister also opines about the potentially-growing field of candidates vying to be Louisiana’s next governor in his new column, and says there is more to the story of recently-fired LSU tenured professor Teresa Buchanan than you may have read about thus far.
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