The NAACP this morning joined those urging the Metro Council to vote against implementing the master plan for the proposed Baton Rouge Health District—a vote that could happen at this afternoon’s Metro Council Zoning Commission meeting.
In a letter sent to the council members this morning, Alfreda Tillman Bester, general counsel for the local NAACP chapter, says the organization opposes the use of any public resources or tax dollars to fund any part of the project while north Baton Rouge lacks a hospital and emergency room.
Bester says the organization sees the cooperation between hospitals and the private sector to try to build a health corridor in south Baton Rouge and wonders where that spirit of cooperation was when the state closed Earl K. Long and left north Baton Rouge without its lone major source of medical care, and also when the Woman’s Hospital moved far south from its Airline Highway campus.
“We OPPOSE the use of any public resources to further enrich these multi-billion dollar corporations and the more affluent members of our community,” Bester writes, emphasis hers. “If this consortium believes in the private sector and the viability of their project, let them fund it with private dollars.
Bester says until there is a fully functioning hospital with a fully functioning emergency room in north Baton Rouge, the city-parish should not divert any of its “very limited public dollars for private purposes.”
The NAACP’s letter comes one day after Gary Chambers, publisher of The Rouge Collection and advocate for north Baton Rouge, sent his own letter the council in which he references two occasions on which law enforcement officers were shot while working in north Baton Rouge in recent years. Chambers says the lack of a hospital in the area could be disastrous if another shooting were to occur.
The two letters are just a few that Metro Councilwoman Chauna Banks-Daniel says she has received from organizations asking her to vote down the proposed Health District. A petition on change.org asking the north Baton Rouge residents to urge their council members to block the implementation of the Health District until a hospital is brought to north Baton Rouge has 740 signatures.
The Planning Commission approved the item 6-3 at its Jan. 19 meeting. Approval at today’s meeting is final and would not need the Metro Council’s approval at one of its regular meetings.
The NAACP letter also comes a day after the local chapter sent a letter to BREC saying it would oppose any attempt to move the Baton Rouge Zoo from its currently location in north Baton Rouge.
On Thursday evening, Chambers is moderating a town hall meeting in north Baton Rouge that will include discussion on economic development in the area, as well as the zoo and hospital issue. Banks-Daniel and mayoral candidate Sharon Weston Broome, along with many other stakeholders and city-parish officials, will be on hand at the meeting.
Another contentious item on tonight’s meeting agenda is a proposal to change a city-parish ordinance to require a supermajority of Metro Council votes—nine, rather than the seven required for a simple majority—to allow for the rezoning of private property.
The commission has already deferred voting on the item three times, going all the way back to October. The last deferral was made in January so then-new councilmembers Erika Green and Lamont Cole could become familiar with the issue.
The Planning Commission at its Dec. 14 approved by an 8-1 vote a recommendation to adopt the change, following the Planning Commission’s staff recommendation. The ordinance change was originally proposed by Metro Councilman Ryan Heck.
Councilman Buddy Amoroso says he has received several emails from members of the Protect Highland Road Task Force asking him to vote down the proposal. The task force has been pushing for months to get the council to approve the blanket rezoning of a roughly three-mile stretch of Highland Road between Siegen Lane and the Country Club of Louisiana, as well as about a mile stretch of Pecue Lane that connects Highland and Interstate 10 from rural to REA1. The rezoning change would restrict residential developments to one unit per acre. The current rural zoning allows for up to seven units per acre.
—Ryan Broussard
