The East Baton Rouge Redevelopment Authority’s board of commissioners will meet Thursday for the first time since outgoing president and CEO Walter Monsour announced his resignation from the agency, which he has headed since its creation in 2008.
Among the items on the board’s meeting agenda will be the appointment of an interim CEO. Board chairman John Noland says he will make a recommendation to the board and he expects it will be accepted.
“But I will hold my counsel on that until after the meeting,” he says.
The board will also vote on the 2015 budget for the RDA, which is faced with running out of money in 2016 if no permanent funding source can be identified. Mayor Kip Holden has refused to dedicate city-parish funds to the agency, which is charged with restoring blighted properties throughout the parish and has requested a $3 million allocation. Holden contends the agency should have been self-sustaining by now and has suggested that too much money has gone to Monsour’s compensation package, which has been roughly $365,000 annually in recent years.
Now that Monsour is leaving, effective Nov. 30, Noland says he is looking forward to “the waters calming down a bit and smoothing out a little.”
Noland says the agency will continue to look for funding sources and is confident a solution can be found.
“As I walk the streets I get a pretty broad affirmation that we need an RDA, so I think we are going to get there some kind of way,” he says. —Stephanie Riegel
