The St. Landry Parish Council is calling a special meeting Monday in order to address apparent concerns for a proposed voting precinct merger ordinance aimed primarily at reducing the costs of parish-wide elections.
Council members sparred verbally during a finance committee meeting Wednesday night while discussing the details of the 2019 ordinance that, according to a revised state law, allows St. Landry parish government to reduce the number of precincts by about 57%.
Chairman Dexter Brown said he is calling the special meeting set for 6 p.m. at the council meeting room in order to review the lists of all the polling places used on election days in addition to discussing the number of voters enrolled at each location.
St. Landry Parish government now controls nearly 1,000 pieces of real estate for sale at bargain prices as elected officials determine methods of liquidating the properties that are costing money to maintain.
Within the next six months, parish officials will decide whether to continue listing and selling land parcels they own with a company that conducts online bidding or potentially change that procedure to one more closely supervised by the administration.
For the past several years, however, residents seeking to buy property from parish government have found the purchasing process can be complicated.
People can now acquire parish-owned property through Civic Source, a company which has been handling real estate sales at no cost to the parish for several years or by a newly developed process that allows individuals to deal directly with parish government.