East Side Water holds court ordered election

Pursuant to a recent decision from the Louisiana Third Circuit Court of Appeals, the East Side Water System held another round of elections for its board of directors Tuesday night.
“We had an election because that’s what the Court of Appeals told us to do,” said Board President Randel Brown. “That was our instructions from the court that we had to have an election on the first Tuesday of September.”
In the election for board president, Brown with his 160 votes defeated former president Todd Deville who garnered 66 votes.
Lee Ray Johnson was elected to one seat on the board by receiving 156 votes in comparison to Steve Vidrine’s 69 votes. Carroll “Yankee” Fontenot won the other board seat that was on the ballot by amassing 118 votes against John Vidrine’s 108 votes.
While the vote numbers are final, the election is not valid because the quorum for the election was not reached pursuant to the same appellate court’s decision.
“Within 60 days but no sooner than 30 days after the election, we have to have another election, and how ever many votes we get is considered a quorum,” said Brown. “In the next election if there are three people who vote, whoever has the most votes wins. There’s no quorum.”
Even though the election is not valid, Brown was pleased with how the results turned out. “It pretty much went the way I thought it was going to go, and hopefully we can get some people to vote the next election because whatever the results are it’s going to be considered valid,” he concluded.
The election for the remainder of the seats on the board of directors will be held on the first Monday of next April.