Harlan Kirgan
St. Landry Parish’s Smooth Ride Home Program has transformed more than 300 miles of bumpy roads into smooth ones, but that left about 400 miles of gravel roads in the parish.
And those gravel roads are often the source of complaints at Parish Council meetings.
Councilwoman Mildred Thierry’s agenda item was about a program for gravel roads similar to the Smooth Ride Program for paved roads.
Some roads never get any gravel, she said, and others are getting new gravel twice a year.
Parish President Bill Fontenot said money from the Smooth Ride Program can be used for gravel roads.
Possibly helping the situation is the Council’s approval to lease three graders.
But there was a wrinkle to the approval.
All of the Caterpillar graders are to cost $2,625 a month with a 1,500-hour annual use allocation. The graders are to be equipped with GPS system that can accessed any time.
The leases are for five years, but can be cancelled at any time.
Two of the graders are to be paid for through the Road and Bridge fund. The third grader is be funded out of special road districts. The approval of that third graders’ lease seemed to restrict its use to the special roads districts.
After Wednesday’s meeting, Fontenot said the Council cannot determine where equipment is used. That type of decision is administrative, he said.
Councilman Ken Marks said the equipment gives the parish five graders to cover the parish’s roads.
Marks said his district and that of Harold Taylor, Districts 5 and 6 in north St. Landry Parish, have their own equipment.
“These resources are going to be greatly needed,” he said of the three additional graders.
Since 2015, a 2 cent sales tax has been collected in rural St. Landry Parish to pay for the Smooth Ride Home Program.