Local roads and accepting the Sales and Tax Use Commission’s 2025-26 Proposed Budget were primary orders of business as the Lincoln Parish Police Jury held its June meeting Tuesday evening at the Lincoln Parish Courthouse.
Lincoln Parish Sales and Use Tax Commission Administrator Denise Griggs said the proposed budget was $437,116, down $1,633 or 13.2%.
The parish portion of that total proposed budget is $31,119, down 13.12% from last year’s payment of $33,434.
That fee is charged equally across the five half-cent sales tax ordinances authorized for collection by the LPSB. The reductions are a result of an estimated increase in Union Parish’s contribution to Commission operating costs.
The LPPJ set speed limits of 45 miles per hour on both Rodgers Road and Rabb Road, for different reasons.
For Rodgers Road, the change came after a traffic study indicated that 85% of drivers using that road averagely drive around 45 mph while navigating it.
The 85th percentile rule, often used to set speed limits, defines the speed at or below which 85% of drivers are observed to be traveling during free-flowing traffic conditions. Traffic and transportation engineers use this speed as a guide to determine safe and reasonable speed limits.
The reason for setting the 45-mph speed limit on Rabb Road had more to deal with upcoming work done on a bridge crossing the road.
“That road doesn’t have a (official) speed limit, so it’s considered 55 mph like other parish roads with no speed limit signs,” Parish Administrator Courtney Hall. “But the (Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development) has something called a design speed (for bridges with guardrails) for that bridge design, and we have to comply with that, and it’s 45 mph. So that’s why we’re recommending that speed limit for that road.”
The LPPJ also voted to officially abandon three parish roads during the meeting while tabling a decision on another following a plea from two residents using it.
That was Skinner Road.
By law, the LPPJ has to properly advertise its intentions to abandon a road in the official public journal while also attempting to notify nearby property owners of those plans.
That brought Joyce Skinner Brazzel and her son Ken to the meeting.
Both pleaded their case to the Jury, asking for the road not to be abandoned.
“We have owned that property at the end of Skinner Road since the late 1930s,” Joyce Skinner Brazzel said. “I’ve needed that road three or four times for an ambulance to come help me out. Ken lives around the corner from me, and because of his health, I request that you seriously think about that.
“If the ambulance wouldn’t have been able to get over it and get to the house, I don’t know what I would have done. I am no longer able to keep the road up personally. We have always been very good tenants of that road. We’ve always paid our taxes, and I certainly request that you leave it as is because it’s needed more at this time then it has as any time before.”
Ken Brazzel said part of their concern was a creek between the road and his mother’s house.
“We have one culvert 6×5 feet wide around, and it is starting to crack and fall about. That’s going to be an issue eventually, probably within the next 10 years. But this all leads to the fact that if we don’t have any ingress or egress, my mother’s dead.
“If we don’t have any ingress or egress, I’m dead, because those roads — her road and my road — you have to go over that creek bridge to get to the road (to their houses). … That alone, I think, is a solid reason to consider saving it.”
And that’s what the Jury unanimously decided to do by tabling any discussion about abandoning the road for an undetermined amount of time.
That vote was 8-0 as jurors Joe Henderson and Diane Richards were absent due to health reasons while Chris Garriga was also absent.
The LPPJ did move to abandon Holstead Road, Lester Road and Grover Road. The decision on those first two roads was unanimous while District 5 Juror Logan Hunt was the only dissenting vote concerning Grover Road.
“I did receive a call about Grover Road from the main property owner there,” Hunt told fellow jurors before a public hearing and voting process were held. “He wasn’t excited about it, but he understood what we’re doing and why we’re proposing it.”
In other business, the LPPJ voted to authorize the purchase of property at 203 S. Vienna Street, across that roadway from the Lincoln Parish Courthouse for $265,000.
The LPPJ also agreed to authorize advertisement for 2025 hot mix overlay, six months’ worth of maintenance hot mix for pothole patching, and to advertise for bid the Rabb Road bridge replacement.
What wasn’t discussed, or even on the meeting agenda, concerned a previous request from Allegiance Health Management, which owns Northern Louisiana Medical Center and what was formerly known as Green Clinic as well as other medical facilities in the parish.
During the April Lincoln Parish Police Jury meeting the LPPJ voted to set a public hearing for the start of its May meeting to receive feedback on a request from Allegiance Health Management (AHM) for a new tax assessed on the hospital that could unlock additional Medicaid funding.
Allegiance Health Management officials said at the time they were making the request in hope that the move will result in higher federal reimbursements for treating patients on Medicaid.
During that 20-minute public hearing at the May meeting, some parish residents as well as Police Jurors voiced some concerns.
Following the end of the public hearing portion of that May meeting, the LPPJ voted 9-2 in favor of adopting the ordinance authorizing collection and rate of local hospital assessment.
During that meeting Jury President Glen Scriber said that the actual vote that was authorized that night would come during the June meeting.
The LPPJ requested Allegiance for assurances that the money would stay in Lincoln Parish, with Garriga even requesting that Allegiance President and CEO Rock Bordelon provide those assurances.
But the matter wasn’t on Tuesday’s night (June) agenda and was not mentioned during the meeting.
