Council OKs deal for new bus benches, shelters

Parish bus riders will have new transit shelters and benches after the Terrebonne Parish Council approved two contracts last week.

LNI Custom Manufacturing of Hawthorne, Calif., received a $68,676 contract to supply benches. Duo-Gard Industries of Canton, Mich. received a contract for $84,915 to supply transit shelters.

The parish took advantage of a clause to leave its contract with Lamar Advertising, which had previously provided the benches and shelters.

“We feel Lamar has not maintained them acceptably,” said Parish Public Works Director Greg Bush.

Lamar offered to sell the assets to the parish “but the costs were not justified,” Bush said.

The federal grant the parish received to buy the benches and shelters allows the parish to sell its own advertising.

Bush said LNI and Duo-Gard will only provide the materials for the shelters and benches. The parish will assemble them.

“It’s like a kit,” Bush said.

The parish has identified 15 stops used frequently by the elderly and disabled that will be the first to be built, he said.

LNI also had offered the low bid on the transit shelters ($81,516), but the shop drawings submitted by the company had a thermoclear hip peak roof, according to a memo by Parish Manager Pat Gordon. Guidelines called for the roof to be constructed of aluminum or steel with no exceptions. The bid had to be rejected, Gordon wrote.

Also at last week’s committee meetings, the Budget and Finance Committee passed a resolution at the request of Houma City Marshal Brian LeBlanc asking the parish’s state legislative delegation to raise the cost of each paper served from $10 to $25 and to adopt the state rate for mileage. The marshal’s current rate is .16 cents a mile.

“People who file lawsuits have to put up these court costs,” LeBlanc said. “They usually turn around and tack it on to the people they sue.”

The price increase could bring in an extra $100,000 a year to the marshal’s office, he said.

The last cost increase was in 1998.

Councilwoman Teri Cavalier said the extra funds for the marshal’s office would necessitate fewer requests for money, but she wanted to compare rates charged by other cities before voting on the resolution.

The parish council will vote at tonight’s meeting to implement a pay raise plan for parish employees recommended by the Waters Consulting Group.

Councilman Billy Hebert introduced a motion – which failed – to delay any pay increases until the price of oil reaches $90 a barrel.

“When we discussed this the price of oil was high,” Hebert said.

“Waters has done an excellent job,” he said. “I would like to see it enacted. But we would have to give something that will be taken off later.”

Councilmen Johnny Pizzolatto and Joey Cehan supported Hebert’s motion, saying the local economy is tied to oil and is showing signs of a downturn.

But council members Cavalier, Kevin Voisin and Alvin Tillman countered that sales tax receipts are up in Terrebonne and the raises are overdue.

Hebert’s motion died on a 4-4-1 vote.