Dissention raised over T’bonne storm cleanup contract

Terrebonne Parish’s recent past loomed over the Terrebonne Parish Council’s Public Services Committee and regular council meetings last week.

Drainage ditches in the parish are still filled with silt and debris caused by hurricanes Gustav and Ike that need to be removed, leading to a disagreement over whether to do the cleaning in-house using parish staff or to contract out the work.

To do the job, the parish received low bids on Oct. 21 from the Ohio construction firm TolTest, Inc. for $12,302,000 and from Peake Construction of Slidell for $5,324,000, plus other fees. The contractors would have 90 days to complete the work.

Four other contractors had submitted bids.

Parish Public Works Director Greg Bush opposed accepting the two bids, saying his own staff could complete the work by May 31.

Bush said the parish could perform the cleaning cheaper, but the main reason for wanting the work done in-house was that the parish stood a better chance of being reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“My concerns are reimbursement,” he told the committee.

He said one of the reasons for trying to contract out the cleaning was that the department feared a third hurricane would threaten Terrebonne.

Bush determined which ditches needed cleaning by driving around the parish with an employee.

Only some areas can receive reimbursement from FEMA, such as a place where a tree fell a certain way, he said.

Bush said the parish would have to provide monitors to oversee the cleaning done by contractors. Doing the work in-house would require no monitors.

In addition, the state is using in-house crews to do clean-up work, he told the committee.

“The easiest thing for me to do would be to award contracts, but what if you’re not reimbursed?” he said.

But several council members asserted that the cleaning would not be completed if the work is done in-house.

“It won’t get done if you do it the way you want to do it,” Councilman Clayton Voisin told Bush. “The ditches won’t get clean.”

“We have located the problems, found the low bidders,” Voisin said. “They’re ready to go to work. Now you say you can do it in-house. I’m here to tell you it will not get done.”

Voisin said the parish would have to pay one of the contractors an extra million dollars if the company is not paid on time.

The clean up is needed to ensure water is drained, he said, comparing parts of Dulac to a third-world country because of the damage inflicted by the recent hurricanes.

He asked why other parishes, like St. Charles, can clean up its debris quickly.

“Our economy is great, yet we don’t have money to get it done right,” he said.

Council members Teri Cavalier, Billy Hebert and Alvin Tillman supported Voisin.

“Look at past behavior,” Cavalier told Bush. “The ditches won’t get done. It’s not about you (Bush).”

At the parish council meeting on Wednesday, a Montegut resident told the council that some ditches in south Terrebonne have not been cleared of debris from Hurricane Lili and Tropical Storm Isadore in 2002.

Kevin Voisin, a candidate for the District 6 parish council seat, told the council he wants to see the ditches cleaned, but he had a problem with the fact that awarding the contracts would be voted on as an add-on to the agenda. The council needs a unanimous vote in favor for an add-on to be listed, giving the public less time to review the proposal.

“People should have time to look it over. It just looks funny,” he said.

“We have time to do it the right way,” he said. “Nobody wants to vote against cleaning up ditches. I don’t see anything nefarious here. I dislike the motion to add-on.”

Cavalier said she also objects to add-ons (she sank a later, unrelated add-on proposal with a nay vote), but said the ditch-cleaning contracts were discussed thoroughly at the Public Services Committee meeting, and for several weeks before then.

The council voted to add-on the motion to award the contracts to Peake Construction and TolTest, then voted in favor of the motion with only Councilman Johnny Pizzolatto opposed.