St. Mary Parish - Community Involvement

Executive Summary   

The Long-Term Community Recovery (LTCR) operation in St. Mary Parish has initiated its activities and focus on community involvement and participation.  The initiative started as a systematic outreach strategy with the local elected officials. 

The LTCR office has contacted nearly 700 local businesses listed with the St. Mary Parish Chamber of Commerce. Team members have met regularly with the city mayors, most of the churches, and have met with the school board and superintendent several times.  The team set up several public meetings with the farmers’ association, fishermen, economic development offices, and several minority groups including the Chitimacha Indian Tribal council. 

The most effective outreach has been the involvement of non-governmental organizations, non-profit associations and community action agencies that actively reach out to a wide variety of individuals in this parish.  

The St. Mary Parish LTCR made the decision to use outside observers in order to provide an unbiased and independent assessment of the vision of long term recovery, and therefore remain detached from any insider relationship, politics, election promises, business and personal benefits to assess and report fairly. The result was the creation of an atmosphere of trust and collaboration between the state and the local parish, businesses and general citizens of each parish. 

In such an environment, the team saw excellent results by simply listening to some groups that may have felt left out and/or forgotten in this large-scale recovery effort. They were content to know that we were there to listen to their comments.  The experience in St. Mary shows that the same participants who felt furious and angry or even let down often left LTCR meetings with a positive sense of contentment, simply because they had their concerns heard.  This was apparent following meeting with teachers and students, minority constituencies, farmers, fishermen, tribal councils and especially the community action associations. 

Stakeholders

The plan for the St. Mary Parish has been compiles in close association and collaboration of the following stakeholders who visit our office and with whom we have regular weekly meetings:

• parish chief administrative officer
• parish president
• mayors of Franklin, Patterson, Baldwin, Berwick, Morgan City
• parish planner
• economic development officer
• city engineers from all major cities
• city of Franklin planning and zoning director
• director of Port of Morgan City
• president of the St. Mary Industrial Park Authority
• maritime administrator
• St. Mary Community Action Agency, Emergency Aid Center, East St. Mary Outreach, Oak Community Development Corporation, Matters of the Heart
• American Association of Retired People
• Chitimacha Tribe
• Rotary Club
• St. Mary Parish Chamber of Commerce
• St. Mary Parish Schools superintendent
• Louisiana Technical College
• St. Mary Seafood and Marina
• Natural Resource Conservation Service
• Frank Martin Farmers
• Memorial Airport management
• Franklin Financial
• Security Finance
• frequent meetings with public and the citizens of this Parish to hear their concerns

Other contacts

• Acadiana Regional Development District
• St. Mary Parish government
• St. Mary Parish Economic Development
• Morgan City
• Bernhard Mechanical Contractors, Inc.
• Transitional housing coordinator, St. Mary Community Action Agency
• Environmental Port Security Grant Application Review Team
• Planning & Zoning/Building, town of Berwick
• St. Mary Community Action Agency
• Housing Development, St. Mary Community Action Agency
• Port of West St. Mary
• St. Mary Seafood & Marina
• LJC Planning & Design
• Town of Baldwin
• Chitimacha Reservation
• city of Franklin
• city of Patterson
• Port of St. Mary
• St. Mary Parish Planning & Zoning
• Grey Construction
• USDA, Rural Development

Local Committee / Task Force

The LTCR team has made a serious attempt to attend any and all task force meetings, planning committees and parish level meetings concerning the hurricanes, including: 

• regular meetings with the chief administrative officer
• bi-weekly meetings at the parish administration office with the parish councilmen
• scheduled meetings with the drainage and levee committee

Input Events

• Scoping Meeting (November 2005)
• Governmental Workshop (December 2006) Twenty-eight elected officials including the Parish CAO and the State Senator took advantage of a good forum for discussing their vision for recovery.
• Louisiana Recovery Planning Day (January 2006) Thirty-seven individuals from all walks of life made their voices heard, including school authorities, farmers, community action agencies, Mayors, public, businessmen, bankers and evacuees from other parishes.

Day-to-day interaction with local decision-makers, general public

• St. Mary Parish team regularly attended the parish council meeting.
• Parish team members responsible for various functions and sectors keep a very busy schedule to meet local leaders, non-governmental agencies and citizens of the parish. Each individual dedicated more than 60 percent of their time to outreach with the public and 40 percent documenting the results.
• The storefront is located in front of the U.S. Post Office and the courthouse, which has facilitated the distribution of thousands of flyers and bulletins to the public.

Local leadership of implementation

The LTCR team has not approached any agency to discuss implementation nor has it given any local agencies a copy of the Recovery Plan. 

View the Parish Summary Page from Louisiana Planning Day (PDF)