Are We Accidentally Standing In Our Own Way In Avoyelles Parish?

By Dr. Jay Callegari

Last night, I attended a meeting of the Avoyelles Parish Planning Commission in my role as a member of the Avoyelles Parish School Board. I went with respect for the commission and an appreciation for the job it is tasked with doing. The Planning Commission serves as the permitting arm of the Police Jury, and that responsibility matters. Ensuring compliance with Act 12, health department regulations, and land use standards helps protect our parish and the people who live here.

This column is not written to criticize the Planning Commission or the Police Jury. Instead, it is written to share an experience I had and to explain why it caused me to reflect on whether our collective mindset about growth and opportunity in Avoyelles Parish may need to change.

The School Board is currently building a new technical education facility. That fact alone deserves attention. We do not build community education centers very often in Avoyelles Parish. For most of us, it is a once-in-a-lifetime event. This project represents a rare opportunity to invest not just in a building, but in the future of our children and our local workforce.

This facility is designed to partner with local businesses and industries, giving high school students hands-on training so that when they graduate, they can move directly into the workforce. These students will become skilled employees, productive citizens, and taxpayers who contribute to the long-term stability of our parish.

This project also requires close coordination with the Police Jury. Adjacent to the community education center site, the Police Jury is developing a sports complex. Much of the infrastructure for both projects is shared. Electrical power, drainage, parking, water systems, and other core infrastructure elements are being constructed as joint-use assets.

At the meeting, I presented documentation showing that the School Board, using federal grant funds, is paying for this shared infrastructure. The funding for these projects was also coordinated by our current State Representative Daryl Deshotel. That infrastructure directly benefits the Police Jury’s project as well. In practical terms, the School Board’s investment is saving the Police Jury hundreds of thousands of dollars in infrastructure costs.

One of my reasons for attending the meeting was to ask whether the permit fees for the School Board project could be waived. The request was straightforward. We are using tax dollars to build a community education center, and at the same time, we are paying for infrastructure that benefits another public project. I believed it was reasonable to ask whether those permit fees could be waived so that as much money as possible could go back into improving the school itself for students.

When I asked the question, I heard murmurs from several commission members along the lines of, “We’ve never done that,” or “We don’t really waive permit fees.” I explained my concern plainly. Tax dollars are being used to build this. Charging permit fees in this situation amounts to taxing tax dollars so that another parish office can collect revenue. If nothing is built, the permit office collects nothing and the parish gains nothing. But when something is built, especially something that benefits the entire parish, the instinct should not be to treat it as a revenue opportunity.

To be clear, the discussion did not end without a constructive outcome. Ultimately, the Planning Commission voted to recommend to the Police Jury that if the third-party inspection company from Rapides Parish agreed to reduce its inspection costs, then the Planning Commission would reduce the School Board’s permit fees by the same percentage. The fees were not eliminated, but they were adjusted in a way that likely achieved the same net financial result for the School Board. From a financial standpoint, I probably accomplished what I needed to accomplish.

What stayed with me, however, was not the outcome, but the initial reaction. It was the sentiment. The hesitation. The instinctive resistance to flexibility. That reaction caused me to step back and ask whether our broader approach to growth and development in Avoyelles Parish may be working against us.

If someone wants to build a new community education center here, parish government should be asking, “How can we help?”

If a business wants to locate here, the question should be, “What can we do to make this work?”

If an existing business wants to expand, the response should be, “Let’s figure it out together.”

Education, commerce, small businesses, large employers, and public projects do not grow in a vacuum. They grow where government acts as a partner rather than an obstacle.

What I sensed at the meeting was not hostility. It was caution rooted in habit. A reliance on how things have always been done rather than a willingness to ask whether a different approach might serve the parish better. That may feel safe, but it does not lead to growth.

If Avoyelles Parish truly wants to grow, we need a culture within parish government that welcomes construction, encourages investment, and understands that long-term prosperity often requires short-term flexibility. Waiving or reducing fees for a public school that is already subsidizing shared infrastructure should not be controversial. It should be common sense.

This is not about blame. It is about mindset. We cannot say we want economic development, workforce training, and opportunity for our children while simultaneously placing unnecessary barriers in front of the very projects designed to deliver those things.

We have a rare opportunity in front of us with this technical education facility. My hope is that it also becomes an opportunity for reflection, and for adopting a new way of thinking about how parish government can help Avoyelles move forward.