Letter to the People of Avoyelles Parish about the Home Rule Charter

This letter is written to all the people of Avoyelles Parish, but especially to the residents who live in the towns and villages throughout our parish.

If you live within the city limits of Marksville, Plaucheville, Bunkie, Hessmer, Simmesport, Moreauville, Cottonport, or Mansura, I would ask you to think carefully about the upcoming vote on the Home Rule Charter. The question I ask is simple, why would you vote against the Home Rule Charter when you are already living under one?

Every one of these towns exists because of a charter approved by the State of Louisiana when the town was incorporated. Each town has a mayor who handles the day-to-day operations and a council that provides oversight and approval. The proposed Home Rule Charter for Avoyelles Parish works the same way. Instead of a mayor, the parish would have a Parish President, along with a council to represent the people. Some parishes, like Lafayette, even use the title Mayor-President. This is not something new or untested. It is the same form of government that many of us already live under.

Many of these municipal charters are very old. Marksville’s charter, for example, is nearly 200 years old, and recently it has been in the news because parts of it need to be updated. The reason towns can update their charters is because they have the authority to make changes locally when needed. The Police Jury system does not allow that. Under the Police Jury form of government, many changes require approval from the State Legislature in Baton Rouge, and that process can take a year or more.

A good example comes from Sabine Parish, which wanted to put term limits on Police Jurors to match the limits that apply to most other elected officials. Even after the voters approved it, the change still had to go through the Legislature, and the process took over two years. If Sabine Parish had been under a Home Rule Charter, that change could have been made locally in a matter of months.

If the Home Rule Charter is approved by the voters of Avoyelles Parish, future changes will be able to be made here at home by the elected Parish Council, just like town councils can do now, without having to go to Baton Rouge every time something needs to be updated. That means less delay, less cost, and more control by the people of this parish.

I have also heard people say the Charter is not perfect. That may be true, but no charter ever written has been perfect. The Constitution of the United States has been amended many times, and the Louisiana Constitution has been amended hundreds of times. The important thing is that under a Home Rule Charter, the people of Avoyelles Parish will have the ability to make changes when needed, instead of waiting on the Legislature to do it for us.

This vote is really about whether we want to continue doing things the same way we have always done them, or whether we want the ability to modernize our local government and make decisions here at home. The towns in our parish already have that ability. I believe the rest of the parish should have it too.

For that reason, I encourage the people of Avoyelles Parish to vote YES on the Home Rule Charter.

Allen Thomas
Avoyelles Parish Police Juror