Avoyelles Police Jury restarts work on private bridge

After a week of review and reflection -- and a district attorney’s opinion that it would be legal -- the Avoyelles Parish Police Jury authorized a bridge on private property to be repaired.

The decision to restart the work on a bridge over Bayou Tassin was approved on a 7-1 vote at the Oct. 8 meeting. Juror Mark Borrel said he was opposed to the project. Police Jury President Charles Jones, as he often does, chose not to vote on the issue.

The work had begun Sept. 30 but was stopped on Oct. 2 after jurors received complaints from citizens who believed the work was illegal.

The Police Jury entered into a “gentleman’s agreement” with the grandfather of the current property owner, Pete Oliver, approximately 30 years ago. The Olivers allowed the Ward 3 Water District to lay a water line through the property, and to use the bridge over Bayou Tassin as a support for that line, in exchange for the parish maintaining the bridge.

Ward 3 Water received a grant a few years ago that allowed it to lay the line under the bayou, so the bridge was no longer needed as a support for the line. However, the agreement was never canceled.

APPROVED IN 2017

Oliver came to the jury’s Road & Bridge Committee in early 2017 to ask that the parish repair the bridge, which had been damaged in the 2016 flood. The committee agreed, but said the project would have to be wait until several other priority repair projects were finished.

At the jury’s agenda-setting meeting on Oct. 3, several jurors were upset that the project had been stopped.

Jones said it was his understanding at that time that Oliver wanted nothing more to do with the Police Jury and would rebuild the bridge himself. Jones said he would personally pay half of the Police Jury’s cost for the project incurred to that point, just to put the issue to bed.

Jurors at that meeting said they wanted District Attorney Charles Riddle to attend the Oct. 8 regular meeting to discuss the matter before they made a final decision.

At the Oct. 8 meeting, Riddle said the work was legal based on the agreement that had been in place and observed for many years.

“If the Police Jury were to enter into this kind of agreement today, there would be cooperative endeavor agreements, hold-harmless provisions and such presented and adopted so everyone would know what was being done and why,” Riddle said after the meeting. “However, 30 or 40 years ago, things were done with a handshake.”

It was Riddle’s concern with the lack of written documentation about the agreement that caused Jones to pull the trigger on the bridge project in the first place.

Borrel said he was against repairing the bridge because “this is the third time in the past 25 years the Police Jury will have worked on that bridge.”

He said other property owners that allowed right-of-way for the Ward 3 water line did not have similar agreements to maintain private bridges on the property.

Riddle said one provision for the current work is that the Oliver family waives any future claim to a right for maintenance on the bridge under the 30-year-old agreement.

“This project will end that agreement,” he said.

That work was expected to restart this week.

Parish Civil Works Director Kevin Bordelon said the parish is using mostly salvage material on the project, which the Olivers agreed was sufficient.