Judge asks for appointee to indigent defender board

The St. Mary Parish Council meeting Wednesday featured several guest speakers who came before the governing body to deliver important messages about coming events in the community and the changing landscape of the parish judicial system.
The first to speak was Morgan City Court Judge Kim Stansbury on the topic of the need for council participation with the Morgan City Indigent Defender Fund Board. The request stems from a bill passed by the state legislature that established the indigent defender board and the board fund. Indigent defender is another term for a “public defender” who represents those defendants without the financial means to hire their own attorney.
The board will serve municipal courts in the 16th Judicial District and will take 30 percent of the court’s current fees to establish a separate public defender office for those courts. The move is intended to relieve the burden on the current indigent defender board.
Stansbury said the new law requires a council member to sit on the board.
“The member has to be a resident of Morgan City,” Stansbury said. “The legislation requires that 30 percent of the funds we collect in city court be paid into a Morgan City Indigent Defender Fund. That fund will be used to hire an indigent defender attorney to appear in city court. What I’m requesting is for you (parish council) to consider putting on the agenda for the next meeting the appointment of someone to sit on the board.”
The council said they would take Stansbury’s request under advisement.
The second guest speaker addressed a public health issue involving area youth and a local effort to help them make positive choices when it comes to high-risk behavior. Dr. Gail Hamilton, of Franklin, said an upcoming event would continue to try and educate the public about the fact that Louisiana ranks No. 1 in the country for adolescents with sexually transmitted diseases and No. 7 for teen pregnancy.
Hamilton said the effort, called “Project Connect,” has another brain-storming and work session coming up on Wednesday, Aug. 3, at the Bayou Vista Community Center from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
“Project Connect is an attempt to try and bring together the programs in this parish for our adolescents and young adults so we have a coordinated system of programs for our kids,” Hamilton said. “Our theory is if we develop effective new programs then we won’t have to worry about some of the new numbers we are seeing. We have a lot of great things going on in the parish and Project Connect is an attempt to bring those projects together and enhance or expand existing programs.”
The third guest speaker of the evening was local NAACP representative Willie Peters. Peters was on hand to address the need for members of the community and law enforcement entities to come together to generate a dialogue in light of recent, high-profile events around the country.
Peters said he had received positive feedback about the effort not only from local law enforcement but from law enforcement agencies at the national level as well.
“St. Mary Parish, along with the NAACP and other groups, are putting together what we are calling a law enforcement forum,” Peters said. “All the chiefs of police in St. Mary Parish have been invited. We have a representative coming from the FBI and someone coming from the justice department and from the state police. Too often we have been talking at each other and not with each other. We are trying to be proactive so maybe we can stem some of the things that have been happening. We want to open a dialogue between the community and the police.”
In other business, the council introduced two ordinances both dealing with speed limits in certain locations around the parish, including Verdunville Road.
The council also passed a number of resolutions including one authorizing Parish President David Hanagriff to enter into an agreement with a company regarding “energy efficiency improvements” to the parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.
Under new business, the council received a financial statement from the Acadiana Criminalistics Laboratory Commission. The council also reported they had received a letter from Cox Communications regarding the loss of certain channels and installation rate changes. There was also a request from Councilman Ken Singleton for $2,300 from Wards’ 5 and 8 sales tax fund to Recreation District No. 4 for the local girls’ softball program.