Wayne Breaux hands over the gavel, reflects on tenure

Baldwin was in “survival mode” during what outgoing Mayor Wayne Breaux called “a fair year.”
The mayor is retiring from the position he’s held since 1992, and from a public service position he’s worked at since 1975.
He went to work for Mayor Orville Longman that year writing grant applications. “I was freshly out of college,” Breaux said. “I was appointed assistant city clerk at that time too. It always helps to start at the bottom floor, and I’ve pretty much done everything in the office here.”
Two years later, he became city clerk. “I had some chances to leave Baldwin but by then I had gotten involved in the family business as well,” Breaux said. “This gave me the opportunity to do that and work for the people of Baldwin.”
He was elected mayor in 1991 after Longman retired. “It has been very rewarding,” he said. “It’s been tough at times, but you know that when you get into the political field. It’s just been an honor and indeed a pleasure to serve the people of Baldwin.”
In reflecting on 2014, Breaux said there is light at the end of the tunnel. “We’re beginning to pay off some of our debt and that will continue through next year,” he said. “Hopefully the economy will pick up and the sales tax collections will pick up as well. Kind of a question mark there, with the oil situation and the price of oil and the way it effects our economy down here.”
Sales taxes are life-blood to Baldwin, the majority of the little town’s funding source. “Hopefully the downturn in the oil field is only temporary,” Breaux said.
The last few years have been hard times for the mayor and Baldwin after a series of extenuating circumstances, including sales taxes. “It’s held its own but it hasn’t grown much, but expenses have, they continue to grow at a rate that’s higher than the increase of income,” he said. “You mix in our particular situation where we had some funds, especially $175,000 a year from the Chitimacha Tribe, that was not renewed. That’s pretty significant out of this budget, so we had to compensate for that. At the same time, we were having increase in debt and were kind of a victim of our success.”
The town was able to secure an $800,000 state grant for a new community center, but that only paid for a portion of a $2.1 million project. So $300,000 came from Baldwin’s surplus funds and debt of $900,000.
“It’s a natural situation that all communities are experiencing, increase in expenses and flat lining of revenues,” Breaux said.
Such grants as the one Baldwin secured for the community center come with deadlines: use it within that time period or lose it. Breaux said, “A bargain costs money. We’ve been very fortunate, I’m proud of the success we’ve had, getting grants, but they don’t pay everything. Most have matching requirements, some don’t pay administrative costs, and in almost every situation…it still does cost you money.”
While grants are available for construction projects, getting grants for personnel is rare. Breaux said there were first responder grants to buy equipment after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which Baldwin took full advantage of to augment the fire department. “But nowhere was there a grant to house that equipment,” he said. “We were fortunate to get a $1 million state grant to build a new fire station to house that equipment.”
There are few personnel grants. Breaux recalled when the COPS grants were common, grants which paid for police salaries in some circumstance, which Baldwin succeeded in doing. But those grants are also now rare.
“We’ve looked for (grants to hire) firemen, and there’s just nothing out there,” Breaux said. “The federal money and state money isn’t easy to get. Everybody’s tightening purse strings and it gets tougher and tougher.”
The last four years of his tenure have been toughest of all, Breaux said. “It looks like you’re not doing anything, but you’re actually working harder putting in more time…it’s a daily event to see where the funds will come from to just keep the status quo, to keep the services to citizens. I’ve always prided myself in trying to give our citizens the best bang for the buck, and I think I’ve done a pretty good job of that, maybe to a fault sometimes. But we have a somewhat poor community, and you just try your best to deliver services at the most economical way you can.”
Recreational needs are a constant struggle, Breaux said, because “you have two factions out there. One group thinks that every nickel you spend on recreation is a waste, and you have another that thinks every nickel you have should be spent on recreation. It’s one of the biggest acts to keep up with.”
Sometimes, Breaux noted, a mayor just has to look at the budget and decide what’s best for the budget versus what’s best for the community.
“You have that situation constantly, where almost every decision you make you have to weigh the good that it does and the funds that are available, he said. “That’s a tough thing to do. But in the situation we’re in that’s what you have to do.”
Baldwin’s water rates were historically low for decades. “It was necessary to get on board and make sure that the services we deliver…were being paid for,” Breaux said.
He hopes development will help along the Charenton Navigation and Drainage Canal and the industrial site. “I think it has great potential and I’m real anxious to see it developed and get under way,” Breaux said. “Jobs cure a lot of ills.”
Breaux hopes to see flood protect along Bayou Choupique soon, a project he’s worked on for years. “It’s a terrible thing to have to worry about flood waters coming into homes,” he said. “That’s the lowest part in town, and probably the only area that will have any trouble. If we can get this cured through this project, that’ll take care of any flooding issues in Baldwin in regards to hurricane floods.”
Even though he left office at the precipice of the new year, Breaux will continue helping to develop the fire substation near US 90 on Martin Luther King Street and others he’s been working on, including the latest attest in a very successful housing rehabilitation grant program and closing of railroad crossings in the town.
Breaux said incoming mayor Donna Lanceslin “will do a great job, she’s a fine person. I have told her that I will be available to assist her because it’ll be quite a learning process, but I think she’ll do well. Hopefully she’ll have the cooperation of the council as they have with me…as long as a councilman has the attitude that everything they do is for the betterment of Baldwin it usually works out.”