Young Foundation helps fund city projects; $150K going to wharf project

The H&B Young Foundation will again provide money to Morgan City in 2016 to help fund city projects, including a $150,000 donation to go toward redoing the city’s riverfront wharf.
The foundation “continues to be an asset to the city of Morgan City,” through its “millions of dollars” of contributions over the years, Morgan City Mayor Frank “Boo” Grizzaffi said.
H&B Young Foundation President Brenda Ayo said two brothers, Hugh Young and Byrnes Young, started the nonprofit foundation in 1955 with the purpose of benefiting Morgan City and its citizens.
“We’re happy to give money where we see the money being used in the way that we gave it for. And that’s what’s happening right now,” Ayo said.
The biggest single donation to the city this year is the $150,000 in funding for the city’s wharf project.
Construction began this fall on the roughly $1.7 million project to redo Morgan City’s riverfront wharf on the Atchafalaya River. The project involves replacing and extending Morgan City’s riverfront dock by 220 feet. The dock is currently about 800 feet long. Morgan City received grant money to fund the wharf project as well.
The foundation also awards scholarships to high school students and technical college students and gave LearnPad computers to all elementary public schools in Morgan City during the past few years, Ayo said.
In November, officials broke ground on the Hugh & Byrnes Young Marine & Petroleum Safety Training Center at South Central Louisiana Technical College’s Young Memorial Campus in Morgan City.
In September 2014, the foundation donated five acres of waterfront industrial property and a training pool building with an estimated value of $713,000 on which to build the center, according to a Young Memorial news release.
Several other city projects will also be funded in the coming year thanks to help from the foundation. The police department is set to receive $47,000 from the foundation for software upgrades to replace “a very antiquated system,” Grizzaffi said. The cost of the upgrades will total $94,000.
Morgan City is planning to host a Dixie Youth baseball tournament in 2016, and thus, the foundation is donating $15,000 to the city to upgrade lighting at Complex Park.
The Morgan City Petting Zoo, which opened during 2015 with the help of $10,000 in foundation “seed money,” will receive another $10,000 from the foundation for operation costs, Grizzaffi said.
The city is getting $25,000 from the Young Foundation to help operate its library, without which the city would have to close the library, Grizzaffi said.
Resurfacing of the Lake End Park walking trail is estimated to cost $50,000, and the Young Foundation put up $18,000 to go toward the project. That walking trail is more than 20 years old and in great need of resurfacing, he said.
Finally, the foundation will also provide $3,600 in funds to go toward catching, spaying and neutering almost 100 feral cats in the city this year, Grizzaffi said.
“It’s a humane way of helping out the feral cat population in our city,” Grizzaffi said.
The city will contribute funds to the projects for which it requested the foundation’s assistance, Grizzaffi said.