Parish officials selected
ST. FRANCISVILLE — The West Feliciana Parish Police Jury appointed a new parish manager and jury secretary during a lengthy meeting Thursday night.
Without discussion, jurors unanimously voted to name John Hashagen to the parish manager’s post. He had been interim parish manager for operations since the 2008-11 jury fired Parish Manager Ambrose Sims on April 12.
Jury President Ricky Lambert said after the meeting that Hashagen, the former jury utilities supervisor, will continue at the salary approved when he was named interim manager.
Jurors appointed Finance Director Sherrel Johnson as the jury’s next secretary to replace longtime Secretary Sheila Smith, who is retiring effective April 30.
St. Francisville resident Becky Hilliard challenged jurors to explain why they did not promote Rolanda Robinson, since the former jury had named her assistant secretary last year to train under Smith as her replacement.
“Is that person not qualified?” Hilliard asked, questioning whether politics or personal feelings factored into the decision.
Other business included:
INTERIM JUSTICE: The jury voted to recommend St. Francisville lawyer Andrew D’Aquilla to the state Supreme Court as an interim justice of the peace for the parish. If appointed by the high court, D’Aquilla would succeed Dusty Bickham, who resigned effective Dec. 31.
D’Aquilla would not be able to run for the remainder of Bickham’s term when the governor calls a special election.
FINANCE REPORT: Johnson told jurors the jury finished a challenging financial year with operating surpluses in all of the funds for 2011 except for the solid waste fund that pays for garbage collection.
Collectively, the seven funds the jury administers had $1.65 million in revenues against $1.56 million in expenditures.
SEWER PROJECT: Jurors accepted their engineer’s recommendation to award a $3.1 million contract to Magnolia Construction Co., the low bidder, on a project to build a sewer system in the Independence area of the parish.
The long-awaited project is receiving $3.6 million in funding, most of it from grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development and the Community Development Block Grant programs. The jury also is selling $253,000 in sewer revenue bonds to Rural Development.