Evangeline Campus selection flawed; but LCTCS doesn't have to follow its own rules

Ken Grissom
ken.grissom@techetoday.com

St. Martinville – The Louisiana Community & Technical College System Facilities Corporation is standing pat on its selection of a St. Martinville site for the new Evangeline Campus of South Louisiana Community College despite significant irregularities in the selection process.
In a memorandum on behalf of LCTCS Facilities Corporation, Baton Rouge attorney Steven B. Loeb notes that the corporation is not a public entity. “Thus,” he writes, “the Corporation has the right to select whatever property it deems appropriate without compliance to any law applicable to public entities.”
According to the minutes of the LCTCS Facilities Corporation Board of Directors, the decision was made at the recommendation of – and based on scoring of the proposals by – its advisory committee consisting of Bill Obier, an employee of LCTCS Facilities Corporation, Chris Herring from the Board of Regents, Chris Whitmire from state Facilities Planning and Control, and Rudy Gonzales from SLCC.
The selection is ultimately subject to approval by the LCTCS Board of Supervisors, which is scheduled to meet today (June 11). The matter is not on the agenda at this time.
Approval of the LCTCS Facilities Board selection was on the agenda last month but it was removed after Pellerin Life Insurance Company of Breaux Bridge, which has made a competing offer to donate land, issued a formal protest of the selection process.
Pellerin Life Insurance Co., through its attorney, John B. Davis of Baton Rouge, asserts that the City of St. Martinville’s proposal was flawed because it did not own the land it was offering to donate, and city officials apparently violated a rule set down in the RFL (request for land): “Oral communications with the Board, the Corporation, the College or any person or entity connected with them are expressly prohibited...”
The Pellerins also questioned a scoring process that, using the criteria set out in the RFL, ranked the St. Martinville site above the Breaux Bridge site in proximity to other schools and a resident population, proximity to businesses serving students, and access from a major thoroughfare – this despite the fact that the Breaux Bridge property, adjacent to the new St. Martin School Board headquarters, is in the midst of the fastest growing part of the parish, nearest to two of the three public high schools, and just a mile off Interstate 10.
Pellerin Life Chairman of the Board Ray Pellerin said when he quizzed the scorers about the proximity to schools, they noted that the St. Martinville property is just a mile from St. Martinville Sr. High while his property is about four miles from Breaux Bridge High School. “What about Cecilia?” Pellerin asked. “Where’s Cecilia?” was the reply, he said.
Pellerin said he was told that neither Cecilia High School nor the burgeoning population of the Cecilia and North Bridge area – nothing north of I-10, in fact – was considered by the scoring committee.
At last count there were 717 students at SMSH, 793 at Breaux Bridge High and 741 at Cecilia.
The land being offered by the city is in a cane field across Moore Avenue from the International Trade Center (the old Martin Mills), which also made an offer. The ITC offer, despite being right across the street from the city-sponsored site, scored lowest on the above criteria.
The cane field is owned by Levert-St. John. A minimum requirement set down in the RFL states that the “Land must be free and clear of any liens and title restrictions and immediately ready to begin transfer to the state upon award.”
When the proposals were made in February, Levert-St. John was only offering “...to pursue the sale and possibly consider donation of a site...”
The deadline to respond to the RFL was Feb. 3, but in March Levert-St. John was still balking at donating the land until it received assurances from LCTCS that the property would be accepted.
On April 17 the LCTCS Facility Corporation’s board voted nonetheless to select the City of St. Martinville’s site.
In announcing the selection, Mayor Thomas Nelson made the off-the-cuff statement – albeit from the dais in a public meeting – that the city had been forced to “lie” on its proposal because of the ownership problem. Then and in previous public appearances, Nelson said that the selection of St. Martinville was assured by previous LCTCS President Joe May – who departed the post Feb. 28 – and other unnamed persons with LCTCS, all of whom, he said, cited the involvement of the late state Rep. Sydnie Mae Durand in passing the legislation creating funding for a new facility.
Durand had specified that the new Evangeline Campus be built in St. Martinville on the footprint of the existing campus on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. But Dr. Natalie Harder, SLCC chancellor, deemed the site too small and too bound by the surrounding neighborhood for the new campus.
When two successive requests for land, in September and October 2013, yielded no response, Harder made an appeal at a meeting of the Breaux Bridge Kiwanis Club, saying the parish could lose the campus altogether if no land offer emerged. The law had since been amended to allow the new campus to be built anywhere in upper St. Martin Parish, so Frank Pellerin, president of Pellerin Life, offered up land in Breaux Bridge – an offer that was quickly followed by the two St. Martinville area proposals.
The $9.2 million in funding for the new Evangeline Campus is part of some $198 million LCTCS was authorized to raise via state revenue bonds by Act 391 of 2007. Last year the legislature authorised another $288 million. State Treasurer John Kennedy was critical of the measure, warning that circumventing the state’s capital outlay process to raise such funds could hurt Louisiana’s credit rating.
And Jim Purcell, Louisiana commissioner of higher education, said the LCTCS building spree would impose $20 million in annual debt payments over the next 20 years on the state’s general fund.
Directors of the private corporation overseeing these projects are Stephen C. Smith of Schriever (chairman), Lambert C. Boissiere Jr. of New Orleans, Billy Montgomery of Bossier City, U. Gene Thibodeaux of New Orleans, and E. Edwards Barham of Oak Ridge.