By T. Scott Boatright
In a move to provide a more comfortable polling site for elections, the Lincoln Parish Police Jury approved a resolution changing the polling place locations for Precincts 10-04 and 10-05 during a special-called meeting Thursday evening in the LPPJ Conference Room at the Lincoln Parish Courthouse.
The old voting site for those two precincts was the unairconditioned Greenwood Recreation Center. The new voting site for voters in those precincts will be the Lincoln Parish Humanitarian Enterprises of Lincoln Parish (H.E.L.P.) Agency Building located on Mills Street in Ruston, just north of Northern Louisiana Medical Center.
That new voting site was once the location of the old Temple Baptist Church building before the “new” Temple Baptist Church facility was constructed off the eastbound Interstate 20 South Frontage Road.
“Most of you are probably aware that there are some issues using Greenwood Recreation Center as far as how air conditioning goes,” Parish Administrator Courtney Hall said. “We have an election coming up in June, so what we’d like to do is relocate that to the new H.E.L.P. Agency Building.”
The motion was passed unanimously.
Juror Annette Straughter made a statement shortly after the vote.
“I received a call pertaining to that (old polling site), and I called (fellow Juror Milton Melton, who represents District 10), and I just want to personally say that even though it was in District 10, I like how we all worked together to get this taken care of,” Straughter said. “That is how this Jury works.”
Jury President Glenn Scriber also lauded the decision.
“That was a really good thing,” Scriber said. “It showed that others (not in District 10) who followed the situation realized something needed to be done. So, it was a very united effort to try to make it a little more comfortable for the poll workers at the site as well as the people coming in to vote, because it was a pretty big mess the way it was. So, it is a really good thing.”
In other business, the Police Jury also authorized a Cooperative Endeavor Agreement (CEA) with the Lincoln Health Foundation for health care study tasks.
“We had a CEA with the Health Foundation that we started about two years ago for discussion about that study, and the CEA has expired,” Hall said. “It’s been expired for quite some time. There have been some other things that have come up pertaining to the relationship between the Foundation and the Police Jury in regard to the health care study, so we just need to redo the CEA with the Foundation.”
Authorization for the CEA was also approved unanimously.
