By T. Scott Boatright
Feeling solid progress was made in 2024, the Lincoln Parish Police Jury moved during Tuesday night’s first meeting of the calendar year to keep the same officers in place for 2025.
In a brief process overseen by Parish Attorney James Buckley, District 6 juror Glenn Scriber was reelected as LPPJ president and Greg “Big Coach” Williams from District 1 was reelected as vice president.
Parish Administrator Courtney Hall was also reelected to a two-year term in that position.
Those three were each the only ones nominated for their respective offices, so no actual vote was necessary.
Before moving on to other business, Scriber thanked his fellow jurors and said he felt the LPPJ had made progress in 2024 and that he was looking forward to continuing that trend in 2025.
“We gained a lot of momentum in the year 2024,” Scriber said. “Sometimes, it’s tougher to keep momentum going than it is to gain momentum. I truly believe that, because you’re excited about getting a few new things started and a lot of times, things tend to taper off.
“So my commitment to you is, we will keep everything in the forefront, we will be openly transparent and we’ll continue heading on in the (same direction). All the things we’re doing has us headed in a positive direction, so thank y’all for placing your trust in me and I pledge to do the very best I can in this mission.”
Things then shifted into a little unplanned “trash talking” so to speak, albeit in a positive fashion.
After Scriber thanked his fellow jurors, District 11 juror Diane Richards expressed her concern over ongoing litter problems.
“My people are still complaining about litter,” Richards said. “We started the year (2024, her first year as a juror) talking about getting a litter court, but we never did. It’s still out of hand.”
That led to a discussion involving planning to combat the parish’s litter problem and potentially raising fines for those caught dumping trash on roadways, which Richards said was what she was talking about.
The discussion determined that former parish attorney Amy Miller had been asked to look into legal matters involving trash, and Scriber said that Miller was concerned a big issue would be figuring out what legal entity would handle enforcing such matters.
Juror Logan Hunt said now might be a good time to take another look into the parish’s litter issues.
“Potentially, if we readdress the fines and potentially allocate some resources toward education, whether that means social media, press releases in the paper and the Journal as far as letting people know what the new fines would be,” said Hunt.
“Timing-wise this corresponds with Keep Lincoln Parish Beautiful in April. So if we start talking about it now — and nothing’s going to happen if we don’t talk about it — that’s something we can do. We can talk with our constituents and we can talk loud through our mouthpiece, whether it’s social media or whatnot, even the coffee shop.
“We can’t pick up enough. I would like to see this. I know we’ve increased the litter collection significantly over the last three or four years. And I know that the Sheriff’s Office has too. But even with all of that effort we’re not seeing a tangible effect. It’s affected us but it hasn’t affected anyone out there.”
Hunt said raising awareness and potentially raising fines for littering could change that.
But Scriber said there was another consideration.
“The issue before we had discussed (with Miller) was that if we sent them to city court, it’s already full and backed up and stopped up and would never make it to court,” Scriber said. “We had talked about getting a Justice of the Peace to do it. But (Miller) didn’t know if that was capable.”
Scriber then asked Buckley if he could look into the matter again and see if litter fines could be enforced without increasing the load of cases in city courts.
“I’d be happy to look into that,” Buckley said. “I’m sure there are options in district court, with misdemeanors, or something like that.”
Richards complained that she had gone to city courts but that when a parish litter offender was sentenced with community service for littering offenses reported by LPSO deputies, that community service was being done within city limits and not on parish roadways.
Juror Chris “Moose” Garriga questioned Richards about her assertions that those caught littering on parish roads were doing community services only within city limits, but Richards steadfastly held to her belief that was the way it was happening.
Scriber ended the conversation — which was not on Tuesday’s agenda and thereby couldn’t be acted on — by saying he still believes enforcement would be a problem.
“Who’s going to do it?” Scriber asked. “Who’s going to be writing the tickets. Overseeing it is going to be a problem. But keeping it in the forefront? Yes, we’ll absolutely do that, but it’s time to move on to new business (on Tuesday’s agenda).”
