SULPHUR — A proposed agreement with the Calcasieu Parish Police Jury dominated discussion at Monday’s meeting of the Sulphur City Council.

The agreement calls for the city and parish to each contribute $315,000 to a Swisco Road area sewer system. The council voted to approve a resolution authorizing Mayor Chris Duncan to enter into the agreement, but postponed the vote on another resolution that authorizes advertisement of bids for the project until next month’s council meeting.

“I think what we’ve got is a pretty good cooperative agreement,” said councilman Randy Favre. “It is going to benefit us in the long run. We will make our money back. We will make it back in anywhere from 4-6 years.”

Mayor Chris Duncan asked for more time.

‘I sent a lot of questions to (parish attorney) Allen Smith,” he said. “We still have a lot more questions. We don’t think this agreement is ready. We would like a little more time to analyze it, have the city attorney look at some different items that we brought up. We would kindly ask that this item be placed on the August agenda so we can have some more time to work it out. There is not going to be any rush in this. I strongly recommend that we wait until August.”

Resident Charlie Atherton spoke against the agreement.

“The parish has made it quite clear in their past meetings that anything the parish is involved in, they will control 100 percent,” he said. “When you read this cooperative endeavor, it looks like something somebody’s ex-wife wrote. There is no wiggle room for the city whatsoever. If the city absolutely has to do this project, my recommendation would be to go ahead and annex the property and the city take on the entire project because overall it is going to be less money to you. The only requirement if you take it on, you would have to have those developers pay for the capacity of the sewer plant right up front. It is in the city’s interest to just cut the parish out and do the whole $630,000. Somebody paid more for one of them lots over there that is going to benefit from this. These cooperative endeavors with the parish are not in the best interests of the city or the city residents, especially since it is outside the city.”

Representatives from Progressive Waste, the city’s new trash collector, discussed problems encountered during their first two weeks of service in the city. Duncan said residents needing to get rid of cans provided by previous collector, Allied, should place the carts at the curb and call city hall so Allied can pick them up.(American Press Archives)