'Courthouse shuffle' now includes Coroner Office

When Avoyelles Parish Coroner Dr. James Bordelon suggested the Police Jury could save over $20,000 a year if his office could move into the courthouse, jurors started working to see how to make it happen.

At its Dec. 8 meeting, jurors revised the "musical chairs" plan to shuffle several agencies in the courthouse to add the coroner into the mix.

"We appreciate Dr. Bordelon taking the initiative on this," Police Jury President Kirby Roy said. "It will save us $19,200 in rental costs, plus the utilities for the current office. We estimate the total savings will be about $23,000."

Bordelon said the annual savings could be as much as $28,000

Under this plan, the coroner's office will move into the 2nd Floor space now occupied by the Avoyelles Sheriff's Office Civil Department. Both of those offices are "new players" to the shuffle that had been planned.
APSO Civil will move to the Rental Assistance (HUD) office and HUD will move to the Parish Permit Office, also on the 2nd Floor of the courthouse. The Permit Office will still be moving to the 1st Floor to take the Office of Emergency Preparedness' office, as previously planned.

This leaves OEP as the kid left standing when the music stops. However, Roy said OEP Director Joey Frank won't be homeless.

"We will move OEP into the Maintenance Building behind the Atrium," Roy said. "When the FEMA-funded 'safe room' building is completed, in about two years we believe, the OEP will move in there."

NO 'ONE-STOP SHOP'

The need for much of the moving around would have been avoided had the Police Jury followed through with its plans to purchase a vacant building near the courthouse to be used as a "one stop shop" annex for several parish agencies. That proposal was shelved after the jury decided it was not feasible to ask voters to approve a 1/4-cent sales tax to pay to remodel the third and second floors to address space and security concerns for the courtrooms and judges and provide more public restrooms.

That plan would have moved judges' offices to the 2nd floor to make room for the renovations on the third floor. Programs displaced by the judges' offices would have moved to the proposed annex.

The courthouse remodeling proposal was floated after voters soundly rejected a 1/2-cent sales tax to construct and operate a stand-alone "Justice Center" on La. Hwy 1 in Mansura.

The deck isn't quite finished being shuffled just yet.

"We still want to move our Veterans Affairs Office out of the Council on Aging and to the 1st Floor of the courthouse," Roy said.

Another option being discussed is to move the agency into the parish-owned LSU AgCenter building in Mansura.

The parish will save more in the coroner's budget by requiring all municipalities to pay for autopsies needed for cases within their city limits.

Roy said the City of Marksville has been paying for its autopsies, but the Police Jury has been paying the tab for autopsies in the eight smaller municipalities.

He said municipal officials have been notified by certified letter and by telephone conference of the change in billing.

"We will be seeking reimbursement of of about $44,000 for autopsies the municipalities should have paid for," Roy said. "We are not going to go back two or three years or more to see reimbursement. We will write those off. Starting in 2021, the coroner will bill the municipalities directly rather than us pay the bill and seek reimbursement."