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Permalink Reply by Max on June 5, 2012 at 3:24

Found this blog about DeSoto Parish, 2009.  Things were looking up for such a poor Parish.

http://www.fwbog.com/index.php?page=article&article=107

    The DeSoto Parish Police Jury, the parish’s governing body, has already received a lease bonus on the public’s landholdings, with $28.7 million dollars coming into the jury’s possession. They literally didn’t know what to do with the check when it arrived. The treasurer simply deposited the money into the general fund checking account. It would be two weeks before they met to decide what to do with it.

            The bulk of the money was eventually placed with a joint partnership of Community Bank of Louisiana and Whitney Bank of New Orleans.

            Apparently, all of the bank candidates bidding for the deposits would be required to pledge U.S. Treasury bonds against the deposits, according to Community Bank’s Dorroh. However, there was an issue regarding the availability of bonds to pledge against such a large transaction.

            “Our decision to partner with Whitney, rather than take on the whole $25 to $30 million deposit was based on two issues,” Dorrah said. “First, we didn't have the need for that big of a deposit with the growth we already enjoyed from the shale activity, and we had no way to, in turn, invest it all off profitably. Our loan to deposit ratio had already dropped to a 40 percent level due to previous growth. Second, when a bank takes on deposits in any form, it has to have capital to back it up (usually about 8 percent). Although we had sufficient capital, we had no idea as to the continued growth of deposits from the public and consumer sectors, so in a sense of conservatism we decided to participate in a joint bid.

            When the matter was discussed by the Police Jury, District 6 Juror Fred Jones, who has served several terms as juror from his district, said he didn’t want to spend it. “Let’s just keep it in the bank, use the interest and have the money so that this parish won’t ever have to be broke again,” he urged.

 

 

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Permalink Reply by Max on June 6, 2012 at 2:53

Several years ago the County Commissioners of our county passed an ordnance to limit the travel of large trucks on county roads. 

Enforcing this ordnance didn't work because they had to exempt delivery trucks to agriculture operations and 90% of the trucks using the roads were agriculture related.  They focused on individuals who drove trucks for a living and parked the trucks overnight at their residence. 

That didn't last long, after a few tickets were handed out, the drivers started attending Commissioner meetings, tattoos and all.  The Commissioners decided to lift the ordnance and review the possibilities of alternative means of addressing road damage.

How much damage does a truck cause to a road?  See below....

http://truecostblog.com/2009/06/02/the-hidden-trucking-industry-sub...

 

It seems obvious that the heavier the vehicle, the more damage it does to roads over time. A 40,000 pound big rig probably does a bit more damage than your average 3500 pound consumer vehicle, right? It turns out that vehicle road damage doesn’t rise linearly with weight. Road damage rises with the fourth power of weight, and this means that a 40,000 pound truck does roughly 10,000 times more damage to roadways than the average car [1]!

In other words, one fully loaded 18-wheeler does the same damage to a road as 9600 cars.

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Permalink Reply by Max on June 6, 2012 at 8:43

sesport,

I had to laugh because I've driven in the medium separating the lanes on I-20 before and it's in better shape than some of our roads....

Driving manuals instruct you to "Be Aware" of the traffic flow in front of your vehicle at all times.  Driving 85 MPH and fishing in the cooler for a beer located in the back seat, you can find out right quick you need a new lane, even if it's not paved. 

I have to tell you, when folks are sitting still on the interstate and you pass them in the grass, they kinda look at you funny.  Of course today, everybody has a cell phone, so you had better keep going and find a side road if you find yourself in such a predicament.

I think some of the roads in the Parish can't be fixed.  The Parish doesn't have enough money to build a road that would hold up under the traffic.  They will have to patch roads and listen to the griping until the trucks are gone.

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