DON’T PAVE OUR PARK!

Opelousas Deserves a Voice Before the Bulldozers Roll Again

UPDATE December 1: The groundbreaking is yet to be scheduled.

Any day now, the City of Opelousas is planning to hold a ceremonial groundbreaking for the proposed “multipurpose community center” in South City Park. I plan to be there, but city leaders already know where I stand.

What matters now is whether you will be there, and what message they see when they look out at the crowd.

Because unless we speak up, Opelousas is on the verge of making an irreversible mistake: demolishing a historic WPA-era pool complex and paving over green space without public input, without transparency, and without meeting federal requirements that are supposed to protect communities from exactly this kind of reckless decision.

1. DEMOLITION WITHOUT REQUIRED FEDERAL REVIEW IS NOT LEGAL

The bathhouse and pool were built in 1939 by the Works Progress Administration—a historic public asset over 80 years old.

Any federally funded project that affects a historic structure must go through:

Section 106 review¹ under the National Historic Preservation Act
Public notice and public comment
Consultation with the Louisiana State Historic Preservation Office²
Evaluation of alternatives (including sites that don’t require demolition)

None of this was done.

No public notice.

No hearings.

No historic review.

No alternatives analysis.

That is not just bad practice—it violates federal law attached to the funds they are using.

2. THE CITY CHOSE THE MOST EXPENSIVE AND RISKY SITE

If the goal is to build a gym or community center, there are multiple city-owned parcels that could host it with:

no demolition costs
no hazardous materials
no historic review
no environmental review
better drainage
lower site-preparation costs

Instead, the City chose:

a site requiring demolition of a sturdy WPA building
the removal of healthy, mature trees
potential drainage issues for surrounding areas and Bayou Tesson
more expensive foundations and earthwork
legal risk under federal environmental laws that could cause clawback of funding
a more costly construction path

Under federal law 2 CFR 200.404, all federally funded projects must demonstrate “reasonable costs.”³ Since this project is monitored monthly with payments disbursed via invoices rather than upfront, an audit six months from now could identify issues and halt funds, potentially requiring the return of spent funds.

As of today, the city has received no money from the state. The process for payments to the contractor will hinge on the city’s acceptance of invoices for work done, followed by the state agency’s approval and verification of work. With this system, checks to the contractor are issued by the city after the state disburses funds. It’s often a slow and complicated process with many approval and verification speed bumps. I have post-Katrina experience as a contractor on federally funded programs administered by the state to municipalities, and this multi-step process can lead to slow payments. I hope the Lafayette-based contractor realizes this.

3. THEY NEVER ASKED THE PUBLIC WHY WE USE SOUTH PARK, WHAT WE WANT OR NEED

There has been:

No park user survey
No citywide needs assessment
No analysis of youth sports demand
No demographic or enrollment trend data
No public workshops or listening sessions

Opelousas is making multi-million-dollar decisions without one shred of unbiased research. I’d refer you to the construction manual and bid documents that describe the project in detail, but the city never posted the request for proposals on their Advertisement for Bids page.

A project built on assumptions, whim, and envy for what wealthier communities have rather than evidence is destined to fail—and to cost taxpayers even more in the long run.

4. THE PARKS & RECREATION COMMISSION—REQUIRED BY LAW—HAS NOT MET FOR FIVE YEARS

The city charter requires an independent Parks & Recreation Commission to guide decisions on:

park investments
all planning and new facilities
public processes and input
setting annual budgets, programming and policies
maintenance and upkeep

This body has been dormant since 2019.

Instead, decisions impacting the future of our parks—and millions of dollars—are made by a small, insular group of people, with no citizen oversight, no transparency, and no accountability.

5. ALL OF THIS IS HAPPENING WHILE THE CITY FACES A $1.85 MILLION HOLE IN ITS BUDGET

The city lost $1.85 million in revenue due to a four-month lapse in sales tax collection—an internal control failure because no one on the city’s payroll read the Legislative Auditor’s report for 15 years.

Instead of correcting course, tightening spending, or creating a public plan to stabilize finances, city leaders are:

taking on new long-term operational costs
committing to expensive facilities
draining half of ODDD’s sales tax revenue for 10 years
ignoring the budget crisis

This is not resilience.

It is not planning.

It is financial mismanagement at the moment we can least afford it.

WHAT YOU CAN DO: SHOW UP!

At this month’s ODDD meeting, a ceremonial groundbreaking “hopefully on December 2 at 10am” was discussed, but I’ve seen no announcements, and it’s not happening on that day. Ideally, they’ll post the plan. Then again, I suspect they only want to alert the news media and the small group of city and regional leaders who want to pave South Park into a plastic grass sports complex like Youngsville’s. Watch Historic Opelousas and Opelousas Downtown Development District Facebook pages for an announcement, and if I learn more, I’ll update this post.

In the meantime, city leaders need to see that this community values:

parks
green space
historic places
fiscal responsibility
the input and voice of the public

This is not about politics.

This is about our home—our most beautiful and inviting neighborhood park—our future.

Post comments on social media. Talk to your friends and neighbors. Show up. Bring a sign. Bring friends. Bring your voice.

Here are some simple sign ideas:

“DON’T PAVE OUR PARK”

“SAVE SOUTH CITY PARK”

“NO DEMOLITION WITHOUT PUBLIC INPUT”

“WHERE IS THE PARKS & REC COMMISSION?”

“LISTEN TO THE COMMUNITY”

“HISTORY MATTERS”

“THIS IS NOT COST-EFFECTIVE”

Stand quietly, but talk to the people there. Stand respectfully. Stand firmly.

Let them see that Opelousas is about all the people, not just a select few. That parks are for people of all ages and abilities. Natural spaces and learning about nature and gardening are the prerequisites for children’s health and well-being, and are more critical to developing life skills than indoor competitive sports.

Let them see that decisions made about our parks must include the people who actually use them!

If we don’t show up, they will say no one cared.

But we do care.

And this is the moment to prove it!

A photo by the author shows a south-facing rendering of the Conceptual Master Plan, created in 2022, which the city and ODDD continue to use while spending more money than ever in Opelousas’s 300-year history on non-infrastructure projects. This plan has never been published on the city’s or ODDD’s websites. To see it, you must visit the offices of St. Landry Economic Development on the I-49 Service Road, three miles from downtown. The plan proposes paving a large portion of the park’s natural green spaces for poorly researched sports facilities. Since no unbiased studies have been conducted, all decisions are based on whim and opinion rather than facts, surveys, or guidance from the legally mandated but unappointed Parks & Recreation Commission, the citizen-led “board of directors” for all public parks. This excessive spending and exclusionary planning reflect a severe neglect of duty by the city and ODDD.

This part of the park is one of the most popular and well-utilized areas. These swingsets are for kids only, and the one on the left was built in 1939. Everything you see in this photo will be demolished.

View of the current state of the pool. It’s in remarkably good shape, and there is no publicly available research indicating what it would cost to restore it. It is the largest pool in the city, and when it was constructed, it had its own well. The building is sturdy and in good condition. It was built with old-growth lumber and cinder blocks that are stronger than those available today. If demolished, it should be deconstructed and the materials salvaged.

Rear view of the pool complex. Everything in this photo will be demolished.

The site is popular for events and quiet contemplation. The walking path has become the most used feature in the park, attracting hundreds of walkers of all ages daily, many from nearby communities.

The Financial Cliff: Why Opelousas City Government Can’t Afford a 17,000 Square Foot Gymnasium

Design Failures, Federal Noncompliance Liabilities, and the Fiscal Reality We Can’t Ignore

Opelousas stands at the edge of a financial cliff. It’s not a metaphor. Between the city’s $1.85 million loss of sales tax revenue (updated 11-17 after City Council meeting), historic cuts to federal food assistance, inflation, rising insurance and housing costs, and a destructive federal shutdown, the economic floor is crumbling beneath our feet. This isn’t a short-term squeeze. It’s a systemic threat to the city’s future—and it’s being ignored in favor of ongoing, unaffordable vanity projects in South City Park.

The next step toward the financial cliff is the proposed “community center” now being hastily pushed forward without full public input, transparent financial planning, or credible alignment with its federal funding source. It stands as a symbol of bad planning, mediocre design, and poor governance.

What was originally a 17,000-square-foot double gymnasium in the South Park Conceptual Master Plan for a sports complex was quickly rebranded as a multi-use community resilience center to comply with the federal Capital Projects Fund (CPF) guidelines.¹ These guidelines require the facility to offer a variety of services and flexible spaces for technology access and community programming, all of which must be provided free of charge to the public.

Federal CPF requirements emphasize digital equity and community technology access, but the current design lacks structured wiring, IT closets, or dedicated broadband access areas. There is also no indication that co-working, telehealth, or digital literacy spaces are included in the interior layout. Additionally, the application to the state fund manager depends on loosely verified claims of public-private partnerships to justify the grant.

Federal funds like CPF are a bureaucratic minefield that only the hardiest of administrators handle well. At this week’s ODDD meeting, the paid lobbyist working on the project admitted they’ve been meeting weekly with the state to revise five sections of the application to meet US Treasury requirements, including design features and the production and proper retention of required support and verification documents.

Having experienced the floods and losses of Hurricane Katrina firsthand, I understand how challenging federal compliance can be. The scariest scenario is that if a failure or compliance violation is discovered after the center is built, the city could be responsible for repaying the funds. Given our history, it’s wise to assume this is a real risk going forward.

Despite being designed for sports, there are no showers, lockers, changing rooms, or much storage for equipment. Yet the city and ODDD believe this facility will attract travel league and other tournaments. With such significant design gaps, how can this building compete for tournaments when it lacks features every school gymnasium has? Since no unbiased research was conducted, no one truly knows if this facility could attract paying users.

The project’s other design flaws are more than just cosmetic and will increase operational costs and expenses that were not estimated during the initial planning. Failure to specify high-efficiency HVAC systems and design, and using dark metal cladding in a hot climate like South Louisiana, will increase energy bills, strain long-term maintenance budgets, and weaken claims of environmental or financial sustainability.

The plans also lack site-specific stormwater management features, even though the park is vulnerable to erosion when runoff drains toward Bayou Tesson. The building will generate nearly two acre-feet (more than 650,000 gallons) of runoff annually, yet features no window awnings, no rainwater buffers, and no designs that integrate the building’s voluminous runoff into the (mostly clogged) existing drainage system in ways that won’t overwhelm nearby streets and neighbors.

These choices reflect the same disregard that has defined this administration’s handling of parks, planning, and public trust: no Parks & Recreation Commission, no community workshops, no unbiased research, no cost-benefit analysis, and no meaningful space for public voice. Instead, the process has been top-down, opaque, and dismissive—a local government acting more like an autocracy than a steward of public dollars.

This isn’t just about bad design. It’s also about federal compliance and failures that could come back to haunt the city even after the money is spent. Based on federal rules outlined in 2 CFR Part 200 and Capital Projects Fund guidelines, this project likely fails to meet minimum standards for cost reasonableness, historic preservation, public input, and sustainability. It may also run afoul of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, given the landmark WPA bathhouse and pool slated for demolition.

Because federal funding requires most usage to be free, how will the city cover operational and maintenance costs, which are likely to exceed $100,000 a year (excluding staffing) and put further pressure on the budget?

This isn’t resilience or good governance. It’s a retreat from reality, the public, and financial responsibility.

In these increasingly challenging times, leadership involves more than ribbon-cuttings. It requires a commitment to truth, transparency, and long-term community well-being, with a priority of making Opelousas a well-managed place where people want to live. As I’ve stated before, too many of the individuals behind these costly plans do not reside here, and some of them are among the city’s and parish’s highest-paid employees. Is it too much to ask that we all share a vision of Opelousas as a place where people want to live, and let that guide us?

Before another dollar is spent, this project must be reevaluated for compliance, relocated to a more appropriate and less destructive site, redesigned for efficiency, affordability, and sustainability, and re-grounded in the public interest it claims to serve.

Because the only thing worse than walking blindly off a cliff is dragging a city with you.

The footnote below is the language of (and links to) the US Treasury Department that describes what funds can be used for. Note that the pictures are screenshots from the public bid documents, which were not posted on the city’s Advertisements for Bids page. Like the South Park plans, the bid docs remain missing from the city’s website. These plans and this spending are being done without the legally mandated oversight of the yet-to-be-appointed by the mayor Parks & Recreation Commission. The construction bid proposals are due and will be opened at City Hall on October 30 at 2pm.

Multi-Purpose Community Facility Projects: the construction or improvement of buildings designed to jointly and directly enable work, education, and health monitoring located in communities with critical need for the project. ↩︎

Site plan from public bid construction manual. Every X is a tree or shrub to be cut. Note the entire pool complex is set to be “removed” and the walking path re-routed.

Floor plan from the public bid construction manual. Note the lack of lockers, showers, and storage. The bathrooms are small and there are no designated flexible areas to comply with federal guidelines that the building accommodate “work, education, and health monitoring.” It’s a gym, and lacks the functionality and flexibility of most school gyms, making its use for tournaments questionable.

The Real Game in Opelousas Isn’t Football — It’s Accountability

A Letter to the Opelousas City Council Regarding the Absence of a Parks & Recreation Commission, October 14, 2025

Councilman Gilbeaux (and Colleagues):

Thank you for raising the issue of the absence of a Parks & Recreation Commission at the last Council meeting. You were right to bring it forward. A functioning Commission is not a formality—it’s the mechanism that ensures fairness, transparency, and public participation in decisions that affect every neighborhood and age group.

Today, Opelousas faces difficult choices. The new 17,000-square-foot “community center,” essentially a two-court gym, will add substantial operating and maintenance costs to the city’s strapped budget, on top of the new stadium’s ten-year $632,000 annual bond payment. Together, those facilities could approach $900,000–$1 million in yearly obligations—before staffing or programming. And the timing couldn’t be much worse.

With the shutdown of the federal government well underway, Opelousas will suffer disproportionately compared to wealthier communities, making the ongoing capital investments in youth sports facilities, in an era of declining birth rates and enrollment, doubly troubling. Never before has citizen participation and oversight been more necessary. Here are conservative figures for you to ponder as you work to manage the city’s shaky budget:

Indicator	Estimate	Notes
Population	15,750	2023 Census Data
Opelousas Median Household Income	$28,000	LA median $60,000, St Landry $42,000, US $80,000,
Poverty Rate	35%	Among highest in Louisiana
Percent of households under $30,000	60%	Most citizens are barely getting by
Renter Households	57%	Majority are cost-burdened
FY 2025 Budget Gap	$1.4m to $2m	4 months of sales-tax shortfall
Stadium & Track Bond	$632,000 / year	10-year ODDD obligation
Total New O&M Burden	≈ $900k–$1M / year	Debt + maintenance

Feeding families is economic development. The shutdown is already significantly impacting local food security and the local economy. Loss of SNAP and WIC dollars will exacerbate hunger, hurt local grocers, and shrink tax revenues. If the shutdown lingers, the impacts will be grave. Using conservative estimates of the number of people using SNAP and WIC, here’s how that looks:

Federal Nutrition Program Impact on Opelousas

Program	Estimated Beneficiaries (City)	Monthly Local Spending Loss in Local Economy	6-Month Shutdown Loss	Total Economic Activity Lost¹
SNAP	≈ 4,500 individuals, 30% of the population (~1,700 Households)	≈ $550,000 or under $125 per month per recipient	≈ $3.3M	≈ $5–6M
WIC	≈ 2,000–2,500 participants	≈ $250,000	≈ $1.5M	≈ $2.5–3M

¹Every $1 in benefits generates roughly $1.50–$1.80 in total local economic activity. Combined potential 6-month loss: ≈ $7–9 million—comparable to one full year of Opelousas’s sales-tax receipts.

An expensive-to-maintain and operate high school football and track stadium, along with an oversized basketball gymnasium, destabilizes our fragile economy and faltering budget. Paving South Park to transform it into a high-end limited-use sports complex will not cause anyone to stay here or to move here. Dependable infrastructure, clean water, good housing, and economic opportunities are what drive quality of life.

Every dollar spent on South Park sports plans is a dollar not available to invest in youth development in life-skills programs, tutoring, trades apprenticeships, or arts, music, and culinary education, which often have higher “bang-for-buck” in communities where children lack access. And who can afford the $20 ticket price collected at last week’s games? Are projections (if they exist) based on potential ticket revenue?

The ODDD, formed as a business development organization, mortgaged a decade’s worth of sales tax revenue, accruing more than a million dollars in interest and limiting the city’s ability to fund programs essential for building economic resilience and a better future for all Opelousas citizens. I call them the Opelousas South Park Sports Development District.

Over the ten years of that ODDD debt obligation, SLPSS student enrollment is projected to drop by 4,000. Due to the lack of citizen oversight and failure to conduct non-partisan research, the mayor and ODDD are planning and spending for a narrow demographic that not only doesn’t exist now but won’t exist in the future. The Opelousas they are building is based on memories and on desires to have what nearby wealthier communities have, not on a vision guided by science, data, and community input.

Re-establishing the Parks & Recreation Commission is a fiscally responsible way to realign priorities with community needs. It would give the Council a structured, citizen-based advisory process to guide maintenance, programming, and equitable access across all districts.

Right now, every major city project—from the stadium to the community center to City Hall to the library—is being designed by the same Lafayette firm hand-picked by the mayor. That’s not how public procurement is supposed to work. The Council and the people of Opelousas have had no opportunity to compare costs, credentials, or design philosophy. The total spent on these services remains hidden from public view.

This lack of process invites misuse and guarantees inefficiency. The first step in restoring accountability is to re-establish the Parks & Recreation Commission, followed by transparent procurement reform.

City government investment in high school sports is folly. High school sports are, and should be, the responsibility of school systems. We are all on this ship, and we all can help set a better course. Citizen participation is built into the city charter, if only the administration would adhere to it. Let’s do the right thing and reinstate the Parks & Recreation Commission.

Thank you again for your leadership on this issue. Please keep pressing for the Commission’s reinstatement—it’s an essential step toward building a more balanced and sustainable Opelousas.

Note: This post was updated on October 15, 2025 with information provided by the city accountant at last night’s meeting. The hole in the city budget, caused by the failure to hold a timely vote to renew the sales tax that expired on May 31, will likely reach $2,000,000 —a gap unlike any the city has faced in the modern era. This adds weight to the argument that adding more overhead via new, limited-use facilities that produce little or no income is fiscally and morally irresponsible.

Donald Gardner Stadium on September 11, 2025. A $10,000,000 investment that represents the largest non-infrastructure expenditure in city history.

Lavish Dreams, Empty Coffers: A Reckoning in Opelousas

By Stephen C. Picou (May 1, 2025) For over a generation, Opelousas has relied on a one-cent sales tax to fund nearly a third of its annual operating budget. That tax expires on May 31, 2025, and reinstatement requires a yet-to-be-scheduled public vote. This week, the mayor called for a special meeting of the City Council to continue public notice in support of a ballot initiative to renew the tax. But it’s a classic scenario of too little, too late to stop the cut, because this situation should have been addressed years ago.

How did we end up in this position? It’s not complicated. All city leaders had to do was read the Legislative Auditor’s annual financial report, which plainly states that the tax will expire in 2025. However, those entrusted to plan responsibly repeatedly overlooked this fact.

Over the past fifteen years, under the heading of Sales and Use Tax, the audit shared the following: “Proceeds of the 1% sales and use tax was initially levied by authority of a special election held on April 5, 1975, and was extended through May 31, 2025.” This statement does not hide in footnotes or small print; it is part of the main body of the report. Yet, until March of this year, no one at City Hall flagged it as an urgent concern.

One glaring reason for this oversight is clear: for the past three years, city leaders have been consumed by an ambitious and costly plan to transform serene and bucolic South City Park into a busy, commercially supported, paved-over, high-end sports complex. Fueled by city funds and special sales tax revenue from the Opelousas Downtown Development District (ODDD), this project became their fixation, while more pressing fiscal responsibilities were neglected.

Some of us expressed serious concerns early on, warning that the plan was overpriced, poorly justified, and pushed forward with little transparency or public input. Instead of addressing our concerns, officials dismissed them—and us.

In November, as it became clear that substantial cuts to federal funding for social safety nets were imminent and could devastate Opelousas, the mayor rejected calls to prepare the city by reducing costs on South Park initiatives. He insisted on “staying the course” with the extravagant park development plans, the most expensive non-infrastructure project in the 300-year history of Opelousas.

In the days leading up to Mardi Gras, someone—whose identity remains unknown—must have finally reviewed the annual Louisiana Legislative Auditor report on the city’s finances and discovered the impending May 31 fiscal cliff. It wasn’t until April that the council could initiate the required public notice period.

When the tax expires on May 31, potentially severe cuts will soon follow. Who and what might be on the chopping block are issues that have yet to be discussed publicly.

Though I, too, was unaware of the looming expiration, my advocacy for fiscal prudence during these trying times was timely but insufficient. My analysis, rooted in extensive experience in government, community planning and outreach, economic development, and support for public parks and the environment, was that the city could not afford the costly plans for South Park, and that expenses to improve Gardner Stadium could easily be reduced by more than half while still meeting the needs of the schools.

For more than a year, I politely and professionally presented my questions and observations to the ODDD month after month. Initially, I was ignored. However, in recent months, as I uncovered and revealed details they kept from the public, I have faced scorn and derision. Last month, during an outdoor public event, a board member yelled at me, calling me negative, a liar, and an asshole, in front of city managers who chuckled like schoolyard bullies. I found the incident disheartening and unacceptable. That board member should resign or be removed.

Louisiana has the second-worst poverty rate in the continental US, exceeding eighteen percent. Nearly a million residents live below the poverty line. In Opelousas, the poverty rate is thirty-four percent, and in one Census Tract, home to more than 4000 people, the rate surpasses fifty percent. South Park is not in that tract; the much-neglected North Park is.

Due to special taxing districts like the ODDD, Opelousas has one of the highest sales tax rates in the country. The ODDD is mismanaging this revenue along with its responsibilities. They meet far from downtown at a location outside their district and operate with insufficient transparency and inadequate public input. Millions are being funneled into South Park without the legally mandated guidance of the still-unappointed Parks and Recreation Commission. What has transpired over the past few years, while they and the mayor were distracted by their envy and ambitions for a high-end sports complex like the one in much wealthier and fast-growing Youngsville, is nothing short of a travesty.

In his second term, the mayor is responsible for this situation and for failing to read the annual reports that clearly outline the pending sales tax expiration. Unfortunately, the phrase “the buck stops here” has taken on a new and painful meaning in his case. The bucks are stopping. What happens next is unclear, but we will all suffer due to the failure to prioritize investment in the basic functions of this needy, crumbling town.

People in Opelousas are not clamoring for pickleball; they need food, affordable housing, clean water, good schools, healthcare, and job opportunities. Building state-of-the-art, limited-use sports facilities in a poor town with crumbling infrastructure, rather than investing in infrastructure and business development, is like putting a fur coat on a starving person dying of heat stroke.

Opelousas is a unique and special place. Our history, cultural mix, and location make it a desirable place to live. With the right infrastructure investment and leadership mix, this city can be a great place. However, this can only be achieved when the people elect city (and parish) leaders who strive for greater transparency, are guided by science and data, follow the law, read the audits, and incorporate the public’s voice. It’s up to all of us to do better!