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. ↩︎
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