Evangeline sheriff says office is broke

The well has financially run dry for the Evangeline Parish Sheriff’s Office, and it’s the residents of the parish that are left to suffer.
In an email sent out by Evangeline Parish Sheriff Eddie Soileau to Evangeline Parish Police Jury Secretary/Treasurer Donald Bergeron on Saturday (Aug. 20), the sheriff said, “we (EPSO) are officially broke as of Aug. 19th.”
Due to this, cutbacks began on Monday, August 22, 2016, with what an EPSO press release called “massive layoffs and salary reductions.”
With a total of 14 full-time employees being laid off, the sheriff’s office will only have one patrol deputy on duty at a time. And this issue has left the residents of the parish feeling uncertain about the protection they will be provided.
At a special meeting called by the EPPJ on Wednesday night, an EPPJ meeting room was filled with concerned residents, sheriff deputies, public officials, and individuals that were recently laid off by the sheriff’s office. There was also confusion as to how things could have gotten this bad. Soileau did not attend the meeting to answer the questions of his constituents.
During the special meeting, Darin Bordelon, who ran against Soileau in 2015, said, “All one has to do is go back a few years and look at a handful of legislative audits, and the handwriting was on the wall. He (Soileau) has been told for years what his deficiencies are. He has been told how to fix them, and he has absolutely reused to do it. Due to all of this lack of attention, we all now are paying the price for this. We now have thousands of people in the rural areas that are unprotected.”
Bordelon then went on to say, “I am appalled that the sheriff would stick one man on the road by himself. There has never been a sheriff’s office to collapse like this thing as, and this has nothing to do with the economy. This is years of mismanagement that is now coming to a head, and with tax collections going down, the house of cards is just crumbling. My fear is that he still has over three years left in office. Where are we going to be then.”
Another theme of the meeting addressed how this situation can be rectified, and what the police jury can do to assist the sheriff in his financial crisis. Without an official EPSO budget to look at though, and the sheriff not communicating with the police jury as to how they could assist him, the jury is unsure of where the sheriff needs the help.
According to Bergeron, the 2016 budget that was received was “unrealistic and an unworkable budget, and the numbers were not accurate.”
Police juror Bryan Vidrine directed a statement to the deputies and other EPSO employees at the meeting and said, “I wish your boss would come sit with us to tell us exactly what he needs, so that we can work together to do that. Then he can put what he needs in writing, and we can work towards making that happen, but we don’t want something that is scribbled on a paper. We need something professional and official presented to us.”
There is however little that the jury can do without the consent of the people.
The police jury’s options would be to use taxes that the residents of Evangeline Parish pay to fund specific projects, and the only way to make that happen is by having the people of this parish vote on it.
For many people in the police jury room on Wednesday night, voting to allow the police jury to use tax payers dollars paid to them to help keep the sheriff’s office a float would be hard to stomach when there are other areas a former employee at the meeting said could be cut.
Crystal May, a former sheriff’s office employee said, “There are so many people that are not deputies that are just office personnel and they have vehicles from the sheriff’s office and they use them as they please. That cost the tax payers. There are things that can be cut back, and that should be the first thing. I lost my job on Monday because they couldn’t find ways to cut back, but they all have smart phones that are paid for with data packages. All of that cost and they don’t need it. That could be cut.”
Police juror Sidney Fontenot made a motion to request to receive a budget and to ask the sheriff what his needs are as far as budgeting the salaries of employees.
Fontenot said, “With those numbers we can start going forward to what we actually all need, whether it be a tax, a millage, or a rededication of funds. Let’s move forward from this point.”
Following this discussion, the police jury talked about relief or flood victims in the parish. It was decided that the police jury would waive the permitting fees for all flood victims that will be doing construction to their homes for the next 90 days.