Keep Eunice Beautiful ends meeting with call to action

The Keep Eunice Beautiful board meeting Tuesday ended with its members calling for action to clean the city of trash and blight.
Board member Felicien Simon put the finger on elected officials — “hold elected officials responsible,” he said.
“The bottom line is if somebody has a worn out building in their district or in their area, they need to do something about it,” Simon said. “They know the people who own the businesses. They need to stand up and say ‘Hey, you need to clean this place up.’”
The meeting was a final session until August, said Donna Baltakis, director.
Baltakis had her own message to elected officials.
“All they say is ‘We love Louisiana. We pray. We eat. We love to dance,’” she said. “I’m not going to vote for you if you haven’t said one word about what you are going to do about jobs and litter and education and roads.”
Simon said, “You all the read the papers. You look at the news. This state is in trouble, financially. This state is in trouble and it is because we have elected officials who are sitting collecting the check and doing absolutely nothing.”
Baltakis said she plans to take the beautification message to the city council.
Francis Guillory, a board member, suggested Keep Eunice Beautiful should petition aldermen about cleanup issues.
Simon said the code enforcement officer is key to cleaning up Eunice. Bill Thompson recently retired from the job.
“A lot of problems are people not following the code,” Simon said.
Baltakis said Eunice will be the site of a regional Keep Louisiana Beautiful meeting in May 2016.
A Keep Louisiana Beautiful conference is scheduled in October in Lafayette.
Other board members present were Erin Jones, Dale Francois, Connie Thibodeaux and Dave Simpson.