Key to community development: Citizen involvement

There was a song in the air at the St. Landry Parish Community Development Roundtable held Thursday, and it wasn’t the old Methodist Christmas hymn.
The ‘tumult of joy” pervading in the conference room at the St. Landry Economic and Industrial Development District office in Opelousas was an overriding sense of optimism that the parish is on the right track to a prosperous future.
Invited to get together and begin laying the groundwork for community development by Parish President Bill Fontenot, the 50 or so public officials and private citizens were almost giddy over the fact that a new road improvement plan is about to be implemented and that the parish is ideally situated to benefit from a projected boom in South-Central and South-West Louisiana.
“Something like this meeting hasn’t happened here before. We want to look at our community development needs closely,” Fontenot said in welcoming those attending.
SLEIDD Director Bill Rodier, perhaps responsible for some of the optimism in the room, said intentions are not to “re-invent the wheel” in taking advantage of the growth that is coming, noting about $55 billion in investment in South Louisiana is coming in the next five years alone.
“We have land, transportation and structure. As leaders, I feel a big part of our responsibility is community development and how to be ready for it,” he said. “We have to be proactive and know what we are going to do,” Rodier added.
Special guests at the meeting were Jena Mayor Murphy McMillan and LaSalle Parish Economic Development Executive Director Cynthia Cockerham.
McMillan discussed how his town in east-central Louisiana, essentially stagnant for the last 30 years of the 20th Century, decided it was going to take charge of its future.
He and the town council involved every segment of the community in putting together a master plan for how citizens wanted their town to evolve.
“Community development is getting your place ready to sell,” McMillan said.
“You have to have a plan that people have helped construct. Look at our strong suits. What’s better than what others have? And make sure you have an implementation matrix. Otherwise the plan just goes on a shelf.
Selling is the economic developer’s role, and Cockerham talked about the challenges of marshaling the economic interests of a widely divided parish into a single focus.