Today at 4 p.m., the East Baton Rouge Parish Metro Council will consider approving a resolution that would authorize special counsel Mary Olive Pierson to file suit to stop the people from voting on whether to incorporate the proposed City of St. George.

The key things about St. George are that it would 1) bring good public schools to 109,000 people in the parish — just as we have in Zachary and Central — and 2) it would insure low crime in that area for many years to come. The result would be people moving back to East Baton Rouge Parish from Livingston and Ascension, instead of continuing to flee. History tells us what can happen.

In the early 1990’s, Sen. Mike Cross, Rep. Mike McClerary, and I authored a constitutional amendment to create the Baker Community School System. That proposal went to the voters statewide, in EBR, and Baker in 1991 and was approved! Baker was still a vibrant, successful, racially diverse community, but it was changing rapidly, as the whites were fleeing. The new school system was going to “save” the city and reverse the flight out of the city! But the EBR School Board did everything in its power to stop the Baker school system from becoming a reality.

As a result, despite the vote of the people, the new school system did not go into effect until the 2003-2004 school year — 12 years after the people voted to approve it!. By then, it was too late. And everyone can see the results. Baker has a school system that is even worse than EBR.

The effort by Kip Holden and Mary Olive Pierson to file suit to stop the incorporation of St. George is a very unwise effort to subvert the will of the voters and could result in the ultimate destruction of this parish and our becoming another New Orleans or Detroit. Please call or email members of the Metro Council and ask them to vote NO!

THE ORDINANCE PROPOSED for consideration by Metro Council this afternoon reads as follows: “Authorizing the Parish Attorney’s Office to supplement the scope of the existing legal services being provided by Mary Olive Pierson to the City-Parish to include a contract for representing and defending the interests of the City of Baton Rouge, Parish of East Baton Rouge and the Plan of Government with regard to the Petition for the incorporation of the City of St. George in an amount not to exceed $40,000. By: Mayor-President.”

HOW TO EMAIL THE METRO COUNCIL. The simple way to send an email to all of the Metro Council members is to send it to metrocouncil@brgov.com. It will go to all of their in-boxes. If you would like to call them individually or email them separately, go to this site and click the links to individual Council members: http://brgov.com/dept/council/

Please keep all communications with Council members friendly and positive.