By Rita Shirley LeBleu

This summer, improvements were made at every Cameron Parish school, and among them were improvements to the heating and cooling system in some buildings.

The goal was to have it cool and comfortable when teachers returned earlier this month, but glitches are being addressed, Business Manager Kathy Hayes told the Cameron Parish School Board at its Monday, Aug. 10, meeting.

Five buses have been repainted, “so you should not see any tiger stripes on the road,” she added.

District Attorney Tom Barrett told the School Board about the upcoming Black Bayou Gas Storage Hub Industrial Tax Exemption vote.

Cameron Parish School Superintendent Charley Lemons, along with Katie Armentor, CPPJ Administrator, and Cameron Parish Sheriff Chris Savoie, make up the local ITEP voting committee. Kim Montie, Port of Cameron and Scott Lavergne, Parish Assessor serve on the committee, but are not voting members.

Black Bayou intends to store LNG in salt domes to push to LNG plants as needed, Barrett said.

If the local ITEP committee votes in favor of the proposed 80/20 exemption, the capital investment and improvements for the project is estimated at $685,044,649.

“It goes through the Louisiana Economic Development Board. They’ve approved it, and it goes to the economic industrial board, which is the primary board that issues the contract that also gets submitted to the Dept. of Revenue,” Barrett said.

He said the local board does have a say on the matter; how much weight that carries is debatable.

Lemons clarified that he was not technically obligated to present the matter to the School Board as a voting member of the ITEP committee. However, he thought it best to do so.

Barrett said Black Bayou told Parish that the largest annual expense to the operation will be ad valorem tax. If they have to pay 100 percent of that instead of 20 percent for the specified time, they would not be able to do the project.

Inventory and pipeline will be taxable 100 percent.

School Board Member Joe Delcambre made the motion to approve Lemons voting in favor of the ITEP agreement. Marsha Trahan seconded the motion. The motion carried.

To read the rest of this story, please see page three of The Cameron Parish Pilot.