Cooper, Preston both ‘standing for taxpayers’
By KEVIN CHIRI
Slidell news bureau
SLIDELL – Parish President Mike Cooper and Coroner Dr. Charles Preston are both standing up for what they believe are the rights of St. Tammany citizens in the current stalemate over returning Coroner’s Office assets to that department.
And that’s why it is hard to see how the matter ever gets resolved.
When the parish took over control of Coroner’s Office assets in 2014, they made two major changes to the property during that time. First, they used nearly $900,000 of HUD funds to dig a 13-acre pond that was supposed to provide drainage for area land, then they allowed the private Tamanend development to upgrade the water well on the coroner’s property and allow it to become a backup for the huge residential and commercial property.
Fast forward to 2022 when Preston asked the property and assets to be returned to control of his office—something the Legislature approved in 2021—and now the pond and well are a major stumbling block for both sides to complete the deal.
The parish is willing to turn the assets back over to the Coroner’s Office but say they must have access to both the well and pond for maintenance and other reasons. Preston, meanwhile, said he can’t allow that since it would give the parish some of the value of the office, which is rightfully owned by the taxpayers.
Cooper said that if he hands over the property unencumbered then the parish will have to repay the nearly $900,000 back to HUD since the pond is no longer owned/operated by the parish—thereby, putting the parish in default of terms to use the money.
Additionally, Tamanend legally needed a backup well and the parish allowed an upgrade to the well to provide the needed additional capacity for Tamanend.
Since the parish was the owner of the land at the time there was no agreement signed to that effect, although Preston was aware of the project.
Preston said he already believes the Coroner’s Office should be compensated for the pond, not only since his department has lost 13 acres of useable property, but also because the dirt which was dug from the pond was clearly worth thousands of dollars and now sits on land in front of the Northshore Technical Community College.
“For me to allow the parish to still have maintenance rights to our property we must be compensated in some way,” Preston said. “This property was all built with taxpayer approved funds—and I cannot hand those assets over to the parish. I’m the fiduciary for the assets of this department, the assets that the taxpayers gave us—I must be responsible for that.”
Cooper believes he is offering compensation after he offered to waive administrative fees the parish currently charges the Coroner’s Office to process the annual millage revenue. That fees range from $10,000 to $40,000 a year, and sometimes higher.
However, Preston still believes there are many questions about how much his office should be compensated and has not come to an agreement about how that would be accomplished.
Additionally, Preston said there are a number of issues concerning the work that was done on the well, and the current status of it.
The original well that was dug behind the Coroner’s Office buildings was utilized for Preston’s department until the parish came to him two years into his first term and said the well needed to become the backup for Tamanend. The Coroner’s Office would be hooked up to a well dug by Tamanend, which was located near their water tower almost a quarter mile away.
Weyerhaeuser, the parent company of Tamanend, reportedly paid over $30,000 to have the original Coroner’s Office well upgraded to support a 50-horsepower motor, compared with the original 12-horsepower motor when the well was first built. When that work was finished, the switch was made and ever since then the Coroner’s Office has used the Tamanend well, which has led to various water issues, Preston said.
“We never had problems with our water supply when we used the one originally built for this office,” Preston said. “Ever since they switched us to the Tamanend well we have lost power a number of times, costing us a lot of money when some equipment wasn’t able to keep operating without the water supply it needed.
“Also, we are worried that if the backup was ever used, with so much more power than we needed in our office, it might blow out our lines here,” he added.
The newly upgraded well behind the Coroner’s Office now serves as the backup to Tamanend, although it has never been utilized. And, according to Preston, he wonders how effective it will be since it has apparently never been checked annually as it was supposed to be. Additionally, there is supposed to be a radio tower from the Tamanend well to the backup on Coroner’s Office property, that would immediately turn on the backup if the first well goes down.
“The radio towers don’t work at all,” Preston said. “And there is a gauge on the backup well that shows it has only pumped 89 gallons of water since it was changed. That means it could never have been tested annually or checked at all. We have no idea if it will even work if needed.”
Nevertheless, Cooper says he must have maintenance access to the well to ensure a backup for Tamanend, should that be needed, and he refuses to follow the legislative order to turn over the property to Preston by Oct. 21, 2021, unless he gets that access, along with maintenance access to the pond to preserve the HUD contract terms.
“Until I get some kind of reasonable compensation for what we lost—taxpayer assets essentially—I cannot in good faith hand these two assets over to the parish to control,” Preston added. “As for the administrative fees, we didn’t know that much money was being taken out of the millage revenue and are trying to find out how legal it is to do so.”
Chief Administrative Officer Gina Hayes responded to requests from the Coroner’s Office about the fees and said they are for levying the millage, receiving and disbursing the tax proceeds, and also to service the debt. She added that the taxes must also be accounted for in the parish budget and audited financial statements.
On another matter of potentially lost value for the Coroner’s Office assets, Preston believes the pond actually proved more beneficial to Tamanend than anyone else since it drained some of their development and increased the value of their lots.
Interestingly enough, Tamanend now has its first group of residential homes under construction less than a mile from Coroner’s Office property, after the development sat for several years since first being started.
One former parish councilman stated anonymously on the matter that the possible land draining for Tamanend, if it actually occurred, could have been approved “because of the long-term value to the parish once they started building homes there. It’s easy to see that a huge development will bring the parish a lot of tax money, and it’s not unusual for the parish to work with a developer in various ways, which will eventually benefit the parish.”