The Current

05/27/2026

More financial trouble is brewing in Grand Coteau. The town is nearly six months late on filing its audit report with the state, the deadline for which passed on Dec. 31 2025. As a result, the Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s office has placed the town on its audit non-compliance list, putting any state or federal funds the town receives in jeopardy.

“[The list] is the biggest stick we have,” says Judith Dettwiller, the LLA’s director of local government services. After two years of non-compliance, the state could appoint a fiscal administrator to oversee the town’s finances, Dettwiller notes.
Grand Coteau’s town attorney and Mayor Patrick Richard could not be reached by The Current for comment.

When a town is placed on the non-compliance list, it can no longer legally receive new state grant funding or federal funds that pass through the state, which is the majority of federal grants.

In the last published audit, covering July 1, 2023, through June 30, 2024, the town had $813,967 in intergovernmental revenue, a majority of which came from state or federal funds.

Read more at thecurrentla.com/2026/grand-coteaus-town-audit-is-nowhere-to-be-found/

05/27/2026

Sitting on the sunny patio of Caffe Cottage on St. Mary Boulevard, ready to dig into quesadillas, beignet fries, wings and red velvet cake, the Foodiez of the Flatz are already talking about their next meal. A new hibachi rice burrito recipe they want to try out? A wine and wings dinner party?

There had always been cookouts, festivals and school fundraisers in the lives of Crista Prejean, her husband Joseph “Joe” Prejean, his sister Kearon Prejean and best friend Brianna Francis. But since they started their food review channel Foodiez of Tha Flatz, food has taken center stage.

“We’re already eating, so let’s review the food,” Kearon Prejean says of their idea to start a food review channel on social media that has grown to over 17,000 followers on TikTok and over 6,000 on Instagram. “I feel like that would be a way for y’all to hang out with us,” adds Crista.

Read more at thecurrentla.com/2026/the-foodiez-of-tha-flatz-go-to-lunch/

05/27/2026

When Paula Prejean looked at her February utility bill, she was in shock. The water bill was roughly six times higher than during the same period last year, with no clear explanation why.

“I was looking at $500 just to keep the lights on,” she said.
Both her water and wastewater usage appeared to have gone through the roof.

Prejean reached out to Lafayette Utilities System multiple times, suspecting there might be something wrong with the meter.

After LUS pulled the meter for testing and installed a temporary one, her bills went back to normal. But the utility maintains there was no issue with the meter, which tallied use of 30,000 gallons of water in February alone. Prejean’s typical bills meter about 4,000 gallons of water used per month.
Prejean says she still owes LUS $800, on top of what she has already paid to restore her service.

Several other residents on Moss Street reported similar billing problems to KATC in late April, asking LUS to address their high water bills. Those residents told both The Current and KATC that they saw their bills skyrocket after LUS switched their service from a temporary supply through a nearby fire hydrant to repaired lines monitored by a new meter. The news story came after landlord Guy Ranzino and his business partner posted about the issue on Facebook. Prejean is one of Ranzino’s tenants.

LUS stood firm then that there isn’t anything wrong with its meters.

“Prior to installation, the meters go through rigorous testing to ensure quality,” LUS Director Jeff Stewart tells The Current in an email. “[Over measurement] is an extremely rare occurrence.”

Instead, Stewart posits that high water usage, leaks, running toilets or other changes in utility usage are behind the extremely high charges, not improperly programmed meters.

Read more at thecurrentla.com/2026/a-northside-resident-says-lus-overcharged-her-now-she-fears-losing-her-home/

05/26/2026

Gov. Jeff Landry wants to use $150 million normally dedicated to K-12 school operations to replace a $2,000 stipend public school teachers were expected to lose this coming year, according to four Louisiana lawmakers familiar with the plan.

The governor has proposed taking money normally distributed to public school districts through a funding formula called the Minimum Foundation Program and using it for teacher compensation.

The legislators who spoke about the governor’s proposition did not want to be named because they did not have permission to talk about it publicly. They included two senators and two state representatives, three of them Republicans and one Democrat.

The plan will require Landry to issue an executive order after the Louisiana Legislature’s session has finished June 1. Two-thirds of state lawmakers in each chamber also have to approve moving the money, with a vote taking place by mail-in ballot.

Read more at thecurrentla.com/2026/landry-may-look-to-school-funds-to-cover-teacher-pay/

05/25/2026

Unfortunately, a large corporation now wants to take away the land that I — and many others — hold so dearly. I do not know where I would be today without it. While other kids may spend their time getting into trouble, I am in the marsh with the people I care about. Pecan Island is not just where I hunt — it is part of who I am. Louisiana is known as the “Sportsman’s Paradise,” but you cannot have a “Sportsman’s Paradise” without sportsmen. It is not called the “Rocket Ship Paradise” for a reason. Generations of sportsmen have lived on and hunted this land for hundreds of years. Many residents of Pecan Island rely on these marshes for their livelihoods, and without them, their way of life would suffer greatly.

With all of this in mind, I wrote to the president of Vermilion Corporation, P. R. Burke, last month, asking the company to do everything in its power to make a difference.

Like Jethro in Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt — who wrote a letter to President Abraham Lincoln during a time of uncertainty — I hope the company and others responsible for protecting our land help preserve Louisiana in its natural state.
Gardez la Louisiane belle.

Read the full letter at thecurrentla.com/2026/letter-the-marshes-raised-me-now-they-need-us/

05/22/2026

Bennett Billeaud, who just finished his freshman year at St. Thomas More High School, has been hunting on the marsh near Pecan Island for as long as he can remember. So when he heard rumors that a space company was eyeing the land for development, he grew deeply worried.

“I was devastated,” Billeaud says.

The speculation that SpaceX was interested in buying a large plot of land in the marsh began circulating on social media over the past few weeks, but became more concrete when State Sen. Bob Hensgens, R-Abbeville, who represents the area, confirmed on May 7 that a “space exploration company” was discussing the potential purchase of 136,000 acres of land owned by Exxon-Mobil.

Hunters like Billeaud, as well as some residents and environmental groups, are concerned about the impact large-scale industrial development would have on one of the few stretches of Louisiana coastline not yet lined with smokestacks.

To express his concern, the 15-year-old Billeaud wrote a letter to the president of Vermilion Corporation, P. R. Burke, outlining why he holds the marsh so dearly and asking for the company to support hunters like him in any potential fight over the land. Vermilion Corp. and its predecessors have managed the land for hunting purposes for over 100 years.

Burke explained that any rumored acquisition would be out of his control, so Billeaud and his family decided to try and get some answers on their own. But they quickly hit a roadblock: non-disclosure agreements.

“Anyone who knows anything important is under an NDA, so it has been hard for us to get real information,” Billeaud says.

Under Gov. Jeff Landry, the state has aggressively pursued NDAs for anyone involved in matters of economic development, such as representatives and state senators in districts where large corporations like Meta are pursuing industrial projects, effectively shielding them from public scrutiny.

Read more at thecurrentla.com/2026/as-spacex-rumors-circulate-so-do-worries-of-losing-generational-land/

05/21/2026

The Lafayette Parish Council voted down a resolution that would have limited public comment based on the number of speakers who signed up.

The resolution, brought by District 1 Councilman Bryan Tabor at Tuesday’s Council meeting, would have reduced the time allotted for public comment per speaker from three to two minutes for more than 10 speakers, and to one minute for 20 or more speakers.

“I don’t think it really would change much,” Tabor said at the meeting, explaining that long public comments during recent meetings of the Lafayette Parish School Board inspired the amendment.

In March, public comment during a school board session including a vote on the closure of Comeaux High School lasted several hours. The board later reversed it’s decision.

The council rarely faces more than 10 commenters on its proposals or during open public comment. The only meeting that would have exceeded this limit in recent memory was when Lafayette residents used the parish’s monthly open public comment time to ask the council to do anything in their power to stop Lafayette Parish Sheriff Mark Garber from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement.

On Tuesday, all council members except Tabor voted against the resolution, with several stressing the importance of residents’ comments to the Council.

“To reduce the time element any further simply tells me that their voice and their concern is only an echo to us,” Councilman John Guilbeau explained his vote at the meeting.
Under the current rules, residents are allowed three minutes on any council agenda item with public comment, and during the monthly open comment held by both councils.

thecurrentla.com/2026/parish-council-wont-further-limit-public-comment/

05/21/2026

Government reporter Camden Doherty is in the comments looking for clues to what happened at the polls. Why did the Library millage fail? Will you vote to pass the millage in the future?

Let us know what you think in the comments, and leave a picture of your pets in there too, because Camden could use a pick me up! 🐾

05/21/2026

The Lafayette City Council decided not to attempt to override the mayor-president’s veto of an ordinance that granted $500,000 in city funds for a new Downtown redevelopment plan.

Instead, the ordinance, which originally passed on April 7, with what looked to be 4-1 veto-proof majority, is being reworked.

The council had two meetings in May for a potential override of Mayor-President Monique Boulet’s veto, but never took up the matter. Paul Escott, a lawyer for LCG, confirmed that the council’s window to override has passed, with Tuesday’s meeting the last opportunity.

Boulet vetoed the cooperative endeavor agreement between the two parties in mid-April, citing legal concerns with the agreement, even as no one from the mayor-president’s office or legal counsel had raised public objections previously.

“[Legal] would not give me permission to sign that CEA,” Boulet said after the veto. “It fundamentally goes against what they would allow me to sign.”

The ordinance was an agreement between the Downtown Development Authority and LCG, with the DDA receiving $500,000 for an eventual $1 million redevelopment plan. The other $500,000 from the Downtown Economic Development District is also now on hold.

Combined with $400,000 from aligned philanthropies, the funding is intended in part to support the planning and redevelopment of long-neglected, blighted Downtown properties. The Coburn’s campus — where a building partially collapsed earlier this month — was publicly cited as an example of the type of property the initiative aimed to address.

Read more at thecurrentla.com/2026/downtown-redevelopment-ordinance-being-reworked-after-veto/

05/20/2026

Children and families across the South face some of the nation’s toughest challenges, from poverty and food insecurity to education and health disparities.

Deep South Today is launching a new event series exploring what the latest 2026 KIDS COUNT data reveals about children and families across the region, where challenges persist and where communities are working toward progress.

Join us for this FREE virtual event and be part of the conversation.

RSVP + learn more: https://deepsouthtoday.org/families-count-in-the-deep-south/

Deep South Today is a network of nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsrooms in Louisiana and Mississippi serving communities with the information they need.

05/20/2026

UL Lafayette has a student retention problem.
More than a quarter of freshmen do not return for their sophomore year, according to the university’s own academic strategic plan. The cost of going to UL may be to blame, at least partially.

The main perpetrator of rising costs isn’t tuition or housing, but miscellaneous fees that read like they were pulled from a bowl of higher education alphabet soup. And while UL’s board of supervisors has vowed to make every effort to improve retention, those fees have continued to increase.

Taken together, the 14 fees assessed locally by the university and approved by the University of Louisiana’s System Board of Supervisors, plus those assessed by student government, are higher than tuition for most full-time students.

The average student will pay over $26,000 in fees before graduating, based on the current fee schedule. Those fees are assessed on a credits-taken basis every semester.

A student pays more in fees alone today than the total cost the average public college student carried to complete a four-year degree as recently as 2008.

It’s not just contributing to poor retention. It’s making it hard for UL to compete. With more fees added in 2025, UL students are paying required fees up to 30 times those charged by other public universities to in-state students in the South.

For students like former UL art major Anjolina Fuselier, those costs can be the deciding factor between graduating or dropping out.

“I feel like it was really hindering me as an art student,” she says of her cost burden.

For in-state students taking 15 credit hours at UL, considered a standard full-time course load, tuition was $2,700 this spring. Fees for those same hours range from $3,300 to $3,500, according to UL records.

Read more at https://thecurrentla.com/2026/ul-is-struggling-to-keep-students-fees-might-be-the-culprit/