Police Jury’s new ‘protocol’ won’t solve problems

Editor,
There was an interesting agenda item on Tuesday’s Police Jury committee meeting agenda regarding the adoption of a protocol for appointing a secretary-treasurer when seating a new police jury.
The Post-Signal did a great job itemizing the chronological affairs of the most recent appointment. In fact, as a former candidate, I give the Police Jury big kudos for the initial efforts posting the role online not only for operational transparency, but to attract a wide net of applicants who might otherwise not consider parish government opportunity.
However, the subsequent optics and incompetence of the Jury’s leadership was clearly displayed with the 11th hour Hail Mary selection — not taking away from Bryan Borill — looking so staged to say the least.
Maybe Walter Andrus and Steve Comeaux are catching heat and I hope rightly so. Never in my 25-plus years of working in HR and administration have I ever participated in a vetting process, where I received a rude confrontational call from “a member of the hiring authority” — aka Steve Comeaux — asking whether I was connected to another member of the police jury. I concluded after the obnoxious phone call, my candidacy was going to get derailed in some creative fashion.
In addition, it’s most unfortunate two applicants who I do not know, felt compelled to drop out of consideration because of reasons unknown but, to venture a guess — process and/or politics, maybe both.
Hopefully last Tuesday’s meeting will reveal some lessons learned. The only objective takeaways I walk away with is that turning leadership keys over to unstructured, hot-headed, rookie politician(s) should embarrass the constituency, in addition to exposing elevators aren’t able to reach the top floor.
However if the voters are happy with the out-of-the-gate performance of specific newly elected officials, then who am I to challenge. I admit I’m not politically correct either.
Some of us are just a bit more astute to public perceptions and can smell “BS” across the pasture. Unfortunately now all we have is more of the same along with potential adverse affects for the parish to compete in the 21st century.
Stephen Sislock