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Returning from a summer hiatus, the board of directors of the Rayne Chamber of Commerce faced a full agenda for its September meeting.
Nearly an hour of the 90-minute session involved the 2018 Frog Festival to be held in May.
Jeremy Lavergne, who has served as cochairman under Roy Credeur for the past few years, has assumed the chairmanship and will be implementing some new ideas for the 46th annual event, most noticeable among which will be the availability of beer on the festival grounds and the number of bands to perform.
Beginning this year, the Chamber of Commerce alone will offer beer for sale at the Frog Festival. Last year the Rayne Jaycees were the only other organization selling beer.
“We talked to the Jaycees and they’re okay with it,” Lavergne said, adding that this was a board decision. “They will continue to participate in the festival and will still have the exclusive on fried frog legs.”
Nikki Link, board president, admitted that the meeting with the Jaycees was something she had not been looking forward to, but added that “it went really well. In fact, they said they were kind of surprised that we hadn’t taken this step sooner.”
It was pointed out that the sponsoring entity — whether it be an association or a chamber of commerce — at most area festivals is the lone provider of beer and alcohol at those events.
Concerning music, Lavergne said he has “added new band slots” to the Saturday schedule.
Those slots will fill in the lull in the afternoon between the parade and the evening.
Also, the board voted to have the Beautification Board’s Arts and Crafts booths return to the adjoining Civic Center.
The booths had moved to the fairgrounds for the last two years but, according to Lavergne, organizers had requested to move back into the Civic Center for the 2018 show.
Any vendors that wish to remain on the festival grounds will be treated as a “regular” vendor with a booth space.
Other tweaks for this year’s festival announced by Lavergne included:
• the naming of an “honoree” for the parade in addition to the Grand Marshal;
• a revamped and enlarged “kids’ area” on the fairgrounds;
• the use of scanners for checking IDs; and
• a $1 entry fee on Thursday night — “We provide a band and we simply can’t afford to keep doing it and losing money,” the chairman explained.
Blaine Dupont, chairman of the chamber’s Farmers Market program, told board members that the August move from the Frog Festival Pavilion to The Depot Square marked a turn-around in the monthly event.
He said the number of vendors was dwindling at the Pavilion, primarily because “we were out of sight, out of mind.
“Now, right there in the middle of town, the turnout of both vendors and patrons was incredible.”
Twenty-nine vendors participated in the August event and Dupont said the September event — which was held Saturday, Sept. 12 — had 41 confirmed vendor reservations.
“Next month will mark two years since we started this project and we’re planning to celebrate it,” he said.
Dr. Eddie Palmer reported that the OST Committee is in the process of planning an “OST Day” observance on Saturday, Nov. 4.
Activities will be centered around The Depot Square with antique cars, period dress, food and other activities.
More definite plans will be announced as they are finalized, according to Palmer.
Michelle Autin announced that the chamber’s Grand Court Mardi Gras Ball will be held Saturday, Jan. 13, at the Rayne Civic Center and will be themed “The Emerald City: There’s No Place Like Home.”
Court members are being finalized and will be introduced during a social on Sunday, Sept. 17, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Rayne City Hall.
The meal for the noon chamber meeting was provided by Brian Mouton, owner of BSM Investments, LLC.

CROWLEY - The same company will provide a new and improved solid waste collection service for resident of Acadia Parish for the next five years.
Progressive Waste Solutions of Louisiana, Inc., doing business as Waste Connections, Inc., had the best of four bids opened on Aug. 22.
“After a thorough analysis of the bids and subsequent meetings (with jury officials and counsel), the consensus is that this contract should be awarded to Progressive Waste Solutions of Louisiana, Inc., dba Waste Connections, Inc.,” Tim Mader, solid waste engineer, told jurors.
Seven companies had been invited to submit bids for the five-year contract beginning in March, 2018. Only four — Acadiana Waste Services of Broussard; Pelican Waste and Debris, LLC, of Houma; Progressive Waste Solutions of Louisiana, Inc., of Leesville; and Waste Pro of Louisiana, Inc., of Kenner — did so.
Among the more visible changes to the current contract, the contractor will provide a fleet of new trucks to service the parish and new carts, equipped with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips, will be provided to all customers.
RFID is the use of radio waves to read and capture information — such as, in this case, when a particular cart is emptied — stored on a tag attached to an object. A tag can be read from up to several feet away and does not need to be within direct line-of-sight of the reader to be tracked.
Pelican Waste and Debris, LLC, had the next-lowest bid.
The Solid Waste Committee, after hearing Mader’s analysis of the bids last week, balked at making a recommendation and referred the matter to the full jury, which met Tuesday, Sept. 12.
Mader used figures from the July billing cycle to compare the two top bids being considered.
Findings presented to the committee for consideration included:
• The Police Jury’s current Waste Connections, Inc., (WCI) contract apparently would have paid them $229,435.08 for residential and container bin services provided during the month of July before adjusting for diesel fuel price fluctuations.
• That July payment to WCI was based on the current contract’s Service Unit Count of 26,304 and the current contract’s monthly rate of $865 per Service Unit, again, without diesel fuel price adjustment.
• The new WCI contract would pay them $216,389.97 per month based on 25,442 Service Units at $8.43 per Service Unit per month plus the monthly container bin cost, but without any diesel fuel price adjustment.
• The difference between the July payment to WCI and an estimated new WCI contract monthly payment reflects a savings of roughly $13,000 per month, or $156,000 per year.
• With the new WCI contract and its “Credit for Removed Carts” of $263,040 added to the $156,000 savings under the new contract, the parish will save about $419,000 in Year 1 of the new contract (March 2018 through February 2019).
• In Year 2 through Year 5, without considering CPI adjustments, under the new WCI contract, the parish will save $156,000 per year, or $624,000 (over the five-year term). Together with the Year 1 savings, the total savings over the initial five years of the contract will be $1,043,000.
• Comparing those figures to the second-lowest bid received from Pelican Waste and Debris, it was determined that a new Pelican contract would have paid them $219,409.37 per month, based on 25,443 Service Units at $8.59 per Service Unit per month, plus the monthly container bid cost, not counting any diesel fuel adjustment.
• The difference between the July payment to WCI and the estimated new Pelican contract monthly payment reflected a savings of about $10,000 per month, or $120,000 per year.
• With the Pelican bid for “Credit for Removed Carts” of $50,000 added to the $120,000 savings under the new contract, the parish would have saved about $170,000 in Year 1 of the new contract.
• In Year 2 through Year 5, without considering CPI adjustments, under a new Pelican contract, the parish would have saved $120,000 per year, or $480,000 (over five years). Together with the Year 1 savings, the total savings over the initial five years of the contract would be $650,000.
“Over the course of the five-year contract, the parish will apparently save an estimated $393,000 less under a new Pelican contract compared to a new WCI contract,” Mader said. “We believe that it is very clear that the cost savings realized by virtue of a new WCI contract, together with the new protections that have been incorporated into the new contract, will be of tremendous benefit to the citizens of Acadia Parish in terms of cost, service and accountability of the contractor.”
Some of the “new protections” alluded to by Mader include:
- An independent and technically based method of establishing and updating an accurate Service Unit Count for billing purposes.
A Service Unit Count produced by the Acadia Parish Assessor’s Office specifically for this contract is the difference between the assessor’s parishwide total number of existing buildings, both residential and commercial, that require waste collection services and the total number of existing buildings that are served by container bins.
“The contractor will be required to demonstrate that this count is significantly off before the parish will consider some other method of arriving at a count for billing purposes,” Mader said.
- A new method of managing missed pick-up complaints from customers.
The Acadia Parish Solid Waste Supervisor staff will receive, document and process all such complaint calls, initiate the contractor’s response, and monitor this process through to completion.
This new method includes making it the contractor’s responsibility to provide proof of no merit to such complaints.
“This new method will allow the police jury to deduct $250 per incident from the current monthly invoice amount and requires the contractor to provide evidence of no merit before that deduction is reimbursed in a future invoice,” the engineer explained.
- Required new technology that will provide important evidence of circumstances surrounding any missed pick-up issue, such as video cameras to demonstrate whether or not the customer’s cart was in place on time, RFID chips in the new carts to determine when the missed pick-up was resolved, and GPS monitoring on all garbage collection vehicles as backup to the cameras and chip equipment.
“The vehicle cameras also will provide evidence to assist parish staff in addressing and resolving problems with flying debris and spillage from collection vehicles,” Mader explained, adding that GPS monitoring will also provide a greater level of comfort that waste being collected is not coming from outside Acadia Parish boundaries.
“We have also recommended that the contractor’s monthly invoices be prepared first by the police jury and submitted to the contractor for approval, not vice versa, as is now the procedure,” Mader said. “This approach will afford you much more control over what numbers are used in calculating the monthly billing, which will be especially useful where deductions for liquidated damage assessments are involved.”
The new contract also requires that the contractor maintain an on-site inventory of at least 150 carts at all times in order to respond in a timely fashion to calls for new carts.