The Minden City Council held its monthly meeting this week, which touched on everything from sports tourism to road safety grants to new city appointments, and the city having to take a hard stand on condemned properties, reflecting the council’s ongoing efforts to grow the city’s economy while holding the line on community standards.
Early in the meeting, the council tackled an agenda item furthering the city’s project to turn the Minden REC into a sports tourism destination.
“If y’all remember, a few months ago, we hired a third-party company to come in and help manage our sports tourism efforts. Those guys, in my opinion, are doing an excellent job thus far. They have brought a lot of good potential projects to the table,” said Mayor Cox.
“The one thing they do not have from this council at the moment is a fee structure. So in order to make a deal, you have to know how much the deal is going to cost.”
Later in the meeting, the council was presented with a vote to grant Mayor Cox authority to submit an application for the Louisiana Local Road Safety Program. Tyler Wallace, Minden’s Public Works Director, was able to find some potential grant money for the city to apply for, and this vote helped to move that process forward.
“Tyler, and our engineer, Waggoner, have been working on different projects, and they came to us and said there is some available grant money from the DOTD. Tyler and I agreed to pursue, and they came back and said that we got it,” said Mayor Cox.
“Sometimes it’s never really clear how much you got or didn’t get, but this is also an agreement between the city, the state, and also the parish. So some of the roads you’ll notice listed in this deal aren’t even in the city limits, but I got further information from our engineers that this would just be for the benefit of the city, and then they would work with the parish on that portion.”
Also, regarding roads, the council voted to give Mayor Cox the authority to enter into a maintenance agreement between the City of Minden and the State of Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development Office of Engineering. This provides funds to the city to maintain state right-of-ways, and it saw an increase this year.
“So every year the state gives the city funds to maintain the rights-of-way on the state highways. That includes mowing and litter. It has traditionally been a fairly modest sum for the amount of work that the city does, but getting anything is better than getting nothing,” said Mayor Cox.
“Over the last several years, they’ve tried very hard and have been very mindful to raise the amount of money that they give the city, so they’ve raised it again.”
Later on, the council voted to appoint Victoria Washington to the Minden Main Street Program/Downtown Development Commission with a term set to expire on September 8th, 2029. The council also voted unanimously to approve the hiring of Heather Boucher as a Full-Time Police Officer for the Minden Police Department.
Usually, the condemned properties portion of the meeting is a brief affair, but there was more friction than usual this week as a representative of the condemned properties, Shandra Dozier, the three of which were located on South Street here in Minden.
She presented the council with estimates from contractors for some of the rehabilitation work that would need to be done for the property, as well as having an extended back and forth with the council, trying to convey the property owners’ sentiments that they are willing to rehabilitate the property if given more time.
“The property owners are at an age of retirement. Some of them are 70, some of them are 80. They have supported and sent money for the properties and the upkeep,” said Dozier. “They are willing to work expediently to rehab the properties.”
However, the evidence presented to the council was not convincing enough, with some of the projects being nearly a decade old at this point, on top of the estimates only addressing some, not all, of the issues that would need to be tackled for properties in their current states. This was a difficult decision the council was presented with in its pursuits to beautify the city, with all three of the properties ultimately being voted on to be condemned.
Councilman Buddy Myles, District A, said later in the meeting, “It is not our intent to target anybody. But at the end of the day … we have to impose certain rules and certain standards. What went on today wasn’t easy for anybody.”
“Minden deserves to look nice. I don’t want anyone to feel that Minden is what it is. Minden can be better. I firmly believe that everything that I do, that I can get better, that you can get better, that we can get better as a whole.”
“When I ran for this spot, that was my intent from day one, was to make everything better inside of our city limits. And I will do whatever I have to do to make sure that that happens, to the best of my ability.”
Minden City Council meetings are held on the first Monday of each month at 6 PM at the Minden Civic Center. Meetings are open to the public and, for those who cannot attend in person, are also livestreamed on the City of Minden’s Facebook page and YouTube channel, both titled “City of Minden.”