Small signs reading “I’m in” advertising the City of St. George incorporation cluster outside many Baton Rouge-area homes and businesses and represent the frustrations of the community.
A grievance of the Committee for the Incorporation of St. George is the Baton Rouge Metro Council’s recent effort to officially annex the Mall of Louisiana into Baton Rouge proper.
“They were trying to put a roadblock in front of us,” said committee volunteer and local insurance agent Darnell Browning. “But we’ve overcome every roadblock so far.”
St. George supporter, former state senator and U.S. Senate candidate Woody Jenkins filed a suit against the City of Baton Rouge and the Metro Council for not following proper incorporation procedure.
“The City of St. George isn’t about a mall,” said committee spokesperson Lionel Rainey III. “It’s about 107,000 people wanting a voice in their future.”
A deeper issue driving the movement, Rainey said, is the poor performance of the East Baton Rouge Parish School System.
“The schools are deplorable,” Browning said. “Nobody’s done anything to improve [the system] in the past ten or fifteen years.”
According to Rainey, EBRPSS has consistently been one of the worst performing public school systems in the nation.
Rainey said some individuals with children in the parish’s magnet school programs are apprehensive about creating a new school system, but families privileged enough to be in the magnet system do not outweigh the need for changes.
“Middle-class people in Baton Rouge can’t afford to send their children to private schools and may not make it through the magnet school lottery,” Rainey said. “I’m talking about families where mom and dad work and have about three kids, and the median household income is $90,000.”
While some may disagree, EBRPSS is under scrutiny for grade-recording errors and other issues with academic records. According to the Louisiana Department of Education audit in March, the state is in the process of reviewing the transcripts of EBRPSS high school graduates from 2009 to 2013.
LDOE has produced evidence of possible errors in 29 student transcripts from the Glen Oaks High School class of 2013, including six students not earning the proper credits to graduate and 11 students being awarded the incorrect type of diploma.
“There are samples across the system that expose an epidemic problem,” Rainey said.
Rainey said St. George supporters were told they could not create their own school district, as St. George was a not a city.
“All this group has ever wanted was to have people be able to vote on it,” Rainey said.
Aside from the school system problems, Rainey said legislation like the Local Services Agreement allows the government to take millions in excess tax revenue but not always return city services.
“They treat [citizens] like an ATM,” Rainey said. “That doesn’t happen anywhere else in the country.”
The Local Services Agreement has no expiration date. Article 5 of the act states it shall remain as is unless the parish and the city agree upon termination.
Rainey and Browning said the committee is close to its goal of physically collecting signatures from 25 percent of all registered voters in the City of St. George areas and should be able to get on the November or December run-off ballot.
A sign encouraging citizens to sign a petition instituting the area of St. George as a city are arranged outside of Megan's Dress 2 the 9's Wednesday, June 18, 2014.
