The mayors of Lafayette Parish's southern cities may sit down next week to seek a tranquilizer for their annexation anxiety. The mayors of Lafayette Parish's southern cities may sit down next week to discuss a compromise to their annexation impasse. On Wednesday, Youngsville annexed a mile-long strip on the south side of the Ambassador Caffery extension from Bonin Road to just west of La. 89. The acquisition blocks Broussard from an annexation it was seeking west of Bonin nearly to La Neuvelle Road.
Broussard Mayor Charles Langlinais attended the Youngsville City Council meeting in an effort to work out a deal in which Broussard would be allowed to run water along the Ambassador frontage on the Youngsville annexation to reach property farther west. That would have allowed Broussard to annex an additional mile of land on the south side of Ambasador. But Langlinais's Youngsville counterpart, Wilson Viator, declined to cut a deal.
"I will say this, that a letter is being written by city attorneys offering to reopen negotiations on a compromise," Langlinais now says.
Viator, who at Wednesday's meeting wielded his gavel a few times to call Langlinais out of order, has since softened his tone. "I think we will probably meet next week, but it'll probably be me and him," Viator says. "I have no problem meeting with him; you know, you don't negotiate a proposal at a council meeting. But even though it was done wrongly the other night, they're my neighbors, I'll meet with them and see what they're proposing and consider whatever they have to propose and do whatever's best for Youngsville."
The two cities have been at loggerheads recently over the newly opened stretch of Ambassador; about three miles of the six-mile roadway cut through unincorporated Lafayette Parish and are seen as a prime commercial corridor that will generate millions in future sales tax revenue.