To all the activists who believe the people of Lafayette Parish should vote on the fiber-to-the-home plan proposed by LUS: We've already voted! We duly elected our city-parish representatives and charged them with the responsibility of doing their jobs. This is their job. This is what they are supposed to do! Let's let them do their jobs and not get into micromanaging our city-parish government.
The main argument I hear in favor of a referendum is the amount of money potentially being spent. To begin with, this amount keeps being escalated by the plan's opponents. Let's just take the numbers. If LUS were to actually use all the money they are asking to have available, it would amount to approximately $1,000 for every man, woman and child in Lafayette Parish. Seems like a lot, but it's spread over a long period of time and will only be used in total if the plan is an enormous success.
If these activists were so intent on being watchdogs of our money, then why are they not screaming for a referendum on the state's budget? At $16 billion, that breaks down to more than $3,500 for every man, woman and child in the entire state. To make matters worse, that's just for one year, and supplemental requests are likely. If being guardians of our money is truly why they are in this, then I believe their time would be much better spent filing a lawsuit against the state Legislature.
Another argument I hear and read is that government should not compete with private enterprise. Being a business owner, I am not in favor of government doing much of anything except protect and defend. If these obstructionists are so interested in government staying out of private business, why aren't they filing a lawsuit against the Department of Agriculture and stop Bob Odom from building his pet sugar mills? Nearly everyone agrees we are better served having LUS in our community, and there is a long history of local governments doing certain types of infrastructure business in the interest of the people. That is exactly what LUS is doing now.
We voted precisely in the way that our founding fathers meant our representative democratic republic to work. We elect representatives to handle our government business. Let them do their jobs. If we don't like the job they do, we can always un-elect them next time around, or if we believe they really screwed up, we can always start a recall.
Terry, Joey, et al.: You go guys!