Thirty-eight Lafayette parish residents who submitted résumés for the charter commission will be interviewed by the City-Parish Council. Thirty-eight Lafayette parish residents who submitted résumés for the charter commission will be interviewed by the City-Parish Council beginning Monday and concluding no later than Thursday. Each applicant will face a 15-minute interview from 5:30-8:30 p.m. in the council auditorium. Nine commission members - five city residents and four residents who live in unincorporated Lafayette Parish - will be selected and seated by mid-July based on a votes by the council, which will nominate seven commission members; City-Parish President Joey Durel will make the other two selections. One member from each geographic group must also be a member of a minority.
According to The Advocate, four commission hopefuls have since withdrawn their names due to various conflicts of interest. The remaining list of candidates includes some familiar former government members and civic leaders, among them Cajundome Director Greg Davis, former U.S. Attorney Donald Washington and former District 6 City-Parish Councilman Bruce Conque.
Once seated, the commission will have nine months to determine what, if any, changes or amendments should be made to the Lafayette Home Rule Charter, or whether to recommend scrapping the consolidated charter and writing new, separate charters for dual city and parish forms of government. The city of Lafayette and the unincorporated parish consolidated in 1996; the other five municipalities in the parish - Broussard, Carencro, Duson, Scott and Youngsville - remain sovereign.
The CPC will have no further say in the matter once the commission is seated; the commission's recommendations will go directly to parish voters in a future election, possibly next spring but more likely in the fall of 2011 - the same time all nine seats on the CPC will be on the ballot.