Everything has a life span. When it gets to the end, it can be hard to accept the next step.??

This is true of some of Louisiana's struggling rural towns and villages, many of which face declining population, decrepit infrastructure, shrinking tax bases and ineffective leadership.?

Some of these towns and villages are in the state's version of municipal hospice care, called fiscal administration. A fiscal administrator is appointed when state leaders become concerned the town can't meet basic obligations to residents or pay its bills.

A number of small Louisiana towns have been through this process: Jeanerette, Sterlington, Clarence, St. Joseph and others. Some have handled it well. Others have not.?

For some, there is only one real solution to their problems: dissolution. In other words, they need to cease to exist.?

Dissolution has been a dirty word in rural politics, for obvious reasons. The people who would have to do it?— the elected leaders and officials — often have a vested interest in seeing the town continue.

Beyond that, the remaining residents often have emotional connections to a place. Their families have been there, sometimes for generations. But nostalgia and civic pride won't pump clean water through the pipes or safely handle the sewerage that residents produce.

State law currently makes the process of euthanizing a town more complicated than it should be.?

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Dilapidated buildings are pictured along Mound Street Monday, October 9, 2023, in the old downtown area of Jonesville, La.

Under state law, municipalities can be dissolved in one of two ways: by gubernatorial proclamation, if a census shows fewer than 100 residents. (Powhatan, with a handful more than 100, escapes this fate). For towns with more than 100 residents, there has to be a petition and if the majority of the town's voters agree, then the community must call and?— crucially?— pay for an election. Those requirements are often too much for failing municipalities to manage.?

"There needs to be an easier process," said David Greer, a Denham Springs-based CPA who has served as a fiscal administrator for a number of Louisiana's ailing small communities. In that role, he's seen the problems up close.?

Perhaps none was in as bad a shape as Powhatan, a tiny village along La. 1 in Natchitoches Parish, when Greer arrived there in 2022.?

Village officials weren't keeping any real financial records. Powhatan's water and sewer systems were failing, there was no police force and there were no minutes of town meetings. The town did not own a working computer.

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Faimon Roberts

As a fiscal administrator, Greer was given broad powers to right Powhatan's financial dinghy.

He faced pushback from village officials. When he found a buyer to take over the decrepit water system, the board of alderman voted for it but "they weren't happy about it," he said. They simply didn't want to give up control.?

"It was pretty bad," he recalled last week.?

Greer was unable to find a take for Powhatan's sewer system, which remains in wretched shape.

The situation is likely terminal: Powhatan has no retail stores and no tax base. The number of people who have water and sewer accounts?is shrinking and with it, revenue for upkeep.?

In his final report, Greer urged town leaders to seriously consider dissolving.

Powhatan may seem like an extreme?— and extremely small?— example. But it's not an outlier. A growing number of small Louisiana communities face the same dim prospects.

Greer is not the only one who thinks it should be easier to pull the plug on dying towns.?

A legislative task force appointed in 2023 to study the issues facing struggling rural towns reached the same conclusion. That report recommended that state leaders take several steps to make dissolution easier.

Under those recommendations, for towns with fewer than 1,000 residents, it would just take an ordinance passed by the board of aldermen and ratified by the mayor and then approved by the governor. Bigger towns would need a petition that, with enough signatures, would then trigger an election. Towns with fewer than 300 residents could be subject to involuntary dissolution upon recommendation from the state's Fiscal Review Committee as long as certain conditions were met. That recommendation would then go to the governor, who could order the dissolution.?

The task force was chaired by Leesville Mayor Rick Allen, who unlike many of his small community colleagues has a giant economic engine?— Fort Johnson?— nearby. He knows not every town has that same benefit. And many Louisiana towns, not just Powhatan, have lost whatever economic drivers they once had.?

The report, he noted, was about helping communities make it so they don't become candidates for dissolution. But some need to face reality.??

"A lot of our smaller municipalities just can't keep their heads above water," he said.

Sometimes it's better for everybody to just?let them go.

Faimon A. Roberts III is a columnist and editorial writer at The Advocate | The Times-Picayune. He can be reached at froberts@theadvocate.com.

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