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Ascension Parish President Clint Cointment, at lectern, speaks Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2021, during a news conference about a new power-sharing agreement to manage drainage and flood protection on the parish’s east bank. Flanking him are, left to right, council members Dempsey Lambert, Corey Orgeron, Dal Waguespack and Teri Casso.
Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save A parish council member and Ascension Parish President Clint Cointment sparred verbally over the use of overtime pay for maintenance crews at a recent East Ascension Drainage District Board meeting. District 2 Council member Joel Robert said he wanted to see the amount of overtime paid to crews, saying he thought the parish should potentially reduce overtime pay and use that money to hire more employees or pay existing workers higher wages. “Maybe we don’t ultimately need more employees across the board, or we don’t need to spend more money on more employees, but I think there’s a .
.. possibility that we could be cheaper with more employees and less overtime,” he said.
Cointment responded at the Tuesday meeting by pointing to benefit costs associated with every parish employee, and said overtime pay can act as an incentive for employees paid around $17 or $18 an hour. “The council in the past, they’ve always been very supportive of paying our guys to work that Friday and Saturday in overtime, especially with good weather,” he said. “And that’s some extra pay for these guys.
That means a lot to them.” Robert pushed back, saying, “it would mean a lot more if you gave them a raise.” More work orders this year Robert's questioning arose during a pause in drainage operations director Jade Robin’s presentation on the department’s work in 2025, so far.
The department reported 41 new work orders in January and 67 in February, more than the 25 and 35 reported in the same months for 2024. Drainage has proved a significant point of tension over the years, as the parish struggles to keep up with its massive growth over the previous decades. The Gonzales Weekly Citizen and WAFB reported arguments at 2021 drainage meetings, with police intervening in one instance.
And Robert’s district covers Acy, Sorrento and portions of St. Amant, which suffered significant damage from the 2016 Louisiana floods. Responding to Robert, Cointment said benefits associated with working for the government mean it costs more per employee.
He gave a hypothetical example of an employee with a salary of $100,000, saying the associated benefit costs would add up to a total of $140,000 in costs for that employee. “These are all things we need to look at in a very detailed fashion, but just throwing people at a problem has never been a solution for me. It has to be looked at in every single angle with the budgets that y’all approve,” he said.
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And so, we do pay a lot of overtime due to the fact that we’re in hurricane season, and we just go into overtime.” But Robert said the government could use contract labor instead, if benefit costs were an issue. “If you need to spend $40,000 on every employee you hire, then contract out more labor," he said.
"I mean, you can’t just give away overtime because they deserve it, you give them a raise because they deserve it." In a statement Wednesday, Cointment said the Ascension Parish government makes “workforce structure decisions with the taxpayer in mind to ensure the correct number of people support the right projects across parish government. “Overtime is carefully considered on a case-by-case basis and is approved when necessary and appropriate," he said.
"We are committed to continuous improvement as we adjust to the ever-changing needs of public works.".
