[StBernard] Race for St. Bernard Parish president is stained with bad blood

Westley Annis westley at da-parish.com
Sat Oct 15 09:10:25 EDT 2011


Race for St. Bernard Parish president is stained with bad blood

Published: Friday, October 14, 2011, 10:00 PM

By Benjamin Alexander-Bloch, The Times-Picayune

Incumbent St. Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro is pitted against two
men who harbor great personal animosity toward him, one whom Taffaro fired
and another who led a recall effort against him in 2009. The fourth
contestant, Timothy A. Tobin Jr., says he sees himself as David fighting
Goliath.

David Peralta, a Republican from Meraux, was former Parish President Henry
"Junior" Rodriguez's chief administrative officer and then continued in that
job under Taffaro for about nine months before he and Taffaro had a
contentious falling out that is unsurprisingly depicted differently
depending on the storyteller. Peralta says Taffaro was too much of a
micromanager, while Taffaro says Peralta was incompetent.

Peralta has worn many hats over his career. He was a New Orleans police
sergeant, the administrator of the St. Bernard Sheriff's Office's juvenile
detention center, the warden of the St. Bernard jail, and a parish planning
and zoning commissioner. He is now a grant administrator for the St. Bernard
Sheriff's Office. While still working for Taffaro in July 2008, Peralta was
one of 18 in the running for Causeway police chief. In 2009, he was one of
more than 40 to apply for the Mandeville police chief position.

When Taffaro took office in January 2008, Peralta and he described each
other as longtime friends, but Taffaro eventually asked him to resign.
Peralta refused, and Taffaro fired him. Taffaro says he holds nothing
against Peralta; he just felt the job didn't suit him professionally.
Peralta says he and Taffaro had "philosophical problems" about how to manage
employees.

Peralta maintains that if elected, he will strive for all his employees to
be as happy as possible, "as happy employees are good employees."

Taffaro is running on a platform pledging continued recovery for the parish,
pointing to the ribbon cuttings his administration holds weekly, and to the
benefits of having the same administration wrap up recovery that started it.
Peralta in turn claims that a large amount of financing was received, and
construction started, before Taffaro took office and that "anybody who had
been parish president over the past four years would have gotten this done
-- the money was coming regardless."

Taffaro says if re-elected he would continue to strengthen regional, state
and federal partnerships.

"My role as parish president came as a result of necessity more than
anything else," Taffaro recently said. "As a councilman after Katrina, I
just wanted to see (the parish) get started with recovery, get off a dead
center."

It was a not-too-veiled stab against Rodriguez, the man who ran parish
government before Taffaro beat him at the polls and took over. In his 2007
campaign, Taffaro faulted Rodriguez for not pressing forward fast enough
with FEMA-approved recovery projects.

Taffaro's campaign rests on the idea that he made good on his 2007 campaign
promise to start recovery, and that during the next four years, he would
like to finish it.

"No one else has the direct experience to manage these recovery projects,"
he said.

Taffaro points to nearly 600 projects and more than $1 billion in FEMA
dollars and the need to convert such projects into economic growth for the
parish, citing Val Riess Park in Chalmette and the Aycock Barn Seafood and
Farmers in Arabi as examples of new facilities that attract out-of-town
visitors.

In terms of the pace of recovery, another candidate for parish president,
Paul Molinary of Chalmette, in part sees it as too aggressive.

Molinary helped lead the recall against Taffaro back in 2009, complaining
then and now that Taffaro's administration moves too fast in demolishing
homes damaged by Katrina. He argues that in some cases, houses are being
knocked down before owners can repair them.

He filed the recall in February 2009 along with his current campaign
manager, Bradley Cantrell. At the time, several of their properties had been
targeted for demolition. Their petition fizzled out six months later, but
Cantrell joined six other residents in filing a still-pending federal
lawsuit against the parish claiming their homes were wrongfully demolished.

Molinary, who runs a local disposal and construction business, says he's
also troubled at the difficulty to obtain building and occupational permits
from parish government. He claims not only has it cost residents money, but
he believes it has impeded the parish's growth by frustrating former St.
Bernardians who otherwise might have moved backed after Katrina.

Tobin, of Arabi, meanwhile faults the constant construction throughout the
parish for impeding traffic and frustrating residents. He says construction
schedules should be better managed and better publicized and that the
contractors should be more courteous to residents.

"In terms of the construction, there is a large amount of lack of respect
for people," he said.

He says he worries about safety hazards when trucks block streets and that
his children's school buses often are rerouted to accommodate street repair
projects. He also says he fears that once construction is complete, the
parish won't have enough money and resources to maintain it.

Tobin, the only candidate who hasn't expressed complete confidence in his
electoral victory, says he will need some help.

"I'm up against a couple of really big giants here, but if you look at David
and Goliath, then if God is with me I've got a shot."

Benjamin Alexander-Bloch can be reached at bbloch at timespicayune.com or
504.826.3321.





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