Tagged: East Baton Rouge parish

Vice President of the East Baton Rouge Redevelopment Authority Mark Goodson is part of panel discussion at the Smart Growth summit downtown Tuesday that will delve into the issue of redeveloping neglected and abandoned properties.

The Redevelopment Authority says in 2009, East Baton Rouge Parish had some 6,500 adjudicated parcels of land. That’s somewhere between 2 and 3 percent of all the parcels in the parish. The Authority is currently conducting a study in tandem with the Center for Community Progress to bring that information up-to-date. The numbers, however, are projected to be similar.   

Goodson says Baton Rouge should take a more robust approach to code enforcement to reduce blight like Atlanta, Portland, and even New Orleans already have.

Ninth District Metro Councilman Joel Boe’  has issued a press release saying he supports the idea of consolidating law enforcement in Baton Rouge.

Mike Walker is East Baton Rouge Mayor-President Kip Holden's most formidable opponent in his run for reelection to a third term.

Walker, who is the current Mayor Pro Tem and a 12-year veteran of the Metro Council, has the backing of the Louisiana Republican Party.

Crime has been the major focus of Walker's campaign, and that's where he started his conversation with WRKF's Amy Jeffries.

Kip Holden is running for a third term as mayor-president of East Baton Rouge Parish. Among Holden's challengers is small businessman Gordon Mese. Mese is hoping to win a mandate to rewrite and enforce the Unified Development Code, which sets the rules for land use in the city parish.

In the first in a series of conversations with the mayoral candidates, Mese tells WRKF's Amy Jeffries the code is the key to everything that ails Baton Rouge... starting with taxes.