Youngsville Mayor Ken Ritter Talks Town Hall Meeting On 12/15

Youngsville Mayor Ken Ritter joined Bernie and Rob on Acadiana's Morning News to discuss tomorrow evening's open house and town hall meeting in Youngsville, which allows residents to see upcoming plans for the community's development and interact with city officials.

Ritter outlined the tremendous growth the Youngsville community has experienced in the last quarter century

Our population growth since 1990 has been 350% and we’ve been fortunate to have great developers in our community. We’re ending our fourth year with over 400 residential and commercial building permits and this year alone over 800 new home sites were approved for development.

Ritter also talked the origins of the city's new master plan and what it entails

UL’s Executive MBA program worked with me on a growth guidance plan and they’re the ones who steered us in the right direction and gave us a broad assessment of how does the community feel, what do they identify as the strengths and weaknesses of our community, how do we tackle what’s working right and what do we need to focus on that we’re not doing. One of those weaknesses was the master plan.

The master plan we did with our new engineering firm CH2M they’ve done a fantastic job. They’re our city engineers and they’re tasked with planning and review of projects and to help me with the oversight of where we go from here.

Finally, Ritter explained why he feels Youngsville is so attractive to people looking to move there

There are several reasons. One, we have a fantastic quality of life. The median age is 32 years old, so parks, recreation, and schools are very important. We’re fortunate to have excellent schools in our community, not just Lafayette Parish, but also, Ascension and Acadiana Renaissance and Charter School, which is an excellent school as well. Secondly, they see the emphasis we put on recreation with our 70 - acre sports complex and they want to be part of that. The third option is that we have the availability of housing options that have been affordable, new construction and that’s been attractive to people as well.

Tomorrow night's open house and town hall meeting will be at Green T Lindon Elementary in Youngsville. The open house begins at 5 with information regarding various projects available for public viewing, followed by the town hall at 6. Click the image above to hear the full interview.