MARK POPE: Don’t be fooled, Vote NO On The Rededication [OPINION]

Don’t be fooled, vote NO on the rededication of the 3.56 health millage

This Saturday, Nov. 18, Lafayette Parish voters decide whether to rededicate the 3.56 (mills) health millage, and move some money into the existing drainage millage, and some money into a totally wasteful, unnecessary duplication and expansion of government, which is the “CREATE initiative.”  CREATE stands for Culture, Recreation, Arts, Tourism, and Economy.  I, along with my family, neighbors, and friends will be voting NO to defeat this diabolical ploy to unnecessarily expand government and turn Lafayette into a “smart city.”   There is an honest, transparent way to put more money in the drainage fund, and this is not it.  Voting NO will keep the full 3.56 mills in the health fund for (a) the parish health unit, (b) the animal shelter, (c) mosquito spraying.

A promotional mail piece, sent out and paid for by Mayor Robideaux’s former PAC, “Leadership for Louisiana,” is totally devious in that the CREATE initiative is not even mentioned in the  piece concerning the rededication of the 3.56 (mills) health millage. Citizens are encouraged to vote for the rededication issue, but are given only half the story – that is deceptive and dishonest.
Each of the aspects of C-R-E-A-T-E has many existing organizations which support and promote the arts, tourism, and so on.  The administration and city-parish council of Lafayette Consolidated Government have not been open and honest about the CREATE initiative. Maybe they’re just not fully informed. Regardless, their CREATE effort is devious, wasteful, and unnecessary. A group of friends and myself have scrutinized the 22-page CREATE document.  It is bad for Lafayette.

Consider this excerpt from the CREATE document: “Our public/private sector advisors perceive the creative industries as key factors of sustainable economic, social, cultural and environmental development.”  That means that the “ruling elite” will tell us what we must do in all aspects of our lives. The organization UNESCO is the first on a list of “recognized models” for CREATE. UNESCO stands for United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.  UNESCO promotes gloom-and-doom environmental education worldwide, which clouds the minds of  young people, misleading them into believing that our modern society must be changed into the futuristic, smart, “sustainable society” which the United Nations promotes. Nothing is further from the truth.  UNESCO also has a new leader and a new educational initiative which focuses on indoctrinating “citizens of the world.”   And Lafayette Consolidated Government (LCG) wants to base CREATE on this extremist nonsense?  Besides, what in the world is the United Nations doing as an advisor or “a model” for a local initiative in Lafayette, Louisiana?

This CREATE initiative, which is part of Plan Lafayette, is based on the groupthink that Lafayette must become a “smart city”; for example, like Austin, Texas. The logic that “everybody is doing it [smart city initiatives]” does not fit our Cajun culture in Lafayette Parish.

Please vote NO on the rededication of the 3.56 mills of the health millage.  If you approve of the rededication of the 3.56 (mills) health millage, you approve of the CREATE initiative, and you bring the United Nations into Lafayette and our local government. LCG is not being transparent and honest with this rededication ballot issue.

-Mark Pope