EAST BATON ROUGE — Mayor-President Sid Edwards announced a plan to redirect the existing East Baton Rouge Parish Library System’s millage to fund several initiatives, including infrastructure, public safety, mental health, blight reduction, and education.
During a press conference Tuesday morning, Edwards unveiled the “Revive EBR” initiative. He said the goal of the project would be to reinvest public funds from the library system to tackle some of the “most pressing challenges facing East Baton Rouge Parish.”
Edwards said that he would look into cutting hundreds of city jobs if voters didn’t agree to shift those dedicated funds. Initially, he said he would cut 600 jobs but later clarified that was only an estimate.
“I think that right now that’s a raw number. It’s an estimate but it’s going to be hard times. This is a hard thing to do — what we’re doing right now, what I ask,” Edwards said. “There would be massive cuts. Government should be about service to the people. We’re not an employing agency by definition.”
Edwards said this was all part of a campaign promise to not raise taxes in the parish.
“I told you I don’t want to raise taxes. We have a plan here that can cut taxes and help revive Baton Rouge and put us on the map where we should be,” Edwards said.
Edwards said the rededication of funds would be used in several areas of the city, including:
- Improvements to drainage and critical infrastructure.
- Investments in law enforcement, community policing, and violence intervention programs.
- Expanding access to mental health resources and crisis response teams.
- Strengthening community programs and neighborhood initiatives.
- Addressing abandoned properties and improving public spaces.
Edwards, a former high school football coach, said the East Baton Rouge Library System was like a star running back on a struggling football team.
“Our library (system) is the all-star in Baton Rouge. The rest of the team isn’t looking very good,” Edwards said.
While Edwards said that rededication of funding had been unfairly labeled as “police vs. the library”, he emphasized funds will be used for more than just policing but said public safety had become a major issue across the parish.
“Dead people can’t read books. We’ve got a problem in Baton Rouge,” Edwards said.
He also said his administration was committed to funding the library system at the highest rate of any library system in the state if the rededication of funds were to become reality.
During a Metro Council meeting earlier this month, over 100 people signed up to speak in favor of renewing the library’s millage.
During that meeting, East Baton Rouge Parish Library Director Katrina Stokes asked to delete the renewal meeting item from the agenda. If it had been approved by Metro Council members, renewal for the library’s millage could have been placed on the Oct. 11, 2025, ballot with a reduced millage rate.
A press release from the library said that because the council meeting ended without any affirmative action, the library can reintroduce either the same proposal or a new one at the next council meeting on February 26, which the council could then vote on at the March 26 meeting.
The item specifically geared towards redirecting library funds to the general fund will be up for public discussion on March 12, 2025, before the EBR Metro Council.
Edwards previously said that his goal was to give BRPD officers one of the highest raises ever changing the starting pay from $40,900 to $58,000. That’s nearly a 15% increase in starting pay. Plus, he and his staff are also working on raises up to 41% depending on a current officer’s rank and salary. If the plan works, Baton Rouge Police officers would go from one of the lowest starting salaries in the region to one of the highest.
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One Response
Who’s doing the math for this article. A raise from $41k to $58k is nowhere near 15%.
A 17,000 increase divided by the 41,000 current salary is an increase of 41.4%