Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Hi there. Welcome to another episode of the Parish Circuit podcast.
[00:00:05] Today we are going to be talking about animal control or the soon to be lack of animal control in St. Landry Parish.
[00:00:15] So we just received news that the animal control services of St Landry parish are going to be cut.
[00:00:24] Jesse Bellard made an announcement today and this means there will no longer be a St. Landry parish animal control.
[00:00:34] No operations, no officers to call in relation to animal control.
[00:00:40] And this seems like it's pretty big news.
[00:00:44] There are. If you live in St. Landry parish or you live in a place like Opelousis, you probably would agree that there is an animal problem at times and, and now there will be no one to call, as far as we can tell. Now, Jesse Bellard did say he made a point to note that the local municipalities will be responsible for their own animal control. It will no longer be a parish operation.
[00:01:10] But for many municipalities, they probably do not have anything related to animal control in place, at least officially or like a number you can call.
[00:01:22] So, yeah, this kind of leaves some questions for people living in the parish about what they're going to do. Now, from someone who's lived here in Opelousas for a while, I can say that it does seem like there hasn't been maybe much of a prompt response when there have been animal problems in the various neighborhoods in Appaloosas even when animal control was called. So it could be that not a lot changes here in the day to day.
[00:01:53] But of course I'm sure there are some people who would have been helped by this and they will no longer have access to that. But let's talk about this from a biblical perspective kind of role of government, the proper role of government perspective here.
[00:02:09] I think one thing we could say, and I've actually, even before we heard this news, we've talked about this, I've talked about this with some people.
[00:02:17] I think this is something that could be, could be privatized.
[00:02:21] I think I know a couple guys, young men who, you know, maybe have an entrepreneurial mindset who if given the opportunity and a little money, they could probably take care of most of the animal issues in the parish when someone needed it and they called and they would probably be motivated to be prompt and effective.
[00:02:43] So, yeah, anyway, I think that could be something to look into.
[00:02:47] But as of 4:30pm on July 22, that's the, the day that I'm recording this, there will be no more animal control services in St. Landry parish.
[00:03:00] So it'll be interesting to see where we go from here.
[00:03:04] For now, I would say contact, as the parish president encourages you to do, contact your local municipality if you have any animal control issues.
[00:03:17] Not sure what that's going to look like yet.
[00:03:20] We don't know if the local cities are equipped for, for that type of response.
[00:03:26] But.
[00:03:27] But, yeah, a lot of questions, not a lot of answers yet, but maybe an opportunity, maybe an opportunity to privatize something that could be privatized and take some responsibility for the protection of our neighbors. So I think that's it for now. Just as a quick reminder, if you're enjoying the St. Landry Parish podcast and the news that we're putting out in the form of articles, we now have a feature where you can donate if you believe in our mission. We're trying to approach news from a biblical perspective.
[00:03:57] If you support that mission, you can support us.
[00:04:00] Think of it as a, you know, buy us a coffee. There's options for one time donations or recurring donations. And we'd love to be able to keep, keep doing this and providing good news from a biblical perspective for the parish that we love. All right, thanks everybody for tuning in. We'll catch you next time. Bye.
