Please tell me what is going on in St. John Parish.

For some reason, the drainage in Garyville is nonexistent. I have taken pictures of the canals and ditches in Garyville and have gone before the council and gave each councilman copies of the pictures.

They all said that they would do something to help us. They said that they were working on getting a crew for each section of the parish that would only work on drainage.

It was a lie. They came and cut the trees in one of the canals and left the stumps and trash in the middle of the canal. That is just fantastic work.

It does not take an engineer to see what needs to be done. Even I can see the needs.

We just had four inches of rain in Garyville and nearly half of the people came close to flooding. The water cannot get out. The main canal, Hope Canal, is blocked.

The canal draining Garyville to the Hope canal has all kinds of blockages.

The canal along the new road is overgrown and completely· blocked. If and when we get a hurricane we are in trouble. Don’t wait for that to happen, clean the ditches and canals.

If your engineers and foremen are not bright enough to over see the job, I volunteer to do it. Give me the manpower and equipment to do it and it will be done.

Please do not say we need more money to do it. Louisiana is the highest tax paying state in the nation. St. John is the highest taxpaying parish in Louisiana, that makes St. John Parish the highest tax payer in the United States.

Look around, where is the money going?

There is nothing that I can see that is making our parish better.

— Burt Cashio

Garyville