Jury committee recommends bid on Morse Town Hall

The village of Morse will soon have a new town hall.
Bids were accepted Tuesday night by the Acadia Parish Police Jury’s Finance Committee for the construction of a new municipal building for Morse.
The committee will recommend that the full jury accept the low bid in the amount of $371,000 submitted by F. Phillips Contractors of Ville Platte.
The building is the final Acadia project to be funded under the Ike/Gustav Disaster Relief Grant Program, according to Jonas Harrington of Mader Engineering.
Harrington explained that this the second go-around for bids on the project. Bids were accepted in May 2014 but came in over the $423,160 allocated for the project.
“We were forced to redesign and adjust,” Harrington said.
Five bids were received ranging as high as $453,000.
No timeline for construction was announced.
In other business Tuesday night, the jury’s Airport Committee appears to have finally come to terms with a hangar rentor at the Estherwood facility.
Gene LeJeune had occupied the former Mosquito Control hangar at LeGros Memorial Airport. To make room for Landry-Aero, LeJeune agreed to vacate the hangar, moving into a smaller hangar at the field.
The door of his new hangar, however would not accommodate the agriculture planes on which he works.
Tuesday night, the committee offered LeJeune the 3,600-square-foot hangar that Landry-Aero had formerly occupied (before the aforementioned move) at a rate of 14 cents per square foot — or $504 a month — for a term of five years with an option to renew for five years.
In a somewhat related matter, the committee agreed to lease Wayne Guillot 1,668 square feet of airport land upon which an office trailer sits.
Guillot purchased the trailer from Landry-Aero and will use it as a satellite office for his business, Lake Air Flying of Jennings.
Guillot will pay the parish $167 a year for the land. In 10 years, if the office trailer is still there, it will become the property of the parish.
Also Tuesday night, the Roads and Bridges Committee took action to purchase new equipment for the parish road crews, including a dump truck for Branch and a backhoe for the Crowley Barn.