By Juanice Gray, jgray@natchitochestimes.com
The Natchitoches Parish Department of Public Works stated that for the week of Jan. 25, the highway department is planning to work on the Eight Mile Loop bridge, the Shady Grove Road bridge and try to start the shoulders on Johnson Chute Road. All projects are weather permitting.
In May of last year, the Parish Council approved a tool to track maintenance progress on parish roads. The Parish Council, with a split vote, agreed to contract with Dude Solutions for a software program that would have allowed employees and the public to have an online tool to track completed and ongoing projects performed by the Dept. of Public Works.
Parish President John Richmond proposed the service that he said would have provided transparency and information at the click of a button.
This program was never implemented.
After Dude Solutions installed the program on the computers at the Department of Public Works, it became apparent that the ability for the public to interact with the software and view upcoming, ongoing and completed projects was not going to be delivered as promised.
“Once President Richmond learned that Parish residents would not be able to view these projects, we sent notification to Dude Solutions that we were terminating our agreement,” said Executive Assistant to the Parish President David H. Kees Jr. in an email Monday, Jan. 25.
