VIDALIA — The president of the Concordia Parish Police Jury and another juror became heated with each other during a discussion of the president’s privilege in setting the agenda for jury meetings.

The exchange between President Melvin Ferrington and Juror Willie Dunbar began after Dunbar asked other jurors if they thought the president should be allowed to block a juror from putting an item on the agenda.

“You can put anything on an agenda item, I have never denied a juror putting it on an agenda,” Ferrington said.

Dunbar responded that this time Ferrington had blocked a juror’s agenda item.

“What you wanted was not an agenda item, it was a correspondence item,” Ferrington said. “You are out of order.”

Dunbar replied that Ferrington was out of order.

“I want this to go on record stating that you had the secretary take something off I put on the agenda,” he said.

The items in question were letters from the state attorney general’s office about the rights of water and sewer districts to set rates and who they may charge.

Ferrington said he hadn’t taken the items off the agenda, but he had instructed Secretary Kevin Friloux not to place them on the agenda because they were correspondence and not items for discussion.

“The president removed two items I asked him to put on the agenda,” Dunbar said. “It is not something he had the right to do.”

Ferrington said he had the right to set the agenda, and moved the discussion to other items. Ferrington later read the letters in question during the correspondence portion of the meeting agenda.

At the end of the meeting, Ferrington apologized for the outburst.

“I have sort of been under pressure lately, and I don’t usually do that, and I won’t let it happen again,” he said.

Also during the meeting, the jurors discussed the possibility of parish boards, such as recreation districts, notifying the public of the upcoming expiration of terms of board members.

Juror Joe Parker made a motion for the jury to send a letter to the boards whose members the jury appoints requesting they notify the public

“That way, anybody in the general public who thinks they want to serve on this recreation board or whatever board, they have an opportunity to fill out an application with the police jury,” Parker said.

When District Attorney Brad Burget said the process of how those boards appoint their members may be directed by state statute, Parker retracted his motion pending Burget’s further looking into the law.

The jury appointed two men to Recreation District No. 1 — Robert Lee III and James Davis, which sparked the initial discussion.

In other news:

-Juror Randy Temple asked if the parish government could contact the City of Vidalia to find out why the courthouse’s monthly utility bill was $15,000.

“If that is in fact our bill, we need to check with the city and find out if the rates have gone up, if it is because of high usage or what, because this has really been a mild month,” Temple said.

Ferrington agreed that the bill has never been that high before.

“Something is out of whack,” he said.

-The jury adopted a resolution in honor of former parish homeland security director Morris White, who died in late June.

-The jury adopted a resolution in support of an application by Concordia Economic Development to have the area certified as a Work Ready community.

Work ready communities are certified through the testing of employed, unemployed and underemployed residents using a test created by ACT, Inc., Concordia Economic Director Heather Malone said.

“This certification is a designation site selectors are now looking at when they are looking at your community workforce,” she said. “They are looking and seeing if (the workforce) is skilled and able to accept (industrial) clients.”