Abbeville Parks Department in limbo; Mayor has yet to hear from, meet new director

What is the future of the Abbeville Parks and Recreation Department? Abbeville Mayor Mark Piazza did not have a solid answer.
Friday marks Day 10 since the April 15 Abbeville City Council meeting where the council voted 3-2 not to rehire Jerry Smith as the parks and recreation director - a job he held for six months. That same night the council voted 3-2 to hire Laura Briggs as the interim parks and recreation director for the next three months.
Briggs is a recent LSU graduate and Abbeville High graduate, who played in the Abbeville rec league growing up. While she went to LSU, during her summers off, she worked with A.A. Comeaux Youth League in Abbeville.
She was hired 10 days ago by the council, but Mayor Piazza has yet to hear from her or does not have any idea when her starting date is with the city. Piazza said he asked councilman Wayne Landry, who made the motion to hire her.
Landry was not 100 percent sure.
“I have not been told by any of the three councilmen who hired her, when her first day will be,” said Mayor Piazza. “She has not called my office.”
Because she will be a director of the parks department, her boss is Mayor Piazza. It will be his responsibility to educate her about the day to day operations of the parks department.
He would like to have a start-date because summer baseball/softball league in Abbeville is scheduled to be starting up now, however, there is no one to oversee it. Parents and children are in limbo. Many have paid a registration fee for their children to play.
“It has been frustrating and disappointing,” said the mayor about the direction the parks department is heading. “I do not see how baseball will survive. We will have a recreation program in Abbeville. It will not go away. To what extent, is uncertain.”
Before the council voted 3-2 to let go of Smith, Abbeville played baseball under the baseball/softball charter of Babe Ruth. Because of how the council voted, Joe Cormier, who is local Babe Ruth Director, pulled two baseball tournaments from Abbeville.
Abbeville finds itself in this predicament because of actions the mayor and city council has taken over the last four years.
For 50-plus years, the Abbeville baseball and softball programs were run by a private league - Vermilion Youth Inc (changed to A.A. Comeaux Youth League).
The amount of children who played summer ball reached as high as 600 under the private league in Abbeville. Since the city council voted four years ago to get rid of the private league and begin its city run league, the numbers have fallen to less than 70.
There is also the threat of youth football leaving Abbeville.
“I have tried to explain to the council we need to work together as a team,” Mayor Piazza said. “Before you take action to change something of this magnitude, you need to have a plan. You need to know where are we going from here. What is plan B? To make a sudden change like this, with no plan, it is what has caused the recreation program to diminish to the extent it is today.”