How New Mayor Sid Edwards Faced Baton Rouge Snowstorm: ‘No Plan for This’ – The Lawyer

Two months ago, Sid Edwards was a high school football coach.

But this week, he led Louisiana’s most lush parish through a weather event the likes of which Baton Rouge hasn’t seen in more than 100 years.

The new mayor of East Baton Rouge, who took office earlier this month, has faced a chaotic crash course in running the government in the first few weeks of his tenure.

“One of the ways I’m built for this, in the line of work I’ve been in, mainly dealing with students, is a lot of chaos,” Edwards said. “And when you get up and go to work as a faculty member, as a dean of students, for example, the role I was in, there’s no plan for that day.”

There certainly wasn’t a plan for Tuesday, when Baton Rouge was mired in up to 9 inches of snow, closing roads, businesses and government offices, among others, for the entire week.

Just as he once trusted the offensive and defensive coordinators he appointed, the mayor listens to the insight of his hires and seasoned leaders of Baton Rouge’s government departments.

For example, veteran public works employees found ways to convert front-end loads and road construction into snow plows and salt spreaders.

“I learned a lot in those five days,” Edwards said. “The big thing, the thing I liked, was the quiet confidence of the people in charge.”

“The most vulnerable population”

By Tuesday afternoon, Baton Rouge was covered in more snow than it had seen since 1895.

The day before, Edwards closed city panic offices, a shutdown that will extend through Friday, and urged residents to stay inside and off the roads.

But Edwards said his biggest concern and main focus was the people who didn’t have shelter.

The mayor made multiple visits throughout the week to pop-up homeless shelters that opened in county centers or the offices of metro members Anthony Kenney, Cleve Dunn Jr., Daryl Hurst and Carolyn Coleman.

“This is the most vulnerable population,” Edwards said. “The millionaire who lives off Highland Road is important to Baton Rouge, but no more than the barber on Plank Road in the big picture of what we do. One of my goals in the coming weeks is to get both sides of town to see how lives the other.”

The focus appears to have extended to Edwards’ staff and other parish leadership in the past week.

Chief Administrative Officer Jeff LeDouf said hundreds of beds were full between the six shelters that were operating this week.

“There’s been a lot of talk about how well this group has responded,” LeDouf said. “We want to thank our community partners and our board members … who came to our aid.”

According to Leduff, Coleman helped two of the men who sought asylum on Friday.

“Team Effort”

The blizzard was also a test for some of Edwards’ top staff – many of whom are new to the government themselves.

For most of the week, Edwards could be seen making the rounds, joined by two of his top staff: Chief Administrative Officer Charlie Davis and Chief of Staff Lon Vicknair.

Davis, a businessman turned government official, has held a number of roles for various companies over the past two decades, most recently as CEO of Moxey, a business financial services company.

Vicknair launched a 20-year career as a naval officer before holding a number of leadership positions at PSC Group, a chemical logistics company, before joining the ranks at City Hall.

Leduff is the senior appointee with the most experience — he served as chief of the Baton Rouge Police Department from 2004 to 2010.

As he continues to fill out his staff, the mayor said he is intentionally looking at candidates with diverse backgrounds and experiences. Other officials include a former charter school administrator, state finance coordinator and a 20-year LSU student who ran his campaign.

“When we’re building the team, the big thing I want is some diversity and some inclusion and different skill levels,” Edwards said. “I can’t have 10 military guys, right? And I can’t have 10 businessmen, right? It’s the blending of those talents.”

Although the team is new, the mayor called it “adverse” how well its members worked in synergy this week, both with each other and with department heads, emergency responders and

“Our partners, the sheriff’s department, the sheriff’s office … and Dr. (Tamiara) went above and beyond with juvenile services that kept the kids safe and warm. It was a team effort,” Leduff said.

The team test ahead

With a major weather event now under their belts, Edwards and his team must turn to the long-term work of governing: crafting budgets, advancing the agenda through the Metro Council and other long-term efforts.

That kind of work can present a different challenge, especially for some with limited government experience, according to Daryl Gissell, who was a businessman before serving as chief administrative officer for former Vernon Mayor Weston Broome from 2017 to 2022.

The slower pace of work in government, which requires multiple layers of bureaucracy and more hoops to jump through, can often frustrate those used to faster work in the private sector.

“Results don’t necessarily come quickly,” Giesel said.

Like Edwards’ CAO at Davis, Giesel also had some business experience working for a major development company before moving into politics. He said running government like a business makes good fiscal sense.

“We’ve tried to make sure that if someone gets a service, they pay for that service in Baton Rouge,” he said.

But that approach is easier in the business world, Giesel said, when an idea doesn’t need approval from the Metro Council or the Parish Attorney’s OK to go ahead.

“You can do it, but you can’t just wave a stick and do it. It’s very slow,” Geisel said.

Edwards said he’s always seen Baton Rouge step up in times of crisis, and on Friday, the mayor said he’s once again seen the city come together and pass the test over a five-day period.

But now that the storm has passed and the ice has melted, he says his team has a new test ahead of them: to build that relationship in a permanent way, beyond times of crisis.

“It’s amazing. It takes an act of God or Mother Nature or whoever for Baton Rouge to show the deep soul it has. And it happened again this week,” Edwards said. “Is there a world where we can bottle it up and live that way? That’s one of my goals.”