State of the City 2024: A Vision for a Thriving and Unified Zachary

When Mayor David McDavid decided to swap his morning espresso shots for decaf, little did he know it would be the least surprising change of his first mayoral year. Our fireside chat with him is more than just a cozy conversation—it's a treasure trove of heartfelt anecdotes and city updates that will leave you feeling like an insider in the world of Zachary politics. Mayor McDavid candidly reminisces about his high school "could-have-beens," gets personal about his son's softball strategy, and gives us the skinny on a peculiar find beneath a local residence. Learn about his enthusiasm for the city's Must Luv Dogs parade event and more—like a potential Zachary Mardi Gras parade.

The pulse of Zachary beats strong, thanks to initiatives like the extensive road rehabilitation and the exciting hire of Ashleigh McHugh as economic development director. As Brandie Triche redefines city operations with fresh ideas, we look ahead to the potential of downtown trolley services and baseball and softball leagues for children with special needs. The city's blueprint for growth, embellished with community engagement and collaborative regional efforts, paints a future both promising and inclusive. Joining Mayor McDavid, we unpack these tales, from the master plan's vision to the triumphs of the Firecrackers cheerleading team, all while marking the milestones that define our city on the move.

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Transcript

Mayor McDavid: 0:05

I'm Mayor David McDavid. Keep listening to Portion Parish Podcast.

Mike Gennaro: 0:09

What's up, Zachary? Today you're going to get a front row seat to the Mayor's fireside chat, but this time we're going to be in front of a real fireplace. Appropriately enough, if you haven't heard, we're now neighbors with City Hall right here in downtown Zachary. We are here with Mayor McDavid to hear and engage with the 2024 State of the City and to celebrate his administration's first year in office. So congrats. I'm Mike Cheneiro. We bring you the best of Zachary every Monday right here on Virginia Street in downtown Zachary. This is Portion Parish, the podcast. We'll be right back with the lightning round Enjoying the family feature in the fall edition of Portion Parish.

Mike Gennaro: 0:47

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Mayor McDavid: 1:59

Looking for originality best dressed, different make-ups of the dogs, best possible float or wagons or different things that they fix their dogs up in. I'm excited I have a dog, that's in an event, my wife will be. We already got everything fixed up, ready to go.

Mike Gennaro: 2:14

Oh good.

Mayor McDavid: 2:15

We're hearing a lot of good things from residents who are bringing their puppy dogs. We've seen advertising on different new stations here around the area, so I think it's going to be a great event and we hope to continue this every year.

Mike Gennaro: 2:27

Yeah, yeah, and I don't think it's too late to register. Well, you know when y'all are listening. It will be, but we'll fill you in, All right. So where is the last place you bought a cup of coffee?

Mayor McDavid: 2:41

in Zachary, I'm not a coffee drinker, but the last I got a hot chocolate from CC's coffee in Zachary.

Mike Gennaro: 2:48

All right, so let's take it. Um, we'd see, are you caffeinated at all?

Mayor McDavid: 2:53

I've cut back on a lot of my sugars.

Mike Gennaro: 2:55

Yeah, yeah.

Mayor McDavid: 2:56

I try to go decaf as much as I can for his coax and stuff like that.

Mike Gennaro: 3:00

Yeah, I'm kind of trying to become a tea drinker.

Mayor McDavid: 3:04

Too much caffeine. I need that unsweetened tea myself.

Mike Gennaro: 3:07

Yeah, yeah. But I think when you were running for mayor you said your favorite midnight snack was like a Twinkie.

Speaker 3: 3:14

Twinkie donuts and orange juice or chocolate milk. I didn't know which one was.

Mayor McDavid: 3:18

I had to cut back on that.

Mike Gennaro: 3:20

All right. What was the most bizarre request or complaint you've ever received from a citizen? And this can go back to your police days if you want to.

Mayor McDavid: 3:31

There's been numerous. I mean, I've had one recently which we got called out to Americana. The uh, you know the resident was having an issue with some gas smells in the house and actually the plumbing company had to dig underneath the house and they found a a area concerned underneath the house, there with some of the piping there in there. Yeah, you know, and I can't go into it more in that.

Mike Gennaro: 3:54

Right, right right.

Mayor McDavid: 3:55

And litigation. But it was kind of. You know, you're looking underneath at the house there and you and you're seeing people coming in and the house there, and then one of them, I want to go. I said no, I'm not going underneath the house, I'll stay here and, and you know, let's see what y'all got and you know to look at some of the film and stuff.

Mike Gennaro: 4:09

And yeah but yeah that was one of them here, recently. Yeah, all right, if your city had a mascot, what would it be and why?

Mayor McDavid: 4:17

I'd have to stay with the Bronco been a Bronco alumni fan since 1969. And it'll always be a Bronco.

Mike Gennaro: 4:24

I like it. I gave you a bunch of lightning around questions just because you're fun to ask all these. To number five you were really into softball. If your son, Ricky McDavid, we're on your softball team, what position would you play him Usually? He?

Mayor McDavid: 4:37

played in outfield. We played together a lot yeah, go ahead teams and he played the outfield.

Mike Gennaro: 4:42

You put him on right field.

Mayor McDavid: 4:44

Yeah, he has a strong one.

Mike Gennaro: 4:45

He has a good one.

Mayor McDavid: 4:46

So you put him in left field, put it in right field, okay, you put your right field. Or has a strong one, but he could on co-ed, he could. He learned just like I did. Yeah, you bat left hand to opposite hand.

Mike Gennaro: 4:56

Yeah.

Mayor McDavid: 4:57

And he, he was, you know, a great ball player. He just kind of, you know, getting older, he kind of stopped playing.

Mike Gennaro: 5:02

If you could go back to any year in Zachary's history and spend a day, which year would you go back to and what would you do?

Mayor McDavid: 5:10

I would probably go back to my high school years, maybe do some things differently, work a little bit harder on my grades and that Maybe go back and play a little more football but also maybe get involved in tracking fields. Yeah, you know, back then I played basketball and baseball in high school. You know I played basketball my whole four years, football up to 10th grade and basketball up to 10th grade and then just after that concentrated on baseball. But looking at different things from different coaches around the nation and also Ghost Brewers in here, you know playing more sports, I think it helps the athlete to be a better round all around athlete.

Mike Gennaro: 5:44

Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks for playing that. You know I want to play that game too. On question number six, I would go back to whenever they had the great fire in the city and figure out what actually happened, because there's so many rumors about it.

Mayor McDavid: 5:56

Yeah, I wrote one the other day about a banana plant or something. I mean, I'm here to-.

Mike Gennaro: 6:00

We might be spreading this. I read once that it was a banana fire, that it was a green-grosser flame ripening bananas and he caught the whole, or she caught the whole town on fire. How'd you like to be that person if that really happened? Talk about a bad day?

Mayor McDavid: 6:16

Yeah, yes it is, and we have some older residents here. We might be able to ask about that with you. Know two family histories? Yeah, and maybe we can find out.

Mike Gennaro: 6:26

Yeah, I asked Ms Jane Burke and she didn't know. That's our centenarian that we had on the podcast a few weeks ago. Very appreciative to have Mayor David McDavid here as our guest. Mayor McDavid, thank you for joining us today. Let's get to your state of the city, our state of the city 2024. First question January 9th 2024 marked a significant milestone for Zachary as it celebrated the first anniversary of your administration. Can you tell us about some of the highlights of this past year?

Mayor McDavid: 7:01

Well, like I said, you know, in the beginning I talked about working with the council, you know, and like I stated earlier, you got two bankers on the board, you got two business council and you got one retired public safety council person who all understands the financial business aspects, you know, but also the public safety aspects of the city and I think it's very important that you know they're on there. We've had other bankers not on there before and other business people, but this is important to us. And then you know they prepare themselves and they do their homework. They ride because I see them. I ride myself when the council agenda comes out to see what you know, things we need to look at. But they know they really, really in tune with their constituents and you know, and you know we meet often.

Mayor McDavid: 7:47

I try to take a Monday where I take two or three hours and they have any questions. Come visit with me. We'll talk about different issues and that. So working with them has been a plus. But we've had a lot of other stuff that happened in Zachary. We had a great audit this year. I mean that was under some of that was under Mayor Amron's administration. But you know the RCFO is Deanna Mankins and you know she's a certified public accountant and that's very important to have her. Her staff underneath her works hard to the council, payable and receivers, but also our department heads, you know, and they make sure they have all the proper paperwork when the auditors come in, produce that to them and you know it's been a blessing to have them here and working hard with all that and the department has been great.

Mike Gennaro: 8:33

Yeah, excellent Moving forward. You mentioned a commitment to continuing progress with an eye toward the future. What positive changes and improvements have you observed throughout the year?

Mayor McDavid: 8:43

Well, just getting a hold of some of these areas that are flooding we made some changes there.

Mayor McDavid: 8:49

You know whether it's more piping, bigger piping, fixings for more drains. You know looking some areas we can improve there. You know we've got a million dollar tower coming in to don't help public safety in this area We've been asking for for about 10 years. You know, in the area of the hospital or high school or Wal-Mart is tough to be able to talk to each other while you inside them buildings and also in the northwest in the town. So what we did Mr Larry Polinski lives on Propolison Road on the east side of 19 donated five acres of land to put a tower there or, you know, in the process of getting the beds out to get it put up and that, and it's going to be beneficial to the public safety here.

Mayor McDavid: 9:31

But also other stuff here. You know, if we got, you know, more cell tower companies that need to far as Verizon or AT&T or T-Mobile, but it wants to put a tower up there to enhance the cell here, to enhance the cell phones here, it'd be great, you know, and that's what we're looking forward to.

Mike Gennaro: 9:50

Yeah, all right, those are all significant developments. Can you tell us more about the improvements in infrastructure, particularly the annual road rehabilitation project and the updated traffic signals?

Mayor McDavid: 10:02

Yes, we did about 39 roads last year on rehab in a city. Right now, as we're speaking, we're engineers are riding Our road the last couple of days looking at some roads we can improve at around town. Here we made a good, significant dent in our roads to maintain them. As you ride through Zacher right now you'll see on the east side of town where we're down there by Home Depot, we're replacing some of the concrete panels on Highway 64, fixing it up. You know, getting some of the tar down in the cracks areas there, making sure it's maintained. You know it's been turned over to the city of Zacher as our road now from all the way to Plank to Walkon, so we're making sure we maintain it. We had our bridges inspection. They're in good shape so we don't have to worry about them right now. So we're progressing and we'll have a new updated road rehab coming up in July which will be voted on by the council and we're looking forward to continuing to make these roads good and make Zacher a great place.

Mayor McDavid: 10:57

Yeah, traffic signal update. Yes, we are in the process right now. If you saw some of the orange piping in the middle of town here we're trying to get the light laid down and we're working to get the money and all that is funded. We're working with city of Paris to get the updated traffic signals and the boxes here are outdated and we're getting prepared to do that right now so that we can get all our stuff updated and so we can be on, you know, more technology savvy here in Zacher with all our equipment.

Mike Gennaro: 11:32

Yeah excellent, All right. It sounds like Zacher's investing in his future. You also mentioned the addition of an economic development director and plans for downtown revitalization. Could you expand on those initiatives?

Mayor McDavid: 11:44

Yeah, we were hired at Ashley McHugh. She was at the chamber, brought her in. She's hit the ground running doing economic development. She has met with a lot of the business people, lined up different companies to come in and look at Zachary working with retail strategies. You know they're doing podcasts, they're doing different educational things to make Zachary better and I mean, yeah, she's been a rock star.

Mike Gennaro: 12:07

She has.

Mayor McDavid: 12:08

She'll be going to Los Vegas for the Midwest uh uh, regional, uh uh companies out that way to entice them to come to Zachary. And I see, I see, yes, oh cool, and this is going, her and Brian will be over there. I went to Atlanta with them to kind of see how the the program was, see if there's gonna be beneficial Zachary, which it was. Got to meet a lot of companies, but also got to meet the companies already here and see what, how we can improve them, make sure what they need and everything here. And we got some great meetings in Atlanta.

Mike Gennaro: 12:37

Oh, excellent. Okay, let's take a break there. The Castellew agency has provided the insurance our community needs at a price you can afford since 1982. The family owned and woman led insurance agency is ready to help you ensure your home, car, boat and business. Owner Danette Castello is president and member of the professional insurance agents of Louisiana association and a proud community partner. When you work with Castello agency, you're supporting a locally owned small business. Learn more about the Castello agency at Castello agencycom, that's C A S T E L L O agencycom, or give them a call at 225-654-2313. Castello agency. Ensuring our community. All right and we're back. It's great to see Zachary investing in both its infrastructure and economic development. You mentioned Brandy Trish as the chief administration. Excuse me, chief administrative officer. What role will she play in the administration?

Mayor McDavid: 13:43

Well, she'll be running the day to day operations and you know she'll be working with our vendors on to make sure that we're getting the quality work here. And if you need problems arise, like with waste management, maybe we're not getting the garbage picked up or the recycling bins picked up, she's going to be our go between with the waste management administration and make sure we get it done. And we're looking. We talked, met with waste management today to make sure we introduce her to them. So she'll know the vendors, they know her. We're maybe looking at maybe looking at a new program to have bigger recycling bins to roll out. Maybe we might try to do a test in one of the neighborhoods here to see how well it goes over to. Maybe we can encourage residents to do more recycling. You know, more cleaner energy in that.

Mike Gennaro: 14:22

Yeah, cool. Well, this one. It begs the question. You got a new economic development coordinator and CAO, so who was doing it before?

Mayor McDavid: 14:34

Well, chris Cowbert, okay, was the CAO. He could have been a mayor or chief in any city in the United States. He's very talented, very good. You know, well spoken, who had a great relationship with our vendors. And I hated to see him leave but you know he was ready and his wife won't enjoy life. You know a little traveling that and go to different places and you know he'd been involved in law enforcement for over 40 something years.

Mike Gennaro: 15:00

Oh wow, he was with Battery City.

Mayor McDavid: 15:04

He taught in New Mexico, training and all that. He traveled, you know, back and forth between there. He had been with the city since probably 2010. And you know, when I took over, I kept him here. I wanted him to stay here for a long time and he told me to give me some time that it's been beneficial to learn from him and what he knew and that, like I say, he could be a mayor and chief anywhere in any city in the United States. He wanted to be.

Mike Gennaro: 15:25

Yeah, yeah, All right. Finally, you mentioned a new master plan for Zachary. Can you tell us more about this plan and its importance?

Mayor McDavid: 15:33

Well, we think it's important to have a plan for the future growth of the city. Our city planner, brian Dixon, has been working with Valle, bill of Aso and Associates to update our UDC and, you know, to make sure. I think we had a series of meetings where the public had had the opportunity to come in and say what they wanted in Zachary, where they wanted at Zachary, and see how we were updating the master plan. And, like I say, they should be finishing that up pretty soon and we'll roll that out in the future.

Mike Gennaro: 15:59

Yeah, excellent, all right, is there anything else that you wanted to share with the citizens in Zachary?

Mayor McDavid: 16:04

Well, just letting them know we were. We know we're probably six or seven months out from the new police station being finished. We're hearing that it's going to be a possibly September date, but we don't know with the weather and all that. But it's $8 million, $21,000 square foot. Update on Oslo Lauderoad is going to help us to miniscule. This building that we're in right now is built in 1987. We're probably just going to stop here today. Taped our air conditions together.

Mayor McDavid: 16:31

It's tough right now to find air conditioner parts because, it's the old Freon and old air conditions, so we're hoping and praying that they don't go out between now and September. But it's the old building that needs to be torn down and redone and either sell it or figure out what we're gonna do with that area.

Mike Gennaro: 16:47

Yeah well, hey, that was what I was gonna ask. Next, that's all the talk in the town. What's it gonna be? What are we gonna do with it?

Mayor McDavid: 16:53

Well, in the meantime, until we do something with our building, the court will stay there and we have to provide a spot with the court and they need to move a room. They're averaging 100, 200 cases on Wednesday, so we have a lot of people showing up in court there. It's not much room. Like I say, that building's been obsolete probably about 10, 12 years now, if not more than that. But yeah, we're looking at that right now, getting that knocked out.

Mike Gennaro: 17:18

Keep listening, we'll be right back.

Speaker 3: 17:21

Hello Portion Parish listeners. My name is Narissa and I'm the general manager of the Comfort Inn Suites in Zachary, located at 1686 East Mount Pleasant Road. It is my pleasure to announce that we, as well as the best Western and New Roads, are under new ownership and management. We hope to work closely with the local businesses, contributing to the positive growth of both Zachary and New Roads. We would like to thank Portion Parish for being so welcoming and look forward to being a part of your community.

Mike Gennaro: 18:22

Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the fun stuff. Some downtown development. How do you all go about deciding what it's gonna be, or how do you do your visioning on downtown?

Mayor McDavid: 18:31

Well they get with a city planner and downtown development, different agencies and meetings and that, and Ashley and Sharon Phillips have been to these meetings to try to lay down the grouer as what we can do, main Street Live. They go to that stuff To make sure what we can do downtown. We think it's important you have something down here. You know people can come here and eat lunch and that. And it was like the other day I was down in Baton Rouge for a meeting and ate at the Little Village and all the people coming in from the different businesses and different agencies around there City, parish or state agencies to come eat lunch down there was just I was overwhelmed by as much as they come. I think we can do that here. You have a lot of business that they can walk on the sidewalks. Come to eat downtown and that. And then I think that's important. We wanna share downtown and see what you know people that come down here and visit. We think it's important.

Mike Gennaro: 19:25

Yeah, absolutely. Another fun one. You teased a Mardi Gras parade. Yes, I mean.

Mayor McDavid: 19:32

I've been attending the Mardi Gras parade. I attended a couple of them in New Orleans yeah, you know my wife's from New Roads and so we were going there. We saw some of the stuff they had. The last couple of nights Friday night and Sunday night went to Artemis and the Coral Rhine Parades Really like it. A lot of people showed up as family friendly and that's what we want here and we're talking about it. We're kind of in the early stages and we'll probably get some stuff in place and figure out what we're gonna do and come up with a committee and start working on it. If we have to start out small, we will, and it's just like the Coral Rhine Parades is setting it up the same way.

Mayor McDavid: 20:06

But we just wanna make sure we can have family friendly fun here in Zachary.

Mike Gennaro: 20:10

Yeah, I mean, outside of some of the logistics of police patrol and shutting off roads and all that, who owns a parade? Is it just like a collective?

Mayor McDavid: 20:21

Well, we could, the city could do it, or we could. Once you form a crew and somebody wants to take over, we can do that route and the city can assist them if we can.

Mike Gennaro: 20:29

Yeah.

Mayor McDavid: 20:31

Just like working with the chamber on Christmas parade here.

Mike Gennaro: 20:33

Yeah.

Mayor McDavid: 20:34

We think that's important for the chamber and we've talked to the chamber about it. We wanna partner them as much as we can help, go out and recruit more floats, more bands, more different organizations to be involved. You know, last couple of years the bands always had competition kinda at the same time along with football. So we're trying to schedule where they can be and more involved. We wanna showcase the Zachary High Band and other bands around the area here.

Mike Gennaro: 20:58

Yeah, you're also talking about showcasing local art. Are we gonna see the White Light Night come back?

Mayor McDavid: 21:04

Yeah, artcrawl we'd love to see it back. I enjoy that walking to different businesses, listening to different performers, but also seeing the artwork that our children do in the school. We have some amazing art teachers here in Zachary and these kids do a great job and I just wanna showcase what they can do To me. If you keep doing these things for our students and that, and they wanna come back here and live here, maybe open a business here and grow here. We think that's important.

Mike Gennaro: 21:30

Yeah, something that I think about often is how do I help create nostalgia for my own kids? It's things that they wanna come back to, you know. Do you have any insight on that?

Mayor McDavid: 21:42

Well, I mean you gotta bring some stuff here they wanna be able to do, I mean whether it's a nice walking park or maybe some pickleball courts, maybe some different things that they wanna do. You know, I'd love to take some property here and put a nice big barn on it where we can have rodeos here, but also, have different fairs. I mean, I go to Washington Parish Fair pretty much every year and watch what they got there.

Mayor McDavid: 22:05

And it's a great setup and what they do there the food, the promotions. They have a big stage where different dance groups young kids, older kids, cheer teams, different bands come in and showcase and I think it's just awesome to see that and we can do that here. We just got a plan and just you know it's gonna take some time, but we can do some different things like that.

Mike Gennaro: 22:24

I'm also really curious to know over the past year you've probably been able to do some mayoral networking. What has it been like getting your own? It's not. I know you're not self promoting. Getting us out there letting your name be known as one of those business friendly mayors is what I'm getting at. Well, I mean.

Mayor McDavid: 22:45

I was on the police side before. So a lot of times I'd dealt with a lot of the mayors with LMA we had a joint chief police and losing our municipal association and mayors conference together. And you know I've been talking to the chiefs association, the director of, fabian Blanche, and you know we're looking at maybe putting me on the, you know, like a liaison between the mayors and chiefs and that, and you know that route because I've been on both sides now. But you know people already knew who I was been on the police side. But I try to go to different meet with different mayors. I meet with, you know, the mayor of St Francisville, bobby Leake. I meet with the mayor from a slaughter in different areas. How can I help you?

Mayor McDavid: 23:21

The mayor from Baker, darnell Waits, you know we were looking at talking to you. You know Bobby Leake. The other day I met with him at lunch. We're talking about maybe getting a downtown trolley, looking at that right now. What they're doing with their businesses, getting people up to different restaurants. Tell me where Bobby Leake is. Is that St Francisville? Oh, okay, and then going up there and see what they got up there and what they're doing up there. I'd like to visit different towns to see what we can do to enhance our town also.

Mike Gennaro: 23:46

Yeah, I love that. Love that, All right. Thank you, Mac, for joining us today and sharing these exciting updates about the city of Zachary. You know you got anything else for us.

Mayor McDavid: 23:55

I mean, we just got a lot of stuff that we're looking at right now we're trying to get our welcome to Zachary signs updated and moved out more further as the city grows.

Mike Gennaro: 24:05

I'm a big sign, a junkie. I love them. We're looking at that right now.

Mayor McDavid: 24:09

We're also, you know, we're waiting on the finish to the annexation of Jerry Lane dealership, which is great. 40 to 50 jobs out there, yeah, us 61 and Mount Pleasant Okay, we're looking at that also. I mean, we're looking at different things. We were meeting this Wednesday with our legislators to ask for more funding to do more projects here in Zachary. We're looking at trying to start a special needs league, a little baseball softball league, for our special needs children here in Zachary Love that Love that.

Mayor McDavid: 24:36

You know, as you saw the other day, that Jamie Bird does a wonderful job at our special needs children at the high school and they have their own cheerleading team who won a championship called it. They're called the firecrackers, so we want to enhance them and make sure they know that they are, they are citizeness down to and that you know, we have things for them to do also.

Mayor McDavid: 24:55

But we're still working on our crosswalks. We're trying to finish that up with city parish. We have different crosswalks here for more safety reasons. We're looking at across some you know church street park where we own some land there. We want to kind of make that a conservation park walking trail area with Breck and that to go all the way up to Rita Street and connect that to the park at Rita Street.

Mike Gennaro: 25:17

Yeah.

Mayor McDavid: 25:18

It's some other sidewalks out there we're just trying to make it walk friendly. As a you know, a bike rider, and me and my wife, we like to ride and we think that's important. We'd like to walk too, and we're looking at different areas to, you know, help the city, you know, to make more walkable, and I love that.

Mike Gennaro: 25:34

My son is a runner, my daughter is a runner and they they often have these opportunities to go long distance in Zachary and the coach will say hey, go hit your six to eight miles today and think about that Like you can either live in a city where you go in a circle or you can safely run six to eight miles. Just you know, with all that boundless energy that have, I think it's important.

Mayor McDavid: 25:58

I mean you know health and safety is important for the city and how to grow and it's like I was telling some of my employees today.

Mayor McDavid: 26:04

you know we got enough walking areas here. If you know lunchtime or dinner break, why didn't walk? And now we got the you know the, the little walking trail over here behind the depot. They can walk that and I encourage that. I mean, you know, you know healthy city is a great city and that's what I look at. You know, down the line, you know we got a meeting coming up this week I want to tell the public this too with the mayor, president broom, coming up on the 20th to talk more about our roads here. To get, you know, see if they, when they don't get started on my personal road, ryland's and those roads that work on that.

Mayor McDavid: 26:34

So we're we got that coming up and, like I said, we got a legislative meeting with our legislators Senator Barrow, Senator Klein, Peter, representative Adams and representative Barrow, a carpenter to talk about funding and that. So we got that coming up Wednesday. So we're going to be a good thing and I can say Thursday a lot of our employees will be aware with the Northwest Elementary, do a taste fair for them. We'll be cooking catfish on them. That's something we love to get back to our community To help our schools be a part of that and let the kids know that we're here to support you, you'll make some good catfish too.

Mayor McDavid: 27:07

The other guys got a down pat. They know how to do it.

Mike Gennaro: 27:09

Yeah, yeah, y'all follow the same recipe in that the catfish cart, don't you?

Mayor McDavid: 27:14

Yeah, and they say they do a good job and yeah, we look forward to that, and so it's very important we get back to the community.

Mike Gennaro: 27:21

Yeah, how has it been? How is your relationship with Baton Rouge proper? You know, being Zachary, I often think about this. You know, am I recruiting away from Baton Rouge? No, I want to bring businesses here, but I want everybody to tie back to Baton Rouge. What are your feelings? Have you learned anything you know about connectivity with Baton Rouge?

Mayor McDavid: 27:43

Well, we met when my goal was to have established relationships with the administration down in Baton Rouge whether it's, you know, mayor Broome, or with now the new police chief on. I need to go out and talk to him and see. You know what can we do to help him there, but also our representatives and senators and our business people with you. Know a hotel?

Mayor McDavid: 28:02

you know, rock and all that, the different organizations down there to work together, because we're all part of East Baton Rouge, parish. Yeah, we are in East Baton Rouge, parish. We want to promote East Baton Rouge parish. We want to vote Zachary Bakers Central. You know, st George, whoever it may be, you know we want to promote these different cities, and that because it's important. I mean, if you know we flourish and everybody flourishes, it's great for all the parish.

Mike Gennaro: 28:28

Yeah, that's an excellent note to end on. What do you think? Yeah, we wish you continued success in your administration and the future of Zachary. That wraps up this episode of Zachary's vision, a podcast with Mayor David McDavid. We hope you enjoy this conversation and stay tuned for more updates on the progress and the future of Zachary.