BATON ROUGE — The East Baton Rouge Parish Mosquito Abatement and Rodent Control Board decided to move a vote originally scheduled for Wednesday morning on whether to approve or reject a budget proposal submitted to them by parish officials to a later date.

The budget proposal was submitted by Mayor-President Sid Edwards and parish officials as Thrive! East Baton Rouge last week. Under Thrive!, the parish would redirect dedicated tax dollars to a city-parish general fund.

Edwards billed the plan as a compromise after a long struggle with library staff, but sources told WBRZ that some members of the MARC board weren't told about it even though a portion of their millage rates would be rededicated to the general fund.

They added that they weren't invited to accompany Edwards as he unveiled the plan, despite members of the parish library and other parish officials joining Edwards.

A one-time rededication of $13.25 million from the department's fund balance will support budget stabilization, allowing the department to retain one year of operating revenue in its fund balance.

However, MARC officials were surprised at the rededication.

"I learned about this basically when they called this special meeting, which was about a week ago," board member Charles McCauley said following a Wednesday meeting, which was the first time the board met since the unveiling of Thrive!

District 9 Metro Councilman Dwight Hudson, who did much of the heavy lifting explaining Thrive! at the mayor's event last week, also attended the MARC meeting.

"We had some early conversations with the director. We didn't work as closely as we did with the library board because the library board is taking up a larger cut from the plan, so I regret that we didn't have closer conversations, but, we're gonna address that moving forward and make sure that we work more collaboratively," Hudson said.

At Wednesday's MARC meeting, Hudson said that the pest control board would maintain a property tax that generates $8.17 million annually with a rate of 1.41 mills, but that the bulk of a secondary millage would be directed to "parish-wide general purposes."

"It's a little different from what we're doing with some of the other millages in that we're not seeing a cut with Mosquito Abatement. They're gonna continue to have the funding that they have," Hudson said.

The board raised concerns about their funding for the future, citing the fact that they have a new helicopter and maintenance will need to be done on said helicopter. MARC also recently began using larvacide, a more expensive alternative to pesticides.

"It's good for this year. It was good for last year, and probably will be enough to operate next year, but is that gonna be enough five years from now?" MARC Director Michael Becker asked.

One thing that came up often was that the board felt there was a lot of information they didn't know.

Rather than rejecting Mayor Edwards' plan, the board said it will take up the matter later. Hudson said he appreciated their feedback.

"We want to make sure that the board has a level of comfort with the millage set that we made in the plan and then also the fund balance that we'll be addressing as well," Hudson said.

Hudson also told WBRZ that there's no hard deadline for the board to hold a vote, but the city-parish would like to take the plan to voters in November.