Calcasieu Parish Administrator Bryan Beam is set to retire soon. Appointed in 2010, he is only the third person to fill the role in the history of the Police Jury.

“I have mixed feelings about it, but the timing is right for me to move on,” Beam said.

Before he gets busy learning to play pickleball — something he sees as a way for the once-avid tennis player to become more active — he shared some highlights from his 30-year career. He also shared a brief history of the men who came before him.   

Three like-minded administrators, though very different in personality, working across 50 years made a difference that might not be evident from the outside looking in. They provided the continuity necessary to plan and accomplish parish-wide longterm goals.

Beam, a 1984 McNeese business grad, started out in the oil and gas industry as an administrative analyst. It was interesting, he said. He enjoyed it, even the travel from Lafayette to Houston and New Orleans. Yet, after about five years, he found himself thinking about a career in the public sector.

Always the analyst and researcher, he added a thorough self-examination to the mix before enrolling in LSU to pursue a master’s degree in public administration.  His wife, Edith, supported the family of three. After his first year in the program,  he was able to get an internship with Calcasieu Parish.

“It was a great experience,” Beam said. “I loved local government. I didn’t know I would be coming back to Lake Charles, but I did. I started in ‘94, and I have been here ever since. It’s the best decision I ever made.”

Parish Administrator Mark McMurry hired Beam, and put him in the Emergency Services Department. Beam moved quickly into administration. In 2002, he was named assistant to McMurry, then appointed administrator in 2010.

Mark McMurry

McMurry went to work for the parish in 1976, and was appointed its second administrator in 1988.

“Mark McMurry was not only my boss but also my mentor,” Beam said. “Mark was innovative.  Along with a select blue ribbon committee of citizens, he developed and executed a large capital improvement program in the late 1980s that included a new jail, a new judicial center, additions to the District Attorney’s building and restoration of the Old Historic Courthouse offices.  This was all paid for by a temporary sales tax that ran less than two years.

In terms of leadership, McMurry believed in “hiring good, competent people and getting out of their way,” as he liked to say it.

McMurry said much of the great work done during his tenure was a result of strong leadership from three jurors, Julian Dondis, Wayne Kingery and Fred Godwin.

Highlights during his administration include going to the sales tax base for public works, which reduced ad valorem tax.

“Prior to that time, eight wards were all operating with different millages. The haves had and the had nots didn’t,” McMurry said.

In 1992, the public passed a sales tax that allowed every residential road in the parish to be hard surfaced.

When the parish had to make what some thought was the unpopular decision to spend $3 million for the last piece of property on the lake for the public to enjoy or let it go to a company who wanted to build it out in condos, Calcasieu Parish purchased the property that is now Prien Lake Park.      

Rodney Vincent

Beam said, and McMurry agreed, that it was Rodney Vincent who set the tone for what the administrator role should be and is today — centralized leadership to execute what the Police Jury says it wants to do.

Before Vincent was appointed as administrator in 1972, parish politics were a bit of a wild west show, according to McMurry.     

Each of the parish’s eight ward bosses handled his own budgeting, purchasing, equipment and personnel functions individually until the process was changed to the unit system. A better description of the unit system might have been the unified approach or consolidation of operations that streamlined decision-making and gave rise to the need for the first parish administrator.

The change was big, a cultural shift that presented challenges, pushback it might be called today, but it helped prioritize building roads and bridges and improving drainage across the parish in a more equitable and efficient manner. It spread out resources and prevented more persuasive juror personalities from securing an advantage.      

“It started in public works,” Beam said, “but it bled into other departments over time.”

Vincent, a Tulane graduate who served in World War II, had been with the parish since 1948 as an engineer during a time when the engineer was the de facto administrator in many parishes.

McMurry worked for Vincent for 12 years before he was appointed, and described him as the quintessential government employee who didn’t really need to have that job. His family was wealthy. He was on a local bank board.

“His leadership quality was very understated, a classic southern gentleman, very intelligent, a smart engineer who also had the skill sets that are most of the time found in different people when you’re an engineer,” McMurry said.

“His sense of humor was wonderful, not what you would have expected if your only contact with him was from the cheap seats,” McMurry said.

In addition to all the changes that occurred in the ‘70s that resulted in appointing Vincent as first administrator, McMurry also credits Vincent for the adoption of zero-based budgeting. Rather than using the previous budget as a baseline, each budget starts from scratch. No expense is automatically included unless it is justified.    

The administrator works for Police Jury

Beam said he has 15 bosses, and “you have to work for all 15, not just the few you like working with.”

McMurry said working with 15 jurors is like “herding cats.”

Fifteen jurors not only represent different geographical districts but also people from those district who can be very different from district to district. That brings a lot of ideas to the table.

Beam said when he started with the parish he was more goal- and task-oriented.

“I wanted to get things done, and I did not appreciate how important relationships are,” he said.

He learned a lot of effective operational practices from McMurry, he said, but he also learned how to build relationships with police jurors.

“I got better at that, and like everything else, with age comes wisdom,” Beam said.

People who run for office and get elected often get criticized for things that not everybody understands, Beam said. They take a lot of direct heat from the public.

“The more I learned about what they have to deal with, the better I was able to serve them in my role.”

McMurry said it’s particularly difficult for local elected officials these days because of social media.

Administrator is in charge of personnel

Beam is proud of his department heads, and of the work that’s done to seek out qualified people and to develop them.     

“Our jurors know that we are not going to try to sell them on something because of somebody’s personality or charm. You gotta come to the table with some good reason, solid data on why something should be done. I love that form of government,” Beam said. “It’s a common expression. Two heads are better than one. I don’t have all the answers.”

2025-2029             strategic plan

The Police Jury has just approved the 2025 to 2029 strategic plan:

l Achieve long-term solutions for special service district demands.

l Maintain excellence in communication, customer service and community engagement.

l Achieve long-term fiscal sustainability.

l Enhance parish parks, recreation and quality of life

l Build sustainable parish-wide drainage, roads/bridges and utility infrastructure — and maintain it.

l Build and maintain the workforce of the future.

“I am a big believer in, if you write it down, you have a much better chance of doing it,” Beam said.

The parish has been getting it down on paper for the last seven years, and said having a plan in place helped make the great strides that have been made in improving parish drainage, building and maintaining roads and improving utilities such as water works.

He said it also helps engage department heads all the way down to front-line workers in a way that might not be possible if they didn’t have a strategic plan to show how their work fits into the larger goal of the police jury.

The strategic plan was used, in part, to develop new ordinances in 2017 in a parish where almost half of it is in a flood hazard area. The ordinances will prevent building in a way that will make the problem worse. The detention pond on Louisiana Avenue is also a result of strategic planning.

In the past six years, the parish has built a new Office of Juvenile Justice and Forensic Center. Most of the major renovations at Burton Complex are complete. Work has begun on a new Animal Services facility, and it’s possible that work could start on a new 14th Judicial District Court building.

“Add it all up and the cost is approaching $80 to $100 million, none of which required new taxes,” Beam said. “It was paid for with existing taxes and gaming funds.”

Beam feels good about how far the parish has come in addressing “quality of life” projects such as parks and the Clean-Up Calcasieu campaign.

“We live in an area that appreciates the outdoors,” he said. “I am proud of our efforts and have a lot of faith that our younger people are growing up with a mindset not to litter their home, their parish.”

Looking back, Beam wishes the repair of facilities wouldn’t have taken as long as it has although the hurricanes and COVID were beyond anyone’s control.

“That one bothers me,” he said. “It’s just taken longer than I had hoped.”

He said it has been a “great pleasure” to get to know the jurors, and there have been many of them, and he wished he would have gotten to visit some of the 700 full-time and 80 part-time employees in the places where they work.

“I wish I would have started earlier,” he said.

Calcasieu Parish public works, development ordinances and infrastructure will continue to improve in the future based on solid planning. The consolidation that began with Vincent is not over. In 2019, seven drainage districts became two. Soon a water trunkline will be extended east to connect what are now three different waterworks districts.

“We’ve made great progress,” said the parish’s third administrator, “but there’s still work to be done.”

•

In the next Weekend Talk, read about Bryan Beam’s successor, Dane Bolin.