Tagged: East Baton Rouge parish

Kip Holden is running for a third term as mayor-president of East Baton Rouge Parish. Among Holden's challengers is small businessman Gordon Mese. Mese is hoping to win a mandate to rewrite and enforce the Unified Development Code, which sets the rules for land use in the city parish.

In the first in a series of conversations with the mayoral candidates, Mese tells WRKF's Amy Jeffries the code is the key to everything that ails Baton Rouge... starting with taxes.

The Recovery School District is announcing plans for an "Achievement Zone" in north Baton Rouge where the schools have been failing for decades.

As part of that effort, New Schools for Baton Rouge will be facilitating the development of charter schools.

Before moving upriver to launch the new non-profit, Chris Meyer worked for the RSD in New Orleans, identifying which schools to turn over to charter operators there.

As he told WRKF's Amy Jeffries, Meyer is out to prove that you don't need a hurricane to make radical changes to the way schools work.

Five hundred and fifty nine -- that's the number of residents the Census estimates East Baton Rouge Parish gained between 2010 and 2011, according to newly released figures.

The total parish population, about 441,000 as of July 2010, grew just .1 percent over the year.

WRKF's Tegan Wendland asked LSU demographer and sociology professor Troy Blanchard what to make of the dramatic drop off in growth.