St. Tammany News

It is not the corner office on the 50th floor, but at least the employees in the Slidell Department of Public and Cultural Affairs are now right in the middle of the city administration complex where they should be.

Last week, the department moved from the second floor of the Slidell Train Station on Front Street to Trailer 18 at the temporary City Hall complex on Bayou Lane. The department's original office in the Slidell Municipal Auditorium was flooded by Hurricane Katrina, and, according to Director Kim Bergeron, the Slidell Art League let Bergeron and her staff move into the train station in the same room where the league has its art gallery.

Public Information Officer Paul Bartels said the view was great at the train station, but the computer system kept breaking down.

"In the train station, no matter how hard or how often our IT folks worked, we suffered frequent outages," Bartels said.

That posed a big problem for a department supposed to keep the public and press informed of government activities with press releases, brochures and fliers.

"The computer system made it hard to be in the information business," Bergeron said.

Bartels said the location was also a hardship for department staff, who had to carry packages up a steep narrow flight of stairs.

Parking was also a problem, because of The Times restaurant downstairs, whose parking lot is usually crowded.

Bergeron and her staff moved into the trailer Friday afternoon, and she said they are still in the process of unpacking.

"We had lots of stuff to pack," Bergeron said.

She said one of the benefits of the train station was a lot of storage space. Now they had to make a makeshift "storeroom" behind some filing cabinets.

"There's not much of a view," Bartels said. "Here we are hemmed in by four narrow walls."

"But having the computers work is a real plus," Bergeron said.

There is about the same amount of space in the trailer that there was at the train station, plus a little more, because there is no art gallery now.

Bergeron said the gallery will still hold exhibitions at the train station, and the department is currently working on the young artists exhibit for the summer.

Bartels said another disadvantage of the new office is that it gets very noisy when the wind gets gusty and blows against the sheet metal walls. But he said the move makes sense.

"In our new home, we're closer to the action, if you will . . . to the nerve center of the city government," Bartels said.