Monthly Donaldsonville, LA, Fire Service Fee Violates Law, Residents Claim

Three Donaldsonville residents are suing the city, alleging a fire department service fee violates state law.

The fee is roughly $7 per month for each household to help cover fire department expenses, and it's a significant source of revenue for the city. The five-member city council unanimously passed an ordinance approving it in June 2021.

Fire Protection District 2 covers the entire west bank of Ascension Parish, though the ordinance applies only to the Donaldsonville city limits.

The lawsuit alleges the ordinance violates a state law that lists which specific fire protection districts can establish service charges. That law doesn’t specify that any fire protection districts in Ascension Parish can establish such fees.

Mayor Leroy Sullivan, City Council Chair Charles Brown and Acting Fire Chief Travis Cedatol did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

Lawsuit seeks return of all funds

Residents Daphanie LeBlanc, Rose Price and Iris Butler, represented by attorney Patrick Pendley, filed the lawsuit on May 16 in the 23rd Judicial District Court.

In their complaint, they write that the fee violates another provision of Louisiana law that requires fire district governing bodies to hold an election on charging fees before it can be implemented. Pendley wrote that the city did not hold an election before passing the ordinance.

The group is filing the complaint as a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all those charged a fee, which the document estimates is slightly less than 3,000 people.

The complaint seeks to end the service charge and have the city return all the funds. Based on the numbers estimated in the complaint, that could total hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The city faces difficult economic conditions

As a city, Donaldsonville has tight financial constraints. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated the city had a poverty rate of just under 43% in 2023, more than double the statewide rate.

In the same estimates, the bureau said the median income in the city is a little more than $24,000.

The economic conditions make it more difficult for many residents to pay city fees and constrain funding for services.

The city’s 2025 audit shows a revenue of around $7.5 million in 2024, and auditors wrote that the fire fee was a major source of revenue for the general fund. In 2024, the city collected $231,173 from the fee.

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