Gonzales Elected Officials
Three Gonzales City Council members rejected an agreement with Ascension Parish to clear the way for AP Baseball and Gonzales’ Diamond Youth leagues to play ball this year. It was the third time this council considered the agreement after deferring consideration on December 8 and rejecting the agreement on January 12. Mayor Tim Riley placed the agreement back on the agenda last week after perceiving some movement toward approval in the interim.
And the 2025 season, conducted under virtually identical terms (accept the City of Gonzales would save $40,000 this year), was a resounding success by all accounts. According to Impact Sports’ Jason “Doc” Adams, Gonzales Diamond Youth league:
- Included 40 teams
- 471 kids participated
- 166 regular season games were played
- All Star teams thrived, with Gonzales hosting two tournaments (16 teams total)
And the travel ball teams wanting access to city fields for practice were accommodated. Not good enough for three council members who’ve resisted the agreement from its inception, even after a unanimous City Recreation Committee recommended approval on November 12.
A TIMELINE
Councilman Tyler Turner mounted the resistance in December, feeling that the council needed additional time to consider the proposed agreement even though it was emailed to him and his four colleagues on November 18 (20 days prior to December 8 and 55 days before Monday’s meeting). In that email Mayor Riley’s Chief of Staff, Wade Petite, wrote:
Council members:
To streamline AP Baseball operations and free time for the city Recreation personnel, Mayor Riley urges you to consider approving the attached Intergovernmental Agreement. Given that AP Baseball runs a single league that utilizes city and parish facilities, to avoid purported accounting discrepancies and more clearly define areas of responsibility, Mayor Riley favors the agreement which satisfies multiple concerns that arose this year.
Our Recreation Committee recommended adoption of the agreement during its November 12 meeting. It will be included on your December 8 meeting agenda which should provide ample opportunity for discussion should you opt to engage.
They didn’t…opt to engage that is. Not until the December 8 council meeting, anyway.
“If the parish is going to be using the fields…the parish should maintain the fields,” Councilman Turner opined in December. “You want to use our city workers to upkeep the fields, we can send them the bill or send the league the bill to pay for the upkeep of the fields. I don’t think we should be losing money doing an IGA because the IGA between two parties, both parties should be able to benefit from the agreement.”
In 2025 Turner and his then council colleagues decided to enter a similar agreement with Impact Sports, plus put in $40,000 so that baseball could again be played in the City of Gonzales. That purported “benefit” is memorialized in the IGA considered Monday.
The City of Gonzales desires to enter into an Intergovernmental Agreement with Ascension Parish because the City of Gonzales’ former softball and baseball programs failed to generate sufficient registration numbers to form a viable league. Partnership with Ascension Parish via this agreement will make it possible for the City of Gonzales to provide softball and baseball programs for its youth.
City Attorney Allen Davis was tasked to amend the IGA, ultimately adding a cancellation clause in favor of the city to match the clause available to the parish in time for the January 12 Council meeting. Davis solicited input from each City Council member before providing the final draft. Davis “made the suggested changes, presented it to the council and also to the administration for final comment. There were a few and those comments were addressed in the changes that were made.”
But new objections arose when Council members Turner and Lambert expressed a preference for allowing travel ball teams to use three ballfields at Municipal Park to the exclusion of their recreation league counterparts.
“I’m thinking we need to exclude a couple of the fields and let the travel ball teams have it,” Lambert opined. “11,000 (the amount in rental collected from travel teams in 2025) is a significant amount of money.”
Two travel team coaches appeared to lobby for continued access on January 12, one of them offering that teams from New Iberia intend to use Gonzales fields to practice too.
Lambert was joined by Tyler Turner and Councilwoman Cynthia Gray James in defeating the agreement on January 12…and they did it again on January 29, even after Councilman Turner attempted to work out an accommodation. He hosted a mid-week meeting at City Hall to hash out acceptable terms.
But none of the Parish Council members on the invite list bothered to show up (not even Turner’s brother, Travis, who happens to chair the Parish Council Recreation Committee) though the parish was represented by Recreation Director Brandon Smith. All of the city’s Recreation Committee members save one skipped the meeting as well.
Multiple Parish Council members provided the emails by Councilman Turner wherein he invited their attendance.
From: Tyler Turner <tyler@gonzalesla.com>
Sent: Friday, January 16, 2026 9:49:10 AM
To: Ranita Claiborne <ranita@gonzalesla.com>; Council <council@apgov.us>; (other email addresses omitted)
Subject: BaseballLadies and Gentlemen,
Good evening. I hope everyone is doing well.
My name is Tyler Turner, and I serve as a City Councilman for the City of Gonzales. I am reaching out to address recent misinformation regarding the Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) between the Parish and the City concerning the use of the baseball fields.
My position is that all involved parties should have had the opportunity from the outset to discuss the details and expectations of the IGA. I believe a fair and workable compromise can be achieved between the recreational baseball league and travel baseball regarding field usage. With the City of Gonzales maintaining eight baseball fields, my recommendation is that four fields be designated for parish use, while the remaining four be reserved for travel baseball teams.
Mrs. Claiborne, interim Recreation Director, will contact all parties involved to schedule a meeting day and time.
I look forward to meeting with all stakeholders together to foster transparency, clarify concerns, and work toward a common understanding and mutually beneficial agreement. Transparency and collaboration are essential as we move forward.
Respectfully,
Tyler Turner
City Councilman
City of Gonzales
Turner did not propose any changes to the agreement, so Mayor Riley “had been led to understand that an agreement had been reached and to expect a majority council vote in favor of the agreement. The City Attorney expected approval, as did the council members we spoke to prior to the meeting.” So did Ascension’s Recreation Director and the AP Baseball/Gonzales Diamond Youth coaches.
All left disappointed and very confused about what they had witnessed on January 29.
NOTE: We’ll get into the confusing part in the days to come.
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