Cynthia Lee Sheng

President | Jefferson Parish
Profiled: June 2020

⏮ REWIND

Just a few months after being elected Jefferson Parish’s first female president on Jan. 8, 2020, Cynthia Lee Sheng sat down with Biz New Orleans to discuss how the first few months of her time in office was going, especially being that the world was in the first month of the global pandemic of COVID-19.

Among her first actions as president was to throw out the administration’s organization chart and create her own. Her chart features service clusters and less of a hierarchy, a move intended to set the stage for progress.

“We cleared my table, and I had [executive assistant] Michelle [Forsythe] write every department on an index card, and I sat and just looked at each card and said, “You know, does this department serve our constituents, or does this department serve us?”

Lee Sheng praised the parish’s strong public works department, its strong business community that she said worked closely with government, and the interconnectivity of the port, rail and airport. She noted weaknesses were housing and infrastructure and the need to look at sewerage services and updating water meters.

⏭ FAST-FORWARD

Looking back at the last four years, Lee Sheng noted that it has been a turbulent ride.

“I didn’t realize how many emergencies we would have to respond to,” she said, “The first one, COVID-19, we worked on that for about a year and a half to 2 years, making sure hospitals had everything they needed, bringing in personnel and the vaccine. Then, there was a series of hurricanes, including Ida, which required a major response. Then we had the saltwater intrusion issue, where for the first time in history we had to shut off all the water on the east bank. That meant no fire protection. Hospitals had no water for dialysis. It’s been a lot.”

All the emergencies have meant Lee Sheng has not been able to tackle all the things that she wanted to when she took office, but she said she’s proud of what that forced change of course led to.

“We now have a completely different emergency management operation. It’s so strong that the state now relies on us to run classes…We now have wind ratings on all our buildings which means we can keep more employees here safely and they can be out helping as needed.”

She has, however, been able to tackle some of the parish’s infrastructure issues.

“We’ve taken care of our water and sewer system for the next 20 years,” she said. ”…We have automated meters now that can be accessed by an app on your phone. We’ve got a new east bank water treatment plant and sewer backup generators.”

Lee Sheng has also reimagined the recreation system in the parish.

“We had 27 playgrounds, and as demographics have changed some of those playgrounds were full, while others in neighborhoods of older residents were empty,” she said. “We needed to make room for other sports like tumbling, archery and boxing — more than just traditional sports.”

Lee Sheng’s “Recreation Reimagined” report was the result of hundreds of hours of meetings with steering committees from six of the parish’s playgrounds that were chosen for overhauls. The plan calls for $6.3 million in capital improvements.

On the business side, Lee Sheng noted that her administration has been working for a year and a half to streamline and automate the parish’s permitting process.