This week, the Bossier City Council seems poised to offer up another sweetheart deal to public works contractor Manchac Consulting Group and to deliver the sucker punch to taxpayers telegraphed weeks ago when it renewed a deal for a facility hardly any citizens use.
With the backing of Republican Mayor Tommy Chandler, the Council will consider dipping into its anything-goes debt-fueled slush fund to spend $1.5 million on new tennis courts at the city’s Bossier Tennis Center. Fewer than three months ago it approved a no-bid three-year contract renewal at $36,000 annually for a company run by longtime center tennis professional Todd Killen to operate it, which obligates him to make a few kinds of service provision but lets him rake off whatever revenues he otherwise can gather, without his having to make any capital expenses.
At the time, in particular GOP Councilor Chris Smith voiced concern about that kind of arrangement, musing that rethinking the deal, or even city ownership of the facility, might make sense especially because the bargain didn’t set aside some of the revenues an operator could keep for future capital expenses. He was ignored, and now those chickens are coming home to roost.
Facts are, few people have club memberships, some more don’t but play there yet not that many, and extraordinarily few Bossier Citians even step into the place, anecdotal data demonstrate. This means that each resident will pay almost $24 each to subsidize the sporting activities of likely less than one percent of the city’s population (almost certainly a disproportionately wealthier slice, given the sport’s costs) and to pad Killen’s bottom line without asking him to have any skin in the game.
At the very least before making such a decision the Council, much less the Chandler Administration, needs to collect usage and financial data that could justify this considerable expense. How many people use the existing courts? How often and close to capacity? What proportion are city residents? What are Killen’s current revenues? How much are these revenues expected to change with the new courts?
Ideally, this review first would determine whether the city ought to be in this business. If almost no citizens use it, it should be sold; even if a significant minority do then if it makes good money it should be sold as well because clearly the private sector could support it and why should the city be in a business competing against the private sector? Otherwise, it shouldn’t go forward unless Killen signed a contract rider that says if the new courts are built then he owes a certain amount off the top of the $3,000 a month the city pays him for the privilege of exploiting the new assets. And an analysis of just how much in tax revenues the center brings the city from things like drawing out-of-towners for tournaments, mentioned by supporters as a reason to have city ownership, is long overdue – probably because they know the numbers will show tax dollars generated come nowhere close to matching the monthly payments, much less a capital expenditure of the kind now in mind.
As short-sighted as this contemplated Council move is, grooving another revenue stream to Manchac is worse. This ordinance would pay to have the city’s contracted engineering firm seek and write grants for infrastructure funding, which it did successfully recently for $5 million, specifically mentioning this year’s federal government spending bill the Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act and the state’s Local Technical Assistance Program as sources of money.
This isn’t a bad idea, but why serve it to Manchac on a silver platter? By the company’s own admission, it’s an engineering firm and claims no expertise in grant-seeking or grant-writing. And the field of grant writing is awash in contractors both inside and outside of Louisiana, with many undoubtedly having far more experience than Manchac in dealing with the subjects identified.
Plus, the deal is structured in a way to siphon money from taxpayers’ pockets. It would pay Manchac up to $60,000 a shot, with a minimum of two submissions but potentially an indefinite number as long as Manchac sells city administrators on pursuing each. This creates incentives for collusion, where politicians rubber-stamp the firm’s recommendations to pursue, whether they succeed, and then magically around reelection time individuals connected with the firm donate to the officeholders’ campaigns, a recycling of taxpayer resources to keep everybody in business at taxpayer expense.
If the city wants to increase its chances at external funding, why doesn’t it hire its own grant writer? And if consulting is a more cost-effective solution, this is the kind of thing that screams for competitive bidding, the outcome of which likely would bring better terms and more expertise to bear than the articulated offer.
Councilors should query the Chandler Administration on why it wants to do this and why only Manchac should be considered for it. With such oversight highly unlikely to reveal a no-bid contract to Manchac the ideal solution, if compelling need was demonstrated then the Council should approve only a competitive bid process and a contract that specifies exactly how many projects and a reasonable cost ceiling for each the city would entertain. As little as taxpayers may need to be in the tennis business, there’s even less call for them to serve as a conduit from their wallets to a favored contractor.
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