The issue of which no Shreveport mayoral candidate would speak now threatens to exact its toll on the nascent Republican Mayor Tom Arceneaux Administration.
Almost a decade after the city entered into a consent decree with the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies, it finds itself in an increasingly deteriorating situation. With an end date at the tail end of his term – in fact, right around the election for the next – it’s far behind on the work to replace aging infrastructure that threatens water quality and wastewater treatment; so far, in fact, that Arceneaux revealed the city is getting ready to be hit with a $4 million fine for dilatoriness.
Progress drags because the remediation continues to escalate. The final price tag, which started with an estimate of $350 million, now has tripled and the work isn’t nearly complete. Of the 64 identified critical projects as of nearly the end of last year, only a quarter have been finished. An eighth only have started the planning stage.
Unfortunately, during last fall’s campaign, even as this could be argued as the most consequential issue facing the city – at the least up there with crime and an eroding budget – candidates, Arceneaux included, hardly mentioned it. That’s because it was an absolutely no-win scenario; to bring it up invited presentation of politically unpalatable actions that could cost votes.
One of which looms now for Arceneaux: likely utility rate increases, on the heels of similar ones that jacked up sewer rates 177 percent between 2013 and 2022 and water rates 6 percent in 2020 and 4 percent in 2022. In its latest report on decree progress, the city assessed the option of further hikes “would place an unconscionable financial burden on its ratepayers.” But he admitted recently this option would be on the table later this year.
Politically, the only thing worse for Arceneaux than seeing through at least one set of rate hikes would be to do that and miss the deadline. As soon as election results came through making him mayor of the black- and Democrat-majority city, he was an underdog for reelection. He’ll keep the job only if he puts in a sterling display of governance in office.
Raising utility rates won’t endear him to voters, but he has little choice. A bond issue would just squeeze money out of residents a different way that they would remember equally as negatively. Divine, read federal government, intervention seems unlikely. It’s just another time bomb left by his predecessors who didn’t aggressively enough husband resources to reduce the problem, themselves not wanting to draw voters ire with more taxes or rate hikes.
The interesting phenomenon of white candidates winning in black-majority north Louisiana cities will founder if they can’t make voters forget about race – a card black Democrats lustily play in elections – through demonstrations of excellent governance. It’s difficult to cultivate that impression when utility bills go up under your rule, but that’s what Arceneaux will have to overcome if he can’t find another way to fund the consent decree imperative.
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