The chickens continue to come home to roost over Bossier City’s profligacy of the past three decades as its agenda of government as economic development machine through interventions into the local economy with taxpayer dollars cascade from failure to failure.
Recently, headlines about how the city has squandered wealth and opportunity have focused on the duplicative Walter O. Bigby Carriageway and provision of expensive recreation for a tiny minority of city residents or for non-residents while discouraging other residents from using these facilities. But while these come from relatively recent poor decisions, there are some huge expenses with little payoff in the past often forgotten.
At over $65 million in cost, the Brookshire Grocery Arena has turned into a perennial money-loser. Since its opening in 2000, it had only three years where it turned a profit, the last in 2006. Its total losses through 2022 have been a startling $9.655 million. And while some of its desperate boosters (echoing arguments made about the millions of dollars going into city park facilities restricted to out-of-towner use) claim it can make that up through taxes paid by visitors to arena events, it’s laughable that non-residents to arena events during their trips could have bought in the city goods worth $386.2 million, the break-even point.
Almost two decades ago, the city built at its own expense a parking garage for the oft-troubled Louisiana Boardwalk Outlets that struggles to maintain occupancy and especially with tenants that can contribute significantly to the tax base (as reflected in the name change that added “Outlets” as upscale tenants have fled resulting in a different strategy to lease the one-third empty property). Politicians back then crowed about how a commercial boom that would attract out-of-town visitors would cause city coffers to overflow, as justification for their gift. Originally built for $160 million, its latest sale in 2022 netted just $30.5 million. That means, on an inflation-adjusted basis, the garage – which at $21.5 million should have been built by the developer, not essentially as a gift by the city – cost $3 million more than the worth of the entire property today. (The nearby property built first but technically not connected to the Boardwalk, Bass Pro Shops, has it own parking lot.)
A few years later, in conjunction with the state and parish the city went in with the Cyber Innovation Center that gradually would expand from it into the National Cyber Research Park. The city threw in $35 million then a few million more since, and as part of that talked about as many as 10,000 high-paying jobs coming to the area as a result of the CIC presence. Instead, only a fraction of that number work near it, and the economic impact of the entire arrangement has come overwhelmingly from the nearby NCRP tenants, who except for infrastructure used their own resources to install their presences. As with the arena, the CIC never has come close to paying itself off, and its presence only peripherally has had anything to do with attracting NCRP business.
All three of these were examples of government venture capitalism, in building something that non-government entities should have pursued but didn’t because the costs exceeded the benefits. Still, elected officials let themselves get sucked into these bad deals, and Bossier Citians have paid for it ever since: in the huge initial outlays, the interest costs, and supplemental costs that far outstrip tax collections attributable to these. But rather than admit defeat, the city continues to allow citizens to lose money on these.
Yet it has decided to throw in the towel on a much smaller similar item. Late last year, the city announced it wanted to dispose of its two alternative fuel stations, and at the Bossier City Council’s Feb. 13 meeting at the request of Republican Councilor Brian Hammons an update was delivered about this. City Attorney Richard Ray said an appraisal on these has been completed, but also expressed doubts about whether the properties even could be sold at appraised values.
Those values likely will come in under $4.4 million. That represents the amount the city anticipated drawing from its Riverboat Capital Projects Fund in 2010 and 2011 to build the pair of compressed natural gas stations. Web records available don’t lay out a precise cost or how much was added over the years.
That story is a rinse and repeat of the government-as-economic-engine ideology that has been a mainstay of the two graybeards who have been on the Council from the time of the building of the arena, Democrat Bubba Williams and no party Jeff Darby, plus Republican David Montgomery who joined just after the arena opened. With the Haynesville Shale booming, the city argued this would lead to lower fuel expenditures as well as be more environmentally-friendly, even though conversions and new vehicles cost roughly $7,000 more per vehicle than running with conventional gasoline.
Naturally, the bet didn’t pan out and after paying extra for dozens of such vehicles since the first station began operating in 2010, they’ve been cycled back out of the city fleet, making the stations obsolete for the purposes of the city. Nor does it appear that this made a positive contribution to city finances. Since then, the stations have a bookkeeping profit of $160,000, with the first nine years in positive territory seven of them. But since 2017 they’ve recorded a deficit every year through 2022 with the three largest in 2020-22.
That may well understate the case. The city’s annual Comprehensive Annual Financial Report doesn’t distinguish whether the sales and purchases include compressed natural gas delivered into city vehicles. The $843,389 sales figure of 2022 implies $2,311 average daily sales, or at an average of $2.49 a gallon (in Louisiana in Jan., 2022) coming out to 928 gallons sold a day or just over 50 vehicles a day filling their tanks. That seems like a high number if only non-city vehicles, and in accounting terms it would be much more difficult to parse out those numbers, so commingled in all of that likely are city fuel costs. Throw in the several hundred thousands of extra dollars spent on CNG-capable vehicles and although normally CNG prices are lower it burns through quicker so fuel price differentials over the years would matter, but probably it ended up with the CNG vehicles costing more to operate over their lifespans.
So, the experiment probably cost extra taxpayer dollars, but that’s par for the course for Bossier City ever since the casinos showed up. At least there’s some belated recognition to cut losses in this case, with selling that should extend to the white elephants the arena and CIC, although with the parking garage there needs to be monetization if possible. It’s just another example of how Bossier City has mismanaged itself out of hundreds of millions of dollars over the past quarter-century, if presenting a smaller lesson, and the pity of it is the likes of Darby, Montgomery, and Williams who have presided over this decline still remain in office, unrepentant and who likely would make the same mistakes all over again if voters will let them.
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