It’s taken a couple of years, but Shreveport Republican Mayor Tom Arceneaux finally has started encountering some drama that served as a hallmark of his predecessor that impedes his low margin for error in reelection.
Even before he took office and throughout his term, Democrat former Mayor Adrian Perkins embarked upon a string of controversies involving questionable deals, questionable personnel moves, personal behavior that conveyed a disinterest in the job, and neglect of pressing city needs in favor of quixotic policy pursuits. Often this meandering brought him to clashes with the City Council, even though his party held a majority on it throughout his term.
In part, the electorate’s counterreaction to Perkins’ accidental mayoral reign thrust Arceneaux into the job, a white Republican in a majority black city, most of whom register as and vote for Democrats. This has the city’s Democrats in power, all black, licking their chops for 2026 hoping to ride these voter demographics to make Arceneaux a one-term mayor, and from time to time the Council, now with a 5-2 black Democrat majority, has played these electoral politics to cast aspersions on Arceneaux’s governance.
But now they have some issues into which they really can sink their teeth. Part of the image Arceneaux portrayed during his campaign focused on competence in administration, in vast contrast to Perkins. However, the city’s required Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for 2023 contained several adverse notes dealing with management that contradicts a narrative of steadiness in administration. It may expect a bit much that Arceneaux’s team could come in and within a year find and fix errors, with shortcomings being a typical feature found in reports under Perkins, but these do detract from an Arceneaux selling point.
And the Council, aided by its two Republicans, have found a bigger issue on which to gain traction against Arceneaux: battling the decrepitude and relocation of the Shreveport Polie Department’s central headquarters, which over decades slowly has crumbled to the point now it could be a health hazard for those working in it. About a month ago, councilors started becoming concerned enough about it to advocate for an immediate shift of functions to other locations until remediation concluded on the complex that voters in 2021 approved bonds then sold to accomplish the move.
Against charges of acting too slowly, Arceneaux’s administration has said that debt issue didn’t raise enough money to do a complete job and more would have to be found – not an unreasonable conclusion, given widespread citizen skepticism over Perkins’ rule that led to a number of bond vote failures and therefore cautiousness in asking for dough. Ham-handedly, it suggested it could derive enough to finish it off from one of the most citizen-despised revenue sources in any city, traffic control cameras that in Shreveport are located near schools.
In order to prompt more action, twice the Council has delayed authorizing then issuance of bonds approved by voters earlier this year under Arceneaux’s watch as leverage to make his administration act more quickly. It’s sort of self-defeating for the Council as a great many of the $88 million worth on the initial list would benefit individual districts, so if Arceneaux wants a sitzkreig battle it may not motivate him to move any faster than he has knowing councilors inflict political pain on themselves with this tactic.
Also problematically for him, a solution to dealing with the problems of the old headquarters, doling out functions to substations, generated more controversy with questions about an inflexible lease for one location that locks the city in for placing only a substation there and for a minimum of 25 years. Councilors were critical that Arceneaux would take such a deal even if it came by donation.
Arceneaux’s fragile winning coalition to keep him in office absolutely relies upon a demonstration of a high level of competence on his part. This kerfuffle detracts from that, and opportunistic Democrats will seize on it and play it up regardless of how quickly solutions come to it and how genuinely necessary these are.
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