BC debt binge foists higher rates onto residents

The reckless spending by Bossier City over the past quarter-century has come back to haunt citizens in another way, this time through increased sanitation rates.

This week, the City Council voted to jack up rates on users, inside and outside of the city. Beginning in February, the flat resident charge for water will go from $8.54 to $10.16 and the pre thousand gallon charge of $3.03 will rise to $3.61; for nonresidents, the flat rate will go from $15.80 to $18.80 and the per thousand gallon charge of $4.55 will rise to $5.41. While nonresidential users without water service won’t see increased rates for waste pickup, residents will see theirs go from $24 (curbside or disabled side yard) or $28 (side yard) to $36 monthly; commercial customers will have theirs rise from $28 to $40; churches will see theirs go up from $24 to $36; and containers for use will cost $8.50 rather than $4 (after the free first one, except for side yard pickup). The typical household would see about an $18 a month increase, with the bulk of that coming not from water but sanitation.

There wasn’t much the city could do to avoid the water rate hike. Having accepted money from the state’s Water Sector program in the forms of loans and grants, the state conditions this on sufficient revenue generation potential as determined through a rate study. The results argued that the rate structure for water since 2007 hadn’t kept pace and an increase immediately plus one built in for the next fiscal year would satisfy the program’s conditions. The FY 2026 gap would be resolved with a two percent increase on rates.

Yet it could have been worse. The original ordinance extended the two percent increase in perpetuity, regardless of projected capital expenditures, usage, and inflation. This would have created just another endless revenue stream by which spend-happy councilors could have used on grandiose schemes, such as the ill-advised gift of a waterworks to the Port of Caddo-Bossier where if the city uses so much as a drop from it that this threatens to have costs overwhelm any projected revenues producing a sweetheart deal to the Port. Fortunately, Republican Councilor Chris Smith had the wit to catch that and have it amended to apply only to 2026.

(Ironically, Republican Councilor David Montgomery, who writes lucrative insurance deals for the Port, at the time hailed the deal as a revenue generator that would “mitigate the fact that we will not have rate increases going forward.” And yet here increases are, making Montgomery wrong yet again. He seemed not in opposition to the eternal two percent increases. And even Smith reiterated his support of the waterworks project as a revenue generator, unwisely continuing to ignore the riskiness of the deal.)

Nonetheless, the timing seemed curious. At the prior meeting city Chief Administrative Officer Amanda Nottingham, in answering questions about the water rates from Smith, said the necessity came upon the state essentially springing its study and demand onto the city without warning. Yet later she said the increase had been worked into the budget, which first was presented in September and passed in November. So why did the GOP Mayor Tommy Chandler Administration wait until the end of the year, after the budget had been passed but right before the increase would take effect, to move forward with asking Council approval for the increase?

Regardless, the sanitation charges are another matter. Nottingham noted that this had been a money loser from some time, with last year’s estimated loss at just under $3 million. This will leave the fund balance at around a paltry $1.3 million. Sanitation – that is, waste pickup – comprises the bulk of these operations, which are designed to act as an enterprise fund. These kinds of funds mimic business operations, where ideally only revenues directly related to service provision enter and only expenses tied directly to service provision exit.

Sanitation charges were expected to bring in about $6 million last year – the ones being raised under the new ordinance. But those attached expenses, meaning the value of the contract paid to Republic Services, were almost $7 million alone. Back in 2013 right before the last fee hike kicked in the next year, charges about matched the contract, and the increase began producing healthy surpluses, hitting $1 million in 2014 as the charges exceeded the contract by $1.5 million.

The problem was the contract value kept increasing (Republic had the contract, then lost it, then got it back recently) while charges grew slowly because the city’s population – a development its politicians are loath to admit – hardly grew. By 2020, the Sanitation Fund had peaked at $6 million and saw deficits from therein on out, even as sanitation charges continued to outpace contracted expenses.

That’s because of a great sleight-of-hand of which few ratepayers are aware but which the city has perpetrated for decades: sanitation fees pay not only for picking up trash, but also for all of its herbicide and mosquito control program, animal services, street sweeping, and grass cutting. Those cost an estimated nearly $2.5 million last year, even as the sanitation contract ballooned out and went into deficit for the first time last year.

But unlike garbage pickup, which is a fee-for-service directly attached to discrete individual property owners, these others are functions performed generally for which costs and benefits cannot be apportioned to individual residents, mimicking those such as providing park space and amenities (unless you want to use baseball/softball diamonds and the like). These functions do generate revenues for specific services, in animal control and pickup fees, but that’s it and these produce a relative pittance at about $100,000.

The remainder, since all in the city benefit from these and their usage cannot be apportioned, should be paid out of the general fund from general revenues unattached to specific service provision, such as from sales and property taxes. They aren’t, and a prime reason negating that possibility is the huge principal and interest payments Bossier City must make every year for its out-of-control capital outlay spending on needless items such as a money-losing arena, a parking garage for a property that went into receivership, a high-tech office building that has produced nothing more than if it had been left to the private sector, and a duplicative road that cuts a few minutes off travel times for a select few.

If the city over the past quarter century during which all of these follies had been committed, led by three councilors in particular – Montgomery, Democrat Bubba Williams, and independent Jeff Darby (with relative newcomer in office only half of this time, Republican Jeff Free, also contributing to bring to fruition the duplicative road) – had just eschewed these projects gobbling up $190 million or so, the city would have no government activities debt, saving in 2024 $17 million of tax collections needed to pay off principal and interest. That would have been well more than needed to support the $2.5 million cost of the broadly-cast general activities of herbicide and mosquito control, animal services, street sweeping, and grass cutting.

Instead, the city continues to apply this hidden tax onto its ratepayers, leaving it free to blow money on needless capital projects that do more to help private interests than the public while allowing the politicians involved to puff out their chests in pride and build monuments extolling their virtues. Bossier Citians don’t need to pay their hard-earned dollars to stroking a few egos, but that what Montgomery, Williams, Darby, Free, and their ilk have foisted on a weary public with a sanitation fee increase that with responsible government easily could have been avoided.