So, what part of “waste of money” do Republican Bossier City Mayor Tommy Chandler and the City Council not understand?
City taxpayers may be excused for thinking the city wasn’t going to pursue a project it actually first contemplated in 2018, and got the official award for in 2021 – two fast charging electric vehicle outlets. This comes from a court settlement where Volkswagen promised to pay up for surreptitiously selling vehicles able to dodge emissions standards. The consent decree allows states and Indian tribes and Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia to solicit money from a trust fund for projects that reduce nitrogen oxides emitted from vehicles.
Each state came up with plans detailing eligible usages. A common usage in Louisiana’s has been conversion of older school buses from diesel to something else. In fact, among several local education agencies the Bossier Parish School District won just such an award in 2020 to replace 25 such 2009-or-older buses with new ones powered by propane with the grant picking up half the tab. This meant the BPSD could purchase newer replacements at less than market rate, a potential savings in the million-dollar range. The district did have to fund to install a propane filling unit at its bus barn and it’s unknown whether the fuel and maintenance costs of these buses are higher or lower than for the remainder of the diesel-run fleet.
At a smaller cost, the state’s Department of Environmental Quality also apportioned out funds for the chargers. Over two dozen government entities took the bait, and all chose the 100 percent reimbursable option for Level 2 and/or Level 3 (DCFC) chargers – located on public property open to the public – with Bossier City and Bossier Parish Community College being two of those. BPCC chose the Level 2 option, asking for a pair at $12,000 reimbursable each, while Bossier City asked for a pair of DCFC chargers at $35,000 reimbursable each.
BPCC’s, according to a website dedicated to cataloguing data about charging stations, are in operation and free, meaning state taxpayers pick up the tab. According to the site, the pair are among the 14 Level 2 charger ports in Bossier City, while another 13 are DCFC. The site also claims Bossier City already is in the business of charging vehicles, observing a Level 2 charger at Walker Place Park. That’s the park the city was forced to build for around $5 million, including a pedestrian bridge across the Arthur Ray Teague Parkway, after a court settlement over claims it misled a developer over a residential and commercial project nearby.
Interestingly, the city treats the park like it was an illegitimate birth that not only does it wish to disavow its own parentage but also that the baby ever has existed, as if the product of a fling that it desperately wants to keep the circumstances about the conception under wraps. When that park opened, the city held no ceremonies and sent out no official notifications. It won’t even acknowledge Walker Place Park as a city park. As for the charger, the site has no information about it including whether city taxpayers pick up the tab.
As for the “legitimate” chargers, at first they appeared to end up stillborn. At their Feb. 11 meeting, councilors rejected – with only Republican Chris Smith voting in favor – appropriating $80,000 for the task. Apparently, the city would get $70,000 back – and in the process have installation, maintenance, and monitoring for a few years – while the remainder apparently would have gone for ancillary costs. Councilors seemed unconcerned about whether city taxpayers would pony up for free electricity for motorists or about costs to the city after the initial contract ran out, nor did the fact that they would commit as much as $10,000 in taxpayer bucks to a project that would subsidize a tiny (upper-income) fraction of the city’s residents as well as nonresidents that several other entities already provide within city limits but where 81 percent of these available ports come with at a cost to consumers.
No, it wasn’t any objection to the city hitting up its taxpayers to provide something others in the nongovernment sector already were providing (tennis, anyone?), but the fact that at the location, the top level of the Bossier Boardwalk parking garage (built for $27 million for use by a private property whose ownership since has changed several times with the price of the property now less than the garage’s cost itself), too many liability issues existed. And so that’s why perhaps taxpayers shouldn’t have been surprised when at the Feb. 25 meeting City/Waggoner Engineering Engineer Ben Rauschenbach, at his monthly report on city projects, casually mentioned continued pursuit of installing the two chargers.
With Chief Administrative Officer Amanda Nottingham, he informed councilors that the search for a suitable location continued and, in fact, now private property was in consideration. This should have raised a red flag immediately to councilors, for the very ordinance itself – mirroring language in the state plan – notified that any chargers on private property, even if open to the public, would be eligible for only an 80 percent match.
It appeared to perturb no councilors, nor Chandler whose administration is driving this train, that they had signaled willingness to fork over now up to $24,000 of taxpayer money to build something to spend even more tax dollars on subsidizing the vehicle choices of the chosen few. Indeed, GOP Councilor Brian Hammons proclaimed himself all in favor of this arrangement as long as the city didn’t face the issues it might if the contraption rested on city land.
It’s not the city’s first foray into unconventional fueling. In 2010 it began operating alternative fueling stations ostensibly for city vehicles running on natural gas. At first, they made money, but that reversed since 2017 which since has seen a loss of $605,000 and the biggest ever in the last year audited, 2023, of $155,000, leaving then a lifetime profit of $5,000 that surely went into the red in 2024. The city currently is trying to sell these white elephants.
It's particularly disturbing that both Smith and Hammons, the Council’s two most reliable fiscal watchdogs, don’t seem to have a problem backing something that has no argument behind it justifying why the city needs to hit up taxpayers to do something duplicated by the private sector where there’s not even any proven need attached to it. And, some explanation about and justifying any taxpayer liability for the charger at unloved Walker Place Park need discussing as well.
Until that argument and explanation are made successfully, installing any new chargers on the city dime is an obvious waste of money, although for decades that’s been par for the course in Bossier City if on a much larger scale.
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