Tax increase? Pull up the ladder? More sensible regulation? Do nothing? The Bossier Parish Police Jury still can’t make up its mind about dealing with something it can’t make up its mind about whether it’s a problem demanding swift, if not far-reaching action.
That sums up a public meeting the Jury called this week, followed on by its regular meeting where it addressed whether to continue a residential building moratorium roughly in the northern part of the parish (in the areas in which it has jurisdiction, or outside of municipalities). The halt first was triggered, over a somewhat larger area, last year after the inventory of permits given for builders had spiraled well into the thousands. In fact, in the current area the estimated number of lots proposed has hit about 5,000, and thousands more exist outside it, mainly in the Haughton area.
The moratorium doesn’t affect the ability of those builders with permits to construct on that land as long as they put down the required infrastructure. Bossier Parish operates on an impact fee regime, so that builders must pay for the infrastructure additions as specified in its building code. Moreover, the moratorium on new permits only affects residential units; commercial and other zones remain unaffected.
To start, it’s helpful to understand why so many permits lie fallow at this time, which is a product of those codes and the market. As came out in the public meeting, a prevailing sentiment among builders is that the parish’s codes are too strict, such as requiring roads in subdivisions that hold up under far heavier traffic loads than they would encounter.
A requirement like this means that maintenance will be reduced and thus reconstruction pushed off farther into the future, saving the parish money. But it also diminishes the incentive to build, since a developer has higher upfront costs. This also skews development in favor of higher-end homes, since their selling price has a greater absolute profit margin to compensate for the increased infrastructure costs.
This makes for one element about why permits have stacked up without building. The other is what development has occurred has started to strain the roads system. Congestion diminishes the value of homes as well as makes buyers more skittish. Indeed, besides the permit inventory as a motivation behind the moratorium is resident complaints that additional building will tax the traffic system even more. At the meeting, more than one speaker opined that to add more housing will degrade their quality of life – a kind of scramble over the walls into Fortress North Bossier, then pulling up the ladder to prevent others from doing the same.
To avoid further congestion presents daunting numbers. Those 5,000 homes if built parish officials thought would require $75 million to $100 million in roads improvements just to handle the increased traffic flow. Consider that the parish in 2023 spent around $24 million on its regular road system, including on the now-open Veterans Parkway, which had its own dedicated fund in addition to the Highway Fund that usually spots dough for roads.
Regular Highway Fund dollars, about two-thirds of which come from the 1995 1.5 percent sales tax levied outside of municipalities, propped up a small portion of the $40 million Parkway spending although likely it will be used to cover debt payments for years to come as borrowing covered about half that cost for the Parkway that will strain the Fund even more. Considering its bounty also has to go to fixing all parish roads and not just future upgrading to handle thousands of more houses, certainly this portends fiscal stress if the building commences to completion.
Which led Parish Attorney Partick Jackson to subtly hint that a property tax increase to pay for roads was in order. Presently it generates just under a tenth of all Fund revenues – although its rate was increased somewhat to 1.95 mills starting this year as part of a tradeoff through lowering library property tax rates – but it could have been over three times that had voters not narrowly rejected a tax hike in this regard in 2006 that in today’s terms would plow in an additional $5.2 million annually (for my extra small role in helping to defeat this by forcing the parish to play by its own electioneering rules, see here).
Still, the parish managed to build out roads sufficiently enough until now because it scored state and federal grant money, meaning one solution would be to continue this and hope for success, which may or may not provide enough. Note that at its base the problem is solved through market forces that makes it self-regulating: you can spew out permits like losing lottery tickets but as long the regulatory environment and congestion fears make turning an adequate profit difficult, developers won’t cash them in with houses.
Yet consider another approach. Presumably, more people mean more sales tax generation, the Fund’s primary funding mechanism. Indeed, all parish sales taxes collected have increased by a factor of 13 since the passage of the 1.5 percent, while parish population increased 30 percent (although two other sales tax elections since did add another .75 percent to the rate, boosting these revenues). So, it’s possible that the increased economic activity could float the bill for roads improvement demanded by the higher population. This would argue for making lighter the regulatory burden, which could kickstart building.
This would likely have another salutary impact: increased incentive to build less expensive housing that actually better serves parish needs. The current regulatory regime biases building towards higher-cost properties, which is great for tax collections – except that there are only so many higher-paying jobs within reasonable commuting distance to support this building. Unfortunately, like it or not Bossier remains mostly a bedroom community whose largest parish employers almost exclusively are government and their parish or nearby private sector rivals being casinos and health care, many of which are located outside the parish.
In other words, you have to get yourself some distance to work, and that means road congestion. This especially is true of north Bossier which has next to no employers within it except for small service businesses or low-margin operations such as grocers that altogether produce few high-paying jobs. Ultimately, there aren’t enough nearby high-paying jobs to trigger enough growth to cover enough building at the higher end to boost roads spending enough, and if you begin building at the lower end – which places more people per square mile, again triggering more congestion – that might better serve to job market but it compounds the congestion problem.
And, tax increases won’t solve the problem. Hiking taxation discourages development, so then the Jury may not even need extra dollars (although jurors will take these in a heartbeat if voters allowed it).
Finally, keep in mind as well that all this is not reality, but projection. Congestion might have started to become a problem, but it will remain minor if minimal building occurs. Market forces have a much better track record in anticipating actual issues than does central planning.
In the final analysis, the best course of action is to let the moratorium lapse and reduce regulations, then let the market decide. At present, it would suggest minimal building because of the perceived congestion problem. For the next few years, the Jury could continue the grants strategy to relieve that, as well as shift taxation and spending priorities, which when once caught up would spur development disproportionately on the lower end but which also would boost economic activity that could improve and maintain adequately the burgeoning roads system.
Parish officials indicate during the moratorium, which at the Jury meeting was extended unanimously another three months into early June, that they will gather data concerning the issue. That’s all the delay needed to get a handle on traffic numbers and to revise the development code to make for more realistic building requirements. The parish stands the best chance of prospering by reducing government’s heavy hand and countering its instinct towards central planning, and letting the market decide.
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