It only took Bossier City government over 30 years to wise up, yet despite that example Caddo Parish is about to launch itself further into stupidity when it comes to supposed economic development.
Over the past few years, the Caddo Parish Commission slowly but surely has been careening farther off the rails. If it’s not general inanity such as commissioners exhibiting Trump Derangement Syndrome or attempts to violate the Constitution, it’s flailing about with useless symbolic gestures opposing everything under the sun out of its jurisdiction but crossways to the majority Democrats’ sensibilities or advancing wasteful spending based on economic ignorance. And, of course, there is flouting of open meetings law that may bring civil penalties. But now it’s entertaining graduate studies in economic development asininities.
The tipping point seems to have come with an alleged agreement between the parish and a truck stop in an economic development district narrowly defined to include only it at present for a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes for improvements made by the business that the parish apparently got snookered on. Unwilling to wait out an apparently extremely long payback period, the parish then authorized this spring a special sales tax increase at the location even as the business was subject to a raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the fallout of both leading the enterprise to sue Republican Commissioner Chris Kracman – who blew the whistle on the open meetings violation – for negative comments he made about the business and the raid (and who the parish refuses to defend; payback, anyone?).
Now it’s gotten to the point beyond just reimbursing businesses for operating to use of tax dollars to build something on behalf of a nongovernment entity to conduct recreation – even though plenty of private and nongovernment entities throughout the parish do the same. This week, a Commission committee discussed backing up to $10 million revenue bonds to fund pickleball courts, tucked into next year’s budget.
Under this plan, the parish’s Parks and Recreation Department would collect revenues from usage and shuttle some of that to the contracted operator the YMCA and the rest to pay off the bonds. A related arrangement Bossier City has rejected over the past few years for a sports center, and wisely so given the city’s history with building things best left to the private sector.
Extending back into the last century, Bossier City’s politicians showed an unhealthy obsession with building things to stimulate economic development – a red-ink arena, a parking garage for the benefit of a private developer, a high-tech office building (in combination with the state and parish) that failed to attract its intended tenant, alternative fuel stations that over the years lost or wasted taxpayer dollars, and a tennis facility and other recreational facilities designed to suck in out-of-towners while denying access to citizens. Finally, elections have produced a new era of governance where officials early on have shown they just want to stick to basic service provision.
That lesson seems lost upon the Commission majority and parish administration, which claims that other capital outlay items won’t be beggared by doing this since revenue bonds will back the venture. It appears to dream on that outsiders for tournaments and the like will be attracted and pump tax dollars into parish coffers, using the same logic that Bossier City tried to float for so long.
But those improvements never came close to paying for themselves, misfiring like the PILOT agreement appeared to. And if revenues are insufficient to pay off the bonds, parish taxpayers will have to pick up the difference.
Dozens of pickleball courts operate in the parish, and if there’s an economic appetite for more, the private or nonprofit sector can handle that. The parish even could build a few at existing park sites to satisfy resident demands. But to risk taxpayer resources in the hopes of chasing outsiders is just stuck on stupid, and hopefully commissioners break their recent streak of imbecility to reject this wasteful notion.
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