Prudent BC budget still must avoid landmines

Bossier City’s 2026 executive budget exemplifies a greater commitment to transparency, and in doing so highlights the sins of its policy-making past and warnings to avoid their consequences  in the future.

The budget doesn’t see much increased spending past the expected 2025 baseline, although reviewing general fund numbers might belie that. This is because of an accounting change that moves expenses for all of the ancillary functions attached to the sanitation fee on utilities bills that the general public mostly associates with trash pickup. That became a controversial point over the rate increases instituted this year where apartment complexes that previously had been billed for only a few addresses, or even just one, the city began to bill for all units. Complex owners argued that they had their own waste removal and so shouldn’t have to pay, but they discounted the ancillary functions the fee covers such things as mosquito abatement, sweeping and mowing, beautification, and animal control.

A compromise was reached that billed at 80 percent of total units. Perhaps as a result, the Republican Mayor Tommy Chandler Administration now plans to budget separately for those items and transfers their functions to Public Works. Thus, the portion of the sanitation fee that covers these functions for bookkeeping purposes now appears in the general fund, inflating year-over-year spending. It’s the right move to make for greater transparency and accountability.

As it is, only a couple of areas of spending are significantly higher. One is a recent bane, spiraling insurance costs, largely beyond the city’s control (although the Administration pats itself on the back for finding ways to save a few hundred thousand bucks). But the other was entirely in control of the city: a pay raise citywide earlier this year that went far beyond recommendations of a study.

Indeed, the 2026 budget includes another attempt to roll forward property taxes, echoing the one recently yanked over overwhelming public councilor opposition, which had been offered as the mechanism to pay for salary increases for positions identified as below market. Instead, the recently-departed graybeard councilors shoved through pay hikes for all without adequate existing general fund revenue streams to cover them.

The justification then was the general fund has escalated enormously over the past few years as a result of higher-than-expected revenues – a combination of massive federal government grant-delivering and inflationary fiscal policy that encouraged consumer spending – and lower-than-expected spending largely due to an inability to keep close to full staffing primarily in the police department, a concern now presumably obviated by the pay hikes. But those ideal conditions are far from certain to continue to repeat, although the city forecasts the revenue stream that provides it with the lion’s share of its funding, its sales taxes, will rise almost five percent year-over-year.

 So, the tactic the city will attempt to try to mitigate the extra higher expense is to siphon from the Parkway Capital Projects Fund. This derives its funding from the half-cent sales tax passed in 1987 primarily to pay for the building of parkways along the Red River. But as rededicated by voters in 2002, it also allows for amounts in excess of debt service requirements for use in operating and maintaining fire, police, and other city departments. Understandably, over the years since now basically all possible roadways have been built on (or in the case of the $89 million, $50 million a linear mile, Walter O. Bigby Carraigeway, sort of near) the Red, a portion goes to regular city roads that possibly can qualify (such as, currently, Brownlee Road) but the large majority – in 2024, 97 percent or $6.8 million – of raised monies flow into and sit idly in the Fund. That balance rested at the end of 2024 at just about $20 million, and the executive budget looks to grab nearly $10 million to back ongoing commitments (and about $1 million to service its original bonding purpose). The strategy multiplies with the intention to establish another general fund backstop by transferring from the anything-goes 2018 LCDA Bond Fund.

The problem with this is this strategy can work only for so long, and if sales tax projections prove too optimistic, the city gets into trouble in a hurry. Thus, there needs to be a plan beyond this to fill the budgetary hole blasted open by the graybeards’ maneuver, and it shouldn’t involve property or any other tax increases.

 Maybe there is a plan. As a preview of coming attractions, the Administration says it would like to jettison the Public Health and Safety Permanent Fund. This was established last century with the sale of Bossier Medical Center (ineptly, costing the city millions of dollars) creating this fund with the $18 million in proceeds spendable only on public health and safety. Its 2024 balance is just over $20 million, and over the past several years the city hardly dips into it (for streets and drainage last time). It typically budgets a return of $25,000 annually (matching what is paid the investment advisors for doing next-to-nothing), although the typical return has been in the range of half a million dollars.

The $20 million, if invested in short-term risk-free Treasury notes, could generate at least $800,000 a year (at current rates, which may decline some by the end of the year, and cost next-to-nothing to administer). The plan appears to be putting most of the similar restrictions into ordinance to provide for more flexibility for the investment earnings use.

 As because of statutory requirements voters would have to approve of this dismantling (which the Administration hopes for in next year’s primary runoff elections), this could first appear as part of the 2027 budget. But if the money is blown on general operating expenses or unneeded capital outlay, that becomes an extension of past unwise decisions that has left the city with an unnecessarily high debt load and now unsteady general fund balance, which is projected to increase a couple of million dollars (with the property tax increase) to $59 million then hold steady in 2026, but only if current trends maintain.

All in all, this first view of the 2026 budget reflects prudence, and Chandler is to be commended for its presentation, although why this wasn’t done in his first term is unknown, that increases transparency (if somewhat last-minute in becoming available on the Internet). So much so that it reveals the land mines ahead, to which city policy-makers can’t delay in addressing their avoidance.