Republican Mayor Tom Arceneaux may helm Shreveport, but its gerrymandered Democrat supermajority City Council keeps spending more money than the city has that puts off a more severe day of reckoning which perhaps cloaks a cynical exercise.
This week, the Council approved the 2024 budget, making several changes to Arceneaux’s plan that had the effect of spending more or putting off debts. In all, for its general operations the city will shell out $283 million, down $11 million budgeted for this year, but overall spending is pegged at $676 million, up $81 million, largely as a result of increased revenue projections for water and sewerage and righting retained risk costs, which in the past couple of years ate into general fund reserves.
But Arceneaux’s plans to begin replenishing general fund reserves, which dove by two-thirds over that period to around $25 million, the Council thwarted by amending away a 20 percent increase in water and sewerage rates, a $3 monthly solid waste charge, and retaining open positions in public safety, with police particularly understaffed, altogether which could have recaptured $25 million. The Council unanimously wanted to keep open proactively the ability to hire into public safety departments, and in the cases of the higher charges felt the public not sufficiently prepared to endure the increases at this time.