A Bossier City Council on the verge of its biggest shakeup in nearly a quarter-century may tell at its next meeting, after a promising sign at its previous gathering, whether it finally has renounced its free-spending, money-wasting ways.
This week, the Council will consider its annual five-year Capital Outlay Budget. While the plan may be altered at any time, it gives an idea of city priorities for infrastructure over the next half-decade.
As an example of how the city may pivot, earlier this month it considered plunking down front money, plus a small amount for contingencies, of $80,000 to install two electric vehicle charging stations on the top deck of the Louisiana Boardwalk parking garage it built two decades ago as a gift to developers. This stemmed from the federal government’s Volkswagen Environmental Mitigation Trust Fund program that would pay for purchase and installation of light duty direct current fast charging (“level 3” or about 20 to 60 minutes for a full charge) chargers according to a state plan, which in Louisiana means along various corridors located within a close distance of a high-speed roadway, or in Bossier City’s case Interstate 20. A survey of available power infrastructure led to this particular siting.
Although the chargers only cost less than half of the grant amount made, the rest was for installation, maintenance, and monitoring by a contractor. The city only would have to pony up about $10,000 of its own money for ancillaries, if even that, after reimbursement.
Yet the Council, which in the previous three decades had blown in the neighborhood of $200 million on a hardly-needed road, an arena, a high-tech office building, and the garage, balked at this. Members, including graybeard councilors Republican David Montgomery, Democrat Bubba Williams, and independent Jeff Darby who had gleefully stumped for the hundreds of millions of baubles, brought up liability and urgency concerns. Not even argued was who would pay for the electricity used, likely the city thus taxpayers.
However, declining a relative pittance for something few people will use and likely nobody the graybeards know is one thing. Plopping down something in the tens of millions of taxpayer dollars that some people will use, a lot of people will see, everybody pays for, and political allies will enjoy is another thing. And so, like herpes, the idea of the “Multi-Purpose Indoor Sports Venue” recurs in the 2025-26 plan, this time at the cost of $20 million which just barely (behind Tinsley Park improvements) represents the second biggest project, or just over 15 percent of the projected over $129 million total.
This is shorthand for a gift building for the local YMCA, which first came up just after elections in 2021 at Montgomery’s suggestion, then priced at $30 million. It received a cold shoulder then and again at the end of the year with a veto threat from GOP Mayor Tommy Chandler. Basically, the Y would run it and city residents could pay dues in the hundreds of dollars a year to use it, as opposed to using any other area Y or other nonprofit or for-profit health clubs.
In other words, it was another needless waste of taxpayer dollars. But the problem is it never has gone away but resurfacing every year after at first laying low, absent from the 2022 version approved just a few weeks after the unsuccessful year-end try. For 2023, it emerged in the Transportation Improvement category, downsized to $25 million with $10 million of that out the door in fiscal year 2024-25, the same the year after, and the final chunk the year after that. For 2024, it made its way over to the Engineering category with the same expenditure category, but this time starting in FY 2026. This year, it’s still in Engineering but cut back $5 million, with half going out the door in FY 2027 and the rest in equal installments over the next two years.
Why does the Council keep approving it, if continuously delayed? Why does Chandler not voice displeasure at it? Can’t something more helpful be put in its stead? Of course, a lot of steps have to happen before this thing could get off the ground, like land acquisition and contracting, that must receive Council approval, and what appears to be an incoming council after elections next month (all races will be decided by then with the disqualification of Democrat former Police Juror Charles Gray from running for District 3, in a delicious irony as he gained his Jury seat in 2019 by having his opponent disqualified) far less willing to blow bucks on egotistical erections, meaning if it stays in the plan it never would see the light of day anyway, but if the prudent frugalness shown in blowing up the EV charger grant is a sign that sanity lies ahead on capital spending, why not start now by excising this project?
While Montgomery and Williams, plus another graybeard whose votes only were responsible for half the waste of the others, Republican Jeff Free, all are jumping ship by mid-year, still Darby is running for reelection as is the graybeards’ lapdog, first-termer Republican Vince Maggio. If they want to make themselves look better to voters, they could join with verified public weal watchdogs Republicans Chris Smith and Brian Hammons to evict that line item. If so, we’ll know a revolution of fiscal sanity finally has arrived, if a few months early although far too late.
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