BC worse off than exiting councilors found it

While they may have gone out with varying degrees of class, the four departing Bossier City Council members leave with a legacy of managing not to break the city, but having blown an incredible opportunity to make the city much more than what it is – America’s biggest small town – leaving it worse off than when each had entered office.

At the final Council meeting prior to a new panel taking shape at the start of next month (and meeting initially almost immediately after taking their oaths of office), the four outgoing councilors – Republicans David Montgomery (24 years) and Jeff Free (12 years) and Democrat Bubba Williams (28 years), who had eschewed reelection attempts, and independent Jeff Darby (32 years of the last 36), defeated in his reelection attempt – were feted through proclamation by their colleagues, all rookies, for their willingness to show them the ropes of governance and for service. Republican Mayor Tommy Chandler also joined in the presentations from the city for service.

In their speeches, continuing councilors (Republicans Chris Smith and Brian Hammons; the GOP’s Vince Maggio was absent) and Chandler were gracious in listing several significant policy decisions stretching back to the era of Darby’s first election, 1989. The problem was, few of these listed were positive accomplishments.

To be clear, since 1989 Bossier City has not suffered through the same magnitude of poor decision-making as have other Louisiana cities that as a result have seen themselves under fiscal pressure and population depletion. New Orleans continues to slide towards dysfunction from high crime and declining economic fortunes, with Shreveport at an equivalent position among middle-tier cities and both suffering depopulation. Baton Rouge largely has resisted those trends, propped up by state government and inclusion of St. George now separated.

Three dozen years ago, Bossier City had about 53,000 residents and was spending and raising about $11-12 million a year, debt service at just over a million bucks included. Property was assessed at around $148 million in value. Its total debt was well under $100 million.

Then a series of bad decisions began to be made, beginning with the advent of gaming beyond Louisiana Downs in the early 1990s. Handed this gift not only with video poker but eventually three casinos, the Council wisely set up a segregated fund for proceeds but then foolishly began to spend it questionably. At least some of it went to pare down debt that by the time Williams came on board and Darby returned had sunk to fewer than $60 million.

Next came the Bossier Medical Center debacle that actually in the earlier part of the decade was making money but when private sector competition increased – the city having refused to sell the operation to Willis Knighton – it went into the red and years later the city threw in the towel and sold it for much less. This was a key moment: had the city sold it at first offer, it could have used the proceeds to wipe out almost all of its debt. Instead, it set aside the much lower amount the interest of which today basically subsidizes emergency medical services.

By ordinance, casino gambling revenues stay in a pot of at least $30 million. What the city should have done was to build up that balance far beyond that and then use earnings to supplement earmarked activities, such as public safety. Over time, it could have begun to reduce sales and property tax rates.

Instead, Williams and Darby joined others to begin spending like drunken sailors on all sorts of shiny objects. First it was the money-losing arena, built as an insult to Shreveport to count coup by snagging the Mudbugs hockey franchise and to entice other anchor tenants away from (technically the state’s) arena in Shreveport. But the economic listlessness of the area plus voracious casinos doomed this hope, and today the arena attracts just a few entertainment acts here and there that guarantees it operates in the red. While Williams and Darby (reentry) came in on the fallout of the Bossier Medical Center needless fire sale, Montgomery would make his entrance from the backlash somewhat from the arena but more to its siting.

Next came the Boardwalk parking garage idiocy, followed by the Cyber Innovation Center flushing away of tax dollars (although enticed by the state which threw in even more, plus the parish kicked in some) on the thought that it would such in thousands of jobs that never materialized (even as some have). Finally, there was the quixotic alternative fuel stations gambit which at the lowest cost wasted the least.

Coming in around the time of Montgomery was Republican former councilors Tim Larkin and Scoot Irwin, who with GOP holdover the late David Jones and Williams and Darby proceeded to foist these wasteful schemes onto the public. But it was with Jones’ departure and Free in his stead that the city concocted its most expensive folly, the Walter O. Bigby Carriageway. It may save a few minutes of driving time for a small portion of total daily city travelers and goes over rail lines, but at almost $85 million the juice just wasn’t even close to being worth the squeeze.

This over $210 million in needless spending actually will cost much more. As of the end of 2023, the city had $391 million in bonded indebtedness (plus $44 million in premiums and deferrals), with $191 million in non-enterprise activities (basically, not water and sewerage) which will cost $80 million in interest over the next 20 years. And this is on top of the $174 million in interest it has spent since 1995 (again, excluding enterprise activities).

If we assume that half of that interest from the past three decades came from the wasted $210+ million, this will mean the total waste will hit $377 million. Can you imagine what that could had achieved for the citizenry with a savings/low tax strategy? Let’s assume that gets thrown in with the initial $30 million in the gambling proceeds account and then, knowing it’s solely to throw off cash for operating expenses, put the boodle in the least volatile, most conservative instrument possible, certificates of deposit for a year’s length. That rate averaged 2.61 percent from the start of 1995 to 2025. Assuming a linear deposit schedule (i.e. each year around $13 million was put in), at the end of this year with interest earnings the fund would have had $407 million in it and, and by this year would be throwing off around $10.5 million in cash – plus avoiding the nearly $17 million in principal and interest repayments on the extant bonds (keep in mind the city would have been debt free except for enterprise activities).

That would pay for two-thirds of public safety expenses. And, therefore it would have allowed for (over time as the fund grew) dropping the city’s the city’s property tax to include only its original alimony amount (now set at 5.25 mills) and a half-cent of its sales tax – if this were static analysis. Then, by including the burst of economic activity fomented by being the Louisiana municipality with the lowest property tax rates – keep in mind businesses pay most of this – and at the average sales tax levy, that additional activity likely would have allowed eating into the sales tax rate even more by increasing a population base far beyond the fewer than 10,000 more residents added between 1990 and 2020 that was an anemic 0.6 percent average annual growth. And, for the cherry on top, it wouldn’t be staring at over $250 million owed over the next two decades.

Admittedly, the above analysis doesn’t have much nuance. For example, the increased population minus the arena, garage, building, stations, and road may have made more infrastructure spending elsewhere necessary. Then again, the investment returns likely would have been higher than this extremely risk-averse strategy to compensate for that, and then some.

And, not even included in this recitation are additional external costs with which each councilor burdened the citizenry by their insular decision-making to favor certain special interests. For examples, Williams used his influence to create a convoluted parks and recreation regime that privileges outsiders at the expense of citizens, while Montgomery’s (and Irwin’s) meddling in an economic development project ended up costing the city an estimated $35 million from a legal judgment brought because of their (and the city’s) actions.

But what should be clear is just a little vision putting taxpayers first would have made Bossier City a far better place to live than its present stagnancy weighed down by mistakes of the past. Instead, ego took over with these chuckleheads, constructing monument after monument to themselves (literally) with a flawed married to a Field of Dreams strategy from the start obviously destined to fail, leaving the highest debt per capita of any city (that is, 5,000 or greater number of residents) in the state even thought it takes in now $76 million a year in tax revenues and property assessed at five times its value than three decades ago.

City officials honored the four departees graciously at the meeting, hiding in background a competition to see who could go out in the most bitter and classless manner. While Darby skipped the entire meeting (and the last one in May), Montgomery predicably took the cake by missing the last meeting of May, the first one in June, and even if showing up for roll call for this one shagged out of there just as soon as he received his honorary award before any business was conducted.

In the final analysis, although citizens may respect the 96 years of service put in by this cabal, their legacy is that they made the city worse off by that. Unkind rhetoric about their service is deserved because citizens shouldn’t be satisfied that the sum total of their governance (and that of Jones, Larkin, and Irwin) produced a city that in 35 years grew marginally while debt repayments soared to (as of 2023) just shy of $8,200 per capita courtesy of a money-losing arena, a parking garage that hardly anybody uses, a high-tech office building that hasn’t come close to attracting the jobs promised, now-abandoned alternate fuel stations, and a duplicative road that cost $50 million a mile.

Instead, Bossier Citians should be offended that these rubes, given a once-in-a-generation chance to vault the city far up the economic development ladder, took the peoples’ hard-earned tax dollars and blew so much of that, especially when these yahoos starting over a quarter-century ago were warned, again and again, that their policy choices were rank stupidity and that saving and reducing taxes was the better way. They didn’t listen, and now current and future generations suffer for their entirely avoidable mistakes. Good riddance to them.