Bossier City this year took a small step towards smarter fiscal management. Its 2026 budget reveals other opportunities where sweating other small stuff can add up to significant savings.
Tomorrow, the City Council takes up the separate budget ordinances, which largely reflect a measure of prudence. Typically, the city budgets conservatively which has paid off in recent years with a growing general fund balance – until the recently-exited long-in-the-tooth councilors concocted a city-wide pay raise built on political, not fiscal, reasons that promises to deplete that healthy surplus in a matter of years unless the city implements compensatory actions.
The Republican Mayor Tommy Chandler Administration has in a few ways, one of which was a nonstarter: property tax increases. But it did get Council approve to muscle through water and sanitation fee increases that were eating away at reserves, hopefully obviating the need for subsidization from general tax revenues. It also apparently has called a halt to the drunken sailor spending by the departed graybeards on shiny baubles that boosted egos but were fiscally imprudent for the general value they imparted to the citizenry, by making a verbal commitment to using one source of funding for these wasteful capital projects – a sales tax that dumps into the Parkway Capital Project Fund – for its legally-permissible alternative of funding city operating activities.
Still, the level at which the 2026 budget draws from this, about $10 million, isn’t sustainable as only $4 million is budgeted to replenish the $10 million remaining, so that can’t work in the long run. Another trick up the sleeve may try to ameliorate this: a proposal by the Chandler Administration to unlock, which would not happen next year but could be incorporated into the 2027 budget, the $18 million in the Public Safety and Health Trust Fund which would require voter approval. The idea would be to stake some of this as a reserve for paying out health benefits for city employees and retirees, preventing the need to dip into tax revenues.
The result of the (botched) sale of Bossier Medical Center, there’s no reason this fund can’t perform a similar function without its dismantling, In recent years it only occasionally has been harvested and as a result has over $21 million in it. It typically has returned in that period around half a million to a million bucks annually, so there’s no reason not to keep the fund as is, transfer the excess and thereafter revenues annually to the new Health Insurance Fund implemented to better track this spending since the city adopted a quasi-self-insured system a couple of years ago, and provide the backstop for what is argued to be a more-bang-to-the-buck arrangement.
In fact, the only real change needed for this fund – which in its existing form has the benefit of reassuring bond rating agencies that the city will sit on at least $18 million that encourages a better bond rating thus lower interest costs – is to bring its investment advising in-house rather than pay a projected $25,000 annually for doing next-to-nothing (buying zero-coupon Treasury bills weekly throughout 2024 would have netted around $800,000 for a few keystrokes worth of work each time, while the projected investment advisement charge was over $12,000). The same goes for the $30 million minimum by ordinance banked in the Riverboat Gaming Trust Fund, which if this zero-risk no-cost investing strategy is replicated would have thrown off, with its existing balance in the $34 million range, closer to $1.4 million and saving the $20,000 or so in advisement expenses. And its earnings can be put to use, such as obviating any property tax hike.
But real savings can be had by extending the rationale behind the city this year jettisoning, and therefore writing out of the budget, its alternative fuel stations. Having in recent years turned into money-losers, the city stopped their operation and wrote off the assets.
Because there are two bigger money-losers out there, duly noted in the budget: the Brookshire Grocery Arena and the Civic Center. Respectively, they are expected to lose $167,148 and $294,580 – and those figures should be taken as reflecting unbridled optimism. Historically, more often than not forecasts have proven rosier than reality, which is why the predicted arena fund balance has fallen to well under $1 million and that for the center is just over $2 million.
If the city got rid of the stations, it certainly could dump these two money pits. The Civic Center might be too difficult to cut loose, next to the city complex as it is and its catering to smaller customers that would make more difficult finding a private operator that can turn a profit on it. But the arena sits on pretty good real estate and can attract much bigger events that would make a private operator interested if the price is right. Sell the structure that has lost over $10 million since its construction and use the proceeds for defeasance of other debt, freeing up funds.
Finally, while these kinds of things – disposing of non-performing assets not critical to city needs, producing and using trust proceeds more wisely – can add millions of extra dollars annually in budgeting capacity, efficiency in spending also can add to that. For example, does the city competitively bid as much as it can, or does it forthrightly vet organizations that it bestows tax dollars onto? This year, the same roster of nongovernmental organizations as last year are getting handouts, with only two – dues for the Louisiana Municipal Association and Northwest Louisiana Council of Governments – related to basic city functions, for $622,800, slightly less than last year. How are these winners and their amounts selected? Why doesn’t the Council have a public process to determine who wins and how much, instead of just about the same ones getting just about the same amounts? And does he city take advantage of all its revenue-raising opportunities, such as maximizing advertising and sponsorships at its recreational facilities?
Unfortunately, over the decades Bossier City has carved out a reputation as trying to make splashy, attention-grabbing forays into development. That caused the squandering of a generational opportunity and legacy. If its policy-makers will focus on some low-hanging little things, these will add it up to put it on the road to fiscal management recovery.
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