BC fiscal prudence in vogue with new councilors

This is the kind of governing that Bossier City should have had since the turn of the century, City Council 2026 budget deliberations show.

It wasn’t that in the first quarter of the 21^st century that Bossier City overspent and put itself in financial jeopardy. Rather, it budgeted conservatively for operating expenses while enjoying bounties first from gambling and then from shale oil. But what it did do is within those parameters blew money fast on all sorts of unneeded concrete: a white elephant arena, a parking garage for a private developer, a high-tech office building that failed to attract its intended client, alternative fuel station, and a $50 million-a-mile duplicative road. This waste cost in the neighbor of $200 million for things the city easily could have done without and should have left to the private sector to build and own.

This created a huge debt overhang contributing to, at its peak, putting the city on the hook for almost half a billion dollars, half of which was unrelated to its water provision. It has come down a little since then – consider that in 1997 (right before arena construction started) the total was just a tenth of that – but even today if it hadn’t wasted bucks on those capital items the city would have zero non-enterprise debt. Instead, today it still owes around $375 million with the non-enterprise interest payable of $63 million through 2044, after paying from 1998 through 2024 $173 million.

This principal and interest drag on the budget prevented spending funds on higher priorities, such as pay for city employees, especially in public safety. This meant to give pay raises, as was engineered earlier this year by the four long-time councilors, three of whom were there since just after the arena opened, meant busting the budget.

As a result, the Republican Mayor Tommy Chandler Administration felt it had to roll forward property taxes just a year after pegging them to their lowest rate in over half a century in order to balance the budget and not have to take the chance of severely depleting general fund reserves, which had increased steadily due to a better economy during the first GOP Pres. Donald Trump term and massive transfer payments from federal taxpayers during the Democrat Pres. Joe Biden term. As it was, the budget was raiding from other funds to keep things in balance, and the general fund reserves will be next without some changes.

That was the legacy of the Council graybeards who fled (one failed in a reelection attempt) mid-year into retirement. Without all of this wasted taxpayer dollars, money could have been there for these kinds of things and more to the tune this year of $17 million extra, or enough to have completely wiped out the need for property taxes. Bossier City could have become a low-tax haven attracting swaths of business and residents and still collect enough revenue, for example, to pay out among the highest public safety salaries in the region and for more police, instead of limping along with a stagnant population and crime statistics similar to Shreveport’s.

But it’s a legacy that the present Council hopes it can reverse by doing the opposite of its profligate predecessors. As detailed during budget introduction, a subsequent workshop, and upcoming actions to be taken simultaneously with budget approval starting at the Oct. 21 meeting, several policy changes will commence, the most consequential of which, as articulated by Republican Councilor Joel Girouard is a paydown of debt (as recommended many times in this space over the years) by extinguishing unused bond proceeds, saving enough in interest costs to obviate the property tax hike.

Veteran reform councilors Chris Smith and Brian Hammons have pitched other ideas to improve the bottom line, such as capturing new revenue streams and competition for all significant city contracts including services – ideas stillborn under the graybeards with the latter pithily dismissed as “We don’t shop,” but possible through administrative fiat if not a Council ordinance attaching the city to the state’s procurement code. And Chris Smith and Chandler are putting another into ordinance that will end the practice of doling out taxpayer dollars to nongovernmental organizations on a whim, with amount limits and standards to be met before Council approval – another cost-saving practice recently recommended in this space.

All of these reforms were available and could have been proposed in past years. But they were dead on arrival with a Council comprised of graybeards more interested in spending and preferably on priorities political insiders wanted as part of a big government-directed economic development strategy that delivered goodies to insiders and allies (plus in the previous term Republican Vince Maggio, then a rookie but long-time insider who hitched his wagon to the graybeards until they all disappeared, where suddenly now after nearly losing reelection his voting mimics that of reformers Chris Smith and Hammons).

Unfortunately, the graybeards’ sins will haunt the city fiscally for years to come. But the ideas being implemented and batted around by the Council and Chandler, who proved ineffective in stopping the graybeards in his first term but seems more than happy to follow the reformist Council in its efforts to dig the city out of its hole, promise to jumpstart that process. Just keep them coming.