Maybe West Monroe voters will get a choice they didn’t have in 2022 in their city’s mayor’s contest.
Republican businessman Don Nance tried to offer himself in 2022 as an opponent to Republican incumbent Mayor Staci Mitchell. She was running for reelection after having defeated 10-term incumbent Don Norris in 2018. Back then, she criticized Norris for what she termed a depopulating city and declining sales taxes, and as one idea for bucking the latter proposed building a facility across the way from the Ike Hamilton Exposition Center, a Norris project.
Nance was critical of that idea and other of her spending priorities. But that matchup never happened because he was disqualified when his residency, specifically his failure to register to vote at the residence at which he claimed a homestead exemption as required by statute, was challenged. West Monroe requires a year of residency within the city, and Nance’s exemption was on a property outside the city limits (although that didn't seem to matter when it came to the Shreveport mayor's race later that year).
But now he’s back, this time apparently with living arrangements not impeding his candidacy. Since then, Mitchell spearheaded the building of the West Monroe Sports & Events Complex that opened early last year, and it’s one reason Nance decided to give it another go, declaring for next year’s contest. The debt heaped to build the complex Nance argues is too high. At the end of fiscal year 2024, the city had over $42 million in long-term debt, with debt raised for the complex being almost half of that.
Nance also points out the extraordinarily high sales taxes West Monrovians pay 10.99 percent citywide, but in two economic development districts, one of which includes the Ike and Complex and land around them and the other around the riverfront, an extra percent is levied, while a third has an extra 5 mills of property taxes added. This has been the strategy of Mitchell and city aldermen since she has taken office, to create extra revenues by created these special districts and then raising taxes on those engaged in economic activity within them, plowing the additional revenue into economic development within those areas.
In response, Mitchell could have pointed to perhaps the lowest property taxes in the state (outside of that EDD) … until this year, when (on a second try) city elected officials asked for and got narrowly from voters a 65 percent increase in these to fund public safety. The 4.50 mills increase, bringing city millages to 11.40, is substantially higher than the 1.63 mills for street maintenance that was allowed to expire in 2022, so it could be argued that Mitchell has backed a citywide tax increase in her time in office, not just for special districts.
Debt load is somewhat of an issue. Since the year Mitchell took office, long-term debt, backed by 1.49 percent of the sales tax levy, has increased by about 40 percent. In fact, had bonded debt remained at the same $28.4 million level as when she took office, the difference in principal and interest paid out annually about doubles the expected new public safety levy. At about $3,200 per capita, it’s not much different from its neighbor across the Ouachita but is neither high nor low relative to Louisiana’s largest cities.
So, Nance may have a case about Mitchell piling on the debt, although it’s not relatively a high amount (for a comparison of another suburb in the nearest metropolitan area, Bossier City’s figure is about twice as much), as well as having a high sales tax rate. And even if the new property tax rate remains lower than any large city’s in the state, it has been increased with her in office and without the added debt the city might not have needed the new levy.
Whether Nance can make and disseminate effectively arguments about fiscal wantonness by Mitchell will determine whether she received her first real electoral challenge while in office.
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