Belatedly, Bossier City is getting more guarded about its direction of tax dollars toward private entities, and implementing a little tough love to a long-simmering problem area is a good next step.
This week, the Bossier City Council tees up its 2026 five-year capital budget. This one calls for $188 million in spending, a substantial increase from the $130 million called for in last year’s. Most of that increase comes from transportation zooming from $36 million to $84 million, with the lion’s share taken by new projects to improve Viking Drive, improve Hamilton Road, create a cut-through from Barksdale Boulevard to the arena, and to bump up generic street improvements by two-thirds. Much of the rest comes from engineering projects jumping up from $24 million to $41 million with the addition of a Swan Lake Road to Deen Point waterline and Interstate 20 exit improvements.
Unfortunately, like herpes, this budget has resurfacing the “multi-purpose indoor sports venue.” This is shorthand for a city taxpayer gift to the YMCA, which the city would allow the Y to run and derive revenues from in exchange for giving residents the chance to pay dues to the Y to use the facility their tax dollars built. As previously noted, given the wide availability of recreation options available already for residents there’s no reason for this, yet it has appeared in all but one budget beginning in 2021. With a pair of reform-minded councilors in their second terms and four like-minded new ones, there’s no reason this Council should let stick around this $20 million waste, especially as the city tries to crawl out from under a mound of debt and has made this mistake before with the city’s tennis center.
It's all the more wonder why it’s in there seeing as the Council plans on getting tough over $80,000 including the end of a cooperative endeavor agreement. That’s at risk for the Bossier Arts Council as the City Council reviews whether to terminate that funding and contract before the quarter is out, as well as evict the BAC from its rent-free digs in the old city hall where it gets its city utilities for free as well.
Like with the recurring nature of the needless Y giveaway, ratcheting down city money going to the BAC has come up before. It all started in 2018 with Ordinance 71 that built on Ordinance 8 that established the East Bank District’s Festival Plaza area. Already subsidizing the BAC, the city decided to allocate $25,000 more for the BAC to manage the area for the remainder of the year and offered $50,000 each succeeding year. The BAC was to coordinate and oversee events.
In 2019, that contract was part of the $280,000 it received from governments, which includes the saved $130,000 in rent and utilities, out of about $360,000 in revenues,. In 2020, contract revenue was about the same while overall revenues increased a bit to $374,000. In 2021, contract revenue slumped $16,000 while overall revenues stayed about the same. And in 2022, contract revenues (now stated separately from the free rent and utilities) reached $293,000 (including the freebies) with total revenues up to $426,000.
According to the Louisiana Legislative Auditor, that’s all we know, because from 2022-24, the BAC violated statute by not presenting its audit (in past years performed by the politically-connected Cook & Morehart firm) in the required six months after the end of the entity’s fiscal year (the same period as Bossier City’s, mid-year). Thus, in the state’s eyes there hasn’t been a report covering any time after Jun. 30. 2022.
Which was about the last time questions about the plaza contract came up. In Oct., 2022, the Republican Mayor Tommy Chandler Administration attempted to terminate the cooperative endeavor agreement. Instead, the Council set aside the Chandler request, then dutifully for the next two years funded both the contract and subsidy despite the failure to comply with the law (which doesn’t carry a penalty for noncompliance that can be levied by a local government, although it does become ineligible for state and federal grants).
Last fall, Republican Councilor Brian Hammons during budget consideration made it a point to bring up the subject. The CEA requires filing, and he opined that, as Chandler had suggested three years earlier, to bring plaza management back under the fold of the city, with the additional argument about the missed audits to justify, and save the $50,000. Again, the Council backed off.
Since then, the BAC missed its third consecutive deadline and the city has lost patience. The three BAC staffers (the executive director’s position is unfilled, after dismissal just prior to budget resolution with purportedly the missing audits as part of the justification) and board plead that they are overworked but working on it. Their excuse for tardiness is very hard to believe, since for two of those three years they managed to file their legally-obligated federal form 990 to continue their tax-exempt status using Cook & Morehart.
Internal Revenue Service records show a 2023 filing where it has $336,000 in revenue of which $206,000 came from governments (excluding the $130,000), and a 2024 filing where revenues plunged to $165,000 of which almost all, $152,000, came from government, reflected in a much smaller amount of programmatic expenses indicating that much less in the way of art support was occurring and some 30 percent alone of total revenues came from the contract.
The 2024 (that is, information from Jul. 1 2023 to Jun. 30, 2024) filing which was due Nov. 15, 2024 was filed months late on Apr. 29, 2025 (about the same time of year the previous filing occurred). That means the 2025 filing (Jul. 1, 2024-Jun. 30, 2025), which was due Nov. 15, 2025, may be filed in the next couple of months. The state audit was due Dec. 31, 2025.
Other embarrassing facts arise from the IRS filings. In 2024, about 23 percent of revenues went to fundraising, while every dollar spent on it returned only $1.40 whereas the typical appeal raises $3-5. The terminated director made over $44,000 while all other employes combined made less than half of that. Why as part of the public support calculation (necessary to demonstrate qualification as a public charity) does the latest year leave out the $130,000 in donated rent and utilities? And what about a listed “restricted donor,” which by law may be redacted from public inspection copies of a form 990 but indicates at least some one person or entity gave at least $5,000 that year?
Thus, the question from which those connected to the BAC has tried to deflect the city from asking is, if you were able to churn out form 990s (if late) using the same accounting firm used in previous years to send in the audit, what kept you from doing sending in the audit on time for the past three years? It’s either laziness – because to stiff the IRS risked losing tax-exempt status – or deliberate obscurantism to hide from the city the dysfunction fomenting in the BAC.
The BAC was not founded to pay over a quarter of its revenues to its leader and another over a quarter to raise money while running a city property as its main function. Bossier City can get it back on track by terminating the CEA and amending the proposed ordinance to kick it out of its abode if by Apr. 30 the Legislative Auditor and the IRS don’t have the audits and latest form 990, respectively. Administering the plaza is too much of a distraction for it when it needs to train its limited resources on getting its own house back in order. And if it can’t get its accountants to do something they already do by then, it proves the organization too dysfunctional for salvage.
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