(The Center Square) — The sale of city bonds and the projects funded by that money headlined the Shreveport City Council meeting Friday.
The city is looking to establish a plan for improvement in 2025 and in order to do so, they need to raise money and have a list of projects.
City officials have already begun the process of both, kickstarted by the 2024 bond issue election in which Shreveport residents voted yes on three packages of projects: $124.4 million for streets; $82 million for water and sewerage; and $49.3 million for public facilities.
However, the council has been hesitant to allow the sale of bonds just yet due to issues with the deed for the North Market Street police substation, which The Center Square previously reported.
This council members voted unanimously to approve the sale of over $100 million in bonds. Their reasoning was that they did not want to hold up construction any longer, but they did still implore the mayor to get answers for them.
The council also established their intent in a unanimous vote by specifying the projects to be undertaken from the sale of the bonds. A list of these priority projects and how much they each cost can be found in The Advocate.
District A councilwoman Tabatha Taylor wanted everyone listening to the meeting to know that although these are ‘start now’ projects, that merely means that they are ready for engineering and design first after the sale of the bonds.
Speaking of police substations, the council adopted a resolution to encourage Shreveport Mayor Tom Arceneaux to negotiate the purchase of the property at 8509 Line Avenue to be used as a police substation.
The council each said they were happy with the substations currently being built, but felt south Shreveport was being neglected. Although it is a low crime area compared to the rest of the city, the council argued the citizens still deserve quicker response times in the case a crime does happen, and with this substation they would get just that.
