Columns & Opinions

The city of Shreveport’s 2.75% sales tax revenues spiked up a whopping 9.5% over January 2020. $13,000,330.17 in January 2021 receipts is an all-time high, the first ever to land north of $13 million. In fact, it had not ever surpassed $12 million.

I endured many winters in the Great Plains (below-zero temperatures), the Great Lakes region (gray skies, sloppy snow) and the mountains of the Pacific Northwest (snowfall exceeding 100 inches).

“(T)he oppressed become as evil as the oppressor.” -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

With the arrival of February, many of us will naturally turn our focus to relationships. Consider for a moment the most important relationship you will ever have: the relationship with yourself. Most of us likely think “other” when we think about relationships, but what sponsors every relationship we are in? Is it not the relationship we have with ourselves?

Shreveport is a great place to live and an even better place to work and raise a family. That flies in the face of all the bad things that people hear about Shreveport, but it is true. Are there problems? Of course there are. Every municipality the size of Shreveport has problems, but that does not mean that those problems are the rule. In fact, in Shreveport, that is not the case. For the most part, people get along with each other in Shreveport.

Driving around Shreveport it does not look like we like each other. That is what one busy realtor called me to meet about last year during early COVID days. We met in a beautifully redone, empty warehouse that had been built here around the time of World War II. She told me that when she shows out-of-town prospects Shreveport and all the potential, they ask to see our worst neighborhoods. They want to see if we take care of one another. When they see neglected neighborhoods with potholes and drainage issues, it is a bad indicator. They report that the litter all over town is appalling.

Caddo Commissioner Jim Taliaferro let the proverbial cat out of the bag recently with his announcement that he would run for Shreveport mayor next year. His declaration was only some 17 months before qualifying.

We all know that feeling you get when you wake in the middle of the night and you are not sure what you heard that woke you up. I have always been afraid of the dark. I don’t like not being able to see around me.