Columns & Opinions

Do you know that feeling when you fail to meet your minimum expectations of yourself? If you don’t, then you’re better than most of us. Better than me, certainly.

Most cities and towns in North America are functionally insolvent. This is not hyperbole. It comes down to a simple question: Is new development producing enough wealth to fund the long-term maintenance of its own infrastructure — let alone public safety and all the other services that we expect government to provide? When we examine these costs and revenue streams, we often find the answer is no.

The Shreveport City Council’s contentious last meeting in January should spark a new approach to pulling Shreveport out of its economic development doldrums.

Fourteen thousand jobs! The claim of 14,000 new jobs is the rallying cry of Gateway Development Consortium’s proposed massive project on Cross Bayou. But has anyone divulged where this number came from or how it is supported? Does anyone favoring the project even care? Let’s see if we can figure this out.

The current city council has now been on the job for thirteen plus months. And it has had its sharing of long, grueling meetings dealing with controversial topics including sagging pants, the garbage fee, and the proposed Cross Bayou development.

January 30, 2020

The Shreveport city council next meets on Mon. Feb. 10 for its administrative conference. The regular meeting will be on Tues. Feb. 11.

This sucks. This is the article you don’t plan for. You can’t be prepared to discuss a figure as large as Kobe Bryant on such short notice. I have followed sports since I was in first grade, when my mom would bribe me with baseball cards if I did good in school. I grew up loving sports, any sport. From Captains baseball games at Fair Grounds Field to watching NAS- CAR with my dad on Sundays to catching every single Chicago Bulls game I could on WGN so I could watch Michael Jordan do his thing. Sports. Sports. Sports.