Columns & Opinions

The city of Shreveport is in a strong financial shape. The combination of 2020 cost-cutting moves, federal monies related to the pandemic and the large spike in our 2.75% sales tax on which I wrote May 7, results in an opportunity to appropriate general funds for several of the “Unfunded Needs” shown in the 2021 Operating Budget. At the Nov. 20, 2015, budget hearing in the mayor’s conference room, District A Councilman Willie Bradford drew a clear distinction between “wants” and “needs.”

Finally, the city of Shreveport has something to cheer about, and the Perkins administration deserves a lot of credit for making it happen.

During the recent Covid crisis, I have wondered why we have not devoted more emphasis in educating all of us about boosting our immune systems. Things like increasing exercise, eating a diet high in fruits and vegetables, getting adequate sleep and minimizing stress are among some of the ways known to boost the miraculous arrangement within our bodies that defends us against disease-causing microorganisms.

Louisiana House Bill 652, which decriminalizes possession of less than half an ounce of marijuana, passed on to the Louisiana Senate by a landslide bipartisan vote of 67-25 Tuesday. Shreveport City Council members John Nickelson and Tabatha Taylor, who successfully cosponsored a similar decriminalization law in Shreveport earlier this year, were in Baton Rouge to speak in support of the bill passage. The bill, which closely mirrors laws passed in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and now Shreveport, moves to the Louisiana Senate for consideration.

Legalize marijuana.

A major earthquake upset Bossier City politics when Tommy Chandler beat incumbent Mayor Lo Walker on March 20.

Something incredible started happening in Baton Rouge on April 28. At the Natural Resources and Environment Committee hearing on Representative Dodie Horton’s HB630 bill to start reining in the appointed bureaucrats with the Cypress Black Bayou Recreation and Water Conservation District, the Good Ol’ Boy Network of Bossier City was put on full display and notice.

Lately, we have been considering energy and what impacts personal energy. Consider psychologically that we live in a three-room house. Three rooms are what everyone has in our conscious minds. The three rooms are the past, the present and the future.