Also: Dealing with speeding violations

The city of Shreveport is addressing safety concerns regarding squatters. Mayor Tom Arceneaux said city officials are looking at revising some city ordinances to clear some obstacles Shreveport Police face when dealing with the issue.

“Unfortunately, the statute for criminal trespass, in most instances, will require some action by an owner or by what the state calls ‘a lawful possessor,’” Arceneaux said. “The police department rarely has that information. For example, it requires either conspicuous signage that says this is private property and there is no trespassing. Or it requires notice by a lawful possessor to a squatter to vacate. And that’s what the police don’t know, therefore, they have trouble having probable cause to arrest. There are due process issues.”

Arceneaux and his administration are looking at the property standards code for the city to resolve those issues.

“We believe we have found a way to do that that doesn’t require the action of the owner,” Areceneaux said. “There are misdemeanor provisions in the property standards code that say that you cannot permit somebody to live in a house that has certain defects — holes in the roof, broken windows, lack of water source. We are the water source, so we can find out if there is water to a particular building.”

The mayor said they are working to remove any ambiguity in the code.

“There’s a little bit of cleanup to make it clear,” he said. “When you write a criminal statute, it has to be very clear, or else people evade it. We’ve identified where we need to make the change.”

The mayor said the issue is bridging the gap between two sections of the existing property standards code.

“One of them, if you read it, is aimed at the landlord — you shall not permit someone to occupy a structure with these defects,” he said. “There is a section right before it that would cover that, but you have to bridge that. We are going to marry the two. Make it clear that occupying a home with serious roof defects is a violation. Most important is absence of a water source. If you don’t have water, you don’t have sewer, and that presents a health hazard.”

Arceneaux said the proposed changes to the ordinance will make it easier for police to arrest squatters.

“They will be able to see from the condition of the house and whether there is water service whether there is a violation,” he said. “It really won’t matter whether it’s an owner or a squatter, but we will generally assume we are dealing with a squatter in those circumstances.”

Arceneaux said the change will be available upon introduction at the March 11 city council meeting, and it will be available for passage on March 25.

Speed zone complaints

Arceneaux said the city has expanded its contract with Blue Line to expand the use of speed enforcement cameras outside school zones. The move has brought some resistance.

“I am getting some blowback on that,” he said.

“We always get accused of making a money grab.”

Arceneaux said the cameras are not a money grab but rather part of a strategic response to complaints from residents to their city council members.

“We are likely to have cameras on about 12 streets in the city,” he said. “That was a result of complaints by council members because of complaints from their constituents. These are really serious speed violation issues.

“We’re not going to have one on every corner.

We are not going to have one on every street. And we have had speed studies for every one of those locations to indicate that there are really significant issues with high rates of speed.”

He said it’s a matter of both safety and efficiency.

“We are not able to have as effective traffic enforcement with police officers as we will with the cameras, and that I think is a very significant point,” he said. “That’s where we are going with that.”

Verni Howard tapped to lead Community Development

Mayor Tom Arceneaux recently announced his appointment of Verni Howard as Shreveport’s new director of Community Development.

Howard will replace long-time Community Development head Bonnie Moore, who retired last month.

“Obviously, Bonnie Moore’s retirement left a big hole,” Arceneaux said. “Because Bonnie had been there 20 years, she knew everybody. She had been doing the work. She had a passion for the work. And we believe we have found somebody who has as much passion as Bonnie Moore for the work that Community Development does and has tremendous credentials.”

Howard is the executive director of Providence House. She holds a master’s degree in public administration from LSU and has over 25 years of experience in the banking and nonprofit sectors.

“In her work with the Providence House, she has really concentrated her work on the kinds of people that typically benefit form the work that Community Development does,” Arceneaux said of Howard.

“Community Development has a heart, and Community Development has a financial component,” he said. “Verni has the heart and the financial background to understand how those transactions work.”

Howard is also part of a group of leaders selected by Arceneaux to address blight in the city as part of the Harvard Bloomberg City Leadership collaboration. He said she will be available for confirmation by the city council on March 11 and plans to start on April 16.