Mayor looks forward to another year of accomplishment

As Shreveport Mayor Tom Arceneaux reflected on 2025 and looked ahead to this new year, he surprised even himself.

“I don’t think about all those things during the day-to-day,” he said as he reviewed 2025. “When I look back, I say, ‘Gee whiz, we did a lot this year.’ I am really proud of the accomplishment. We will have another year of accomplishments in 2026 and look forward to 2027.”

Some of the accomplishments the mayor highlighted resulted from recommendations from the Small Business Task Force. The city created an online one-stop shop for many permitting needs, helping businesses launch or expand in the city. The city also streamlined the processes for acquiring liquor licenses and ABO cards.

Shreveport also made strides in economic development, he said.

“We have begun construction of projects that were begun under the 2024 bond issue,” Arceneaux said. “In addition, we were able to get out to bid and construct and occupy the Monkhouse Drive (police) substation. We were able to get both the North Market substation and the Cedar Grove park substation under construction. Those will fulfill commitments made to the voters.”

Residents will be able to track the progress of those bond initiative projects through a dashboard on the city’s website — another project launched in 2025. And Arceneaux has other ways planned to keep people informed.

“Beginning in 2026, once a month, I am going to have the program manager for that first proposition — streets and drainage — give a monthly report so that people will receive the information even if they don’t go to the dashboard.

Those were commitments made during the bond process, and we have kept all of those commitments.”

The city of Shreveport received bids Dec. 16 for the renovation of the Shreveport Police Department headquarters at 1234 Texas Ave. The building will be gutted and brought up to current standards. The project will provide additional office space.

Four area contractors bid on the project, which was a part of a 2021 bond issue. The low bid, including alternates, was $22,152,000 from Hand Construction Co. The bid was about 10% less than the architect’s estimate.

“I am so excited that this day has finally arrived,” Arceneaux said in a news release. “This is a huge step in getting our police department into modern office space while still preserving some of the historic features of the 1950s-era structure that once served as Shreveport’s City Hall.”

Work on the project should begin in early 2026 and could be completed before the end of 2027.

Those are not the only 2025 initiatives Arceneaux plans to expand in the new year.

“There are some really important things going on,” he said. “The things that I am primarily working on for 2026 are to get to the next phase of the Block-by-Block initiative, where we actually begin redeveloping areas of neighborhoods to learn how we might do that. Then we will be able to scale it to a citywide redevelopment strategy.”

The mayor also expects to get a settlement resolved of the city’s sewer consent decree, “so we know where we are going and can begin going down that road.”

His optimism is bound by a strong budget for 2026.

“The budget is a good budget,” Arceneaux said. “Provides some raises for fire and police, not as much as we would like, but a real good start and within the confines of what we can do with the resources made available to us. We can also provide a cost-of-living adjustment for employees, particularly those earning less than $75,000. That is a big plus in terms of attracting and maintaining people who actually perform the day-to-day services for the city of Shreveport.”

The mayor also kept one of his largest priorities in the budget.

“We maintained our eight percent operating budget,” he said. “We are going to market on the refinancing of $156 million of water and sewer revenue bonds that will save us over time about $10 million. The present value of that is over $7 million in savings to the ratepayers of Shreveport.”

The city’s success in 2025 bolsters Arceneaux’s enthusiasm for this year.

“I think we have really operated on all cylinders during 2025,” he said. “We managed to do a lot of things. I am very pleased and proud of our record of accomplishment and am looking forward to a similar year.”