Bond issues expected to pay off

January is slipping away, and maybe the shine has worn off of some of your New Year’s resolutions. Shreveport Mayor Tom Arceneaux has his resolutions for 2025 front and center and top of mind. And like most of us as individuals, those resolutions have to do with the overall health and appearance of the city.

The Shreveport Police Department headquarters is high on that list.

“This month or early next month, we will likely sell the last of the bonds from the 2021 bond issue,” Arceneaux said. “That will make the funds available for the police headquarters — the police headquarters is under design. Optimistically, we would like to be under construction by the end of 2025. That might be a little ambitious, but that’s what we are shooting for.”

To that end, the mayor said all personnel should be moved out of the headquarters at 1234 Texas Ave. by the end of the year’s first quarter.

One of the first steps was the Shreveport City Council’s approval last week of the donation of property on North Market Street from the North Shreveport Business Association. That building will house a patrol division and a Family Justice Center outreach.

“This will springboard us into being able to initiate the bidding process,” he said. “I am very pleased about that.”

Other divisions are on the move as well.

“There are a couple of groups that are going into restored space at other locations,” Arceneaux said. “Hopefully, by the end of the year, we will have a patrol division at the Monkhouse substation, which is already under construction. And we’re looking at locations in southeast Shreveport for a water-borne patrol division. That’s a big project.”

Citizens also can expect to see progress on other improvements across the city have a plan or some preliminary ideas by that were included in bond proposals overwhelmingly approved by voters last year.

“We have $28 million in streets and drainage projects, mostly neighborhood streets, that will get under construction, or at least under design,” he said. “And we will start working on the Amiss Water Treatment Plant and some other water facilities with the bond money that’s already been sold.”

One of Arceneaux’s major resolutions for the city came out of his participation in the Bloomberg-Harvard City Leadership Program.

“We will have a group that will be working with members of the community to develop a long-range plan for the reduction of blight and the reenergizing of our inner-city neighborhoods,” he said. “I am looking forward to that. We may the end of the year, but probably won’t be completed with that one. It will be a major focus of my attention in 2025.”

Arceneaux reviews security after New Orleans attack

Like many of us, Arceneaux was moved by the New Year’s Day terror attack that hit close to home in New Orleans.

At about 3:15 a.m., a man drove a truck into a Bourbon Street crowd and then got into a shootout with police. Fifteen people were killed, including the attacker, and at least 57 were injured, including two police officers who were shot. The incident prompted the closing of Bourbon Street for a period and the postponement of the Sugar Bowl.

“Our hearts go out to the people of New Orleans, where a terrible act of terrorism cost 15 innocent people their lives,” Arceneaux said in a news release the day after the attack.

After that incident, Arceneaux and his administration went to work to review safety and security protocols for some of Shreveport’s most festive and celebrated events.

“Our biggest exposure, when we have crowds out on the street when something like that could happen, is our Mardi Gras parades,” Arceneaux said. “Our police department is looking at the lessons from New Orleans, as well as a security plan for this year. They are in the process of developing that so the parades are as safe as we can make them.

“Mardi Gras parades are big, open-air, and have lots of street access events, so they create security issues. But we have been able to maintain the safety of our people thus far, and we feel like we can do it for the future, too.”