Police jury works to improve, grow Bossier Parish
A couple of my recent columns highlighted the Bossier Parish Police Jury’s work to create a parish-wide utility district, the largest part of which is a $45 million parish sewer district.
But that’s not the only large-scale project that has the jury’s attention. I visited with Police Jury Administrator Bill Altimus and Engineer Butch Ford for an update on the jury’s Bossier Parish Transportation Plan 2004-15. The plan called for widening Airline Drive and Swan Lake Road, along with major extensions to Crouch Road, Wafer Road, Winfield Road and Wemple Road – at an estimated cost of $23 million (and that’s in “2004 dollars”).
When it comes to the BPPJ, these folks are as ambitious in their planning to improve and grow the parish as they are about finding ways to finance those improvements.
Two elements of the transportation plan have already been completed. The jury financed the 2006 Wemple Road extension “in-house,” and paid for the Airline Drive widening, a $4.2 million project, with federal funds.
Ford said when the jury approached the local Congressional delegation in 2004, “The federal highway administration had plenty of money.” Ford said for every dollar of federal fuel tax, about 89 cents was returned to the states. The jury ended up receiving about $7.2 million in an unusual direct appropriation to the jury. The more conventional arrangement would have seen the state receive the funding to pass along to the parish.
In any case, this funding allowed the jury to start engineering and environmental design on their project list. The priority was the “north-south” route consisting of the Crouch Road extension and Swan Lake widening projects. Ford said this is a transportation priority that will take the load off of existing roads and decrease response time to local medical facilities by up to 15 minutes.
In 2008, the jury started the environmental process for the project, strictly following federal guidelines and finally received a “finding of no significant impact.” Ford said the process would have been completed six months earlier than it was but for the discovery of “rare dirt” or prairie soil at the top of the hill at Crouch Road, which had to be mitigated by moving the planned road.
The same federal process was followed for the Wafer Road and Winfield Road extensions, and fortunately, there were no more incidents of rare dirt finds.
All routes selected and cleared environmentally, a roadblock to construction occurred in 2008 when the economy soured and the federal transportation fund was no longer flush with money.
While the jury has enough of the original $7.2 million remaining to purchase the right-of-way for the “northsouth” project, they don’t have the funding to construct/extend the roads.
And this is where the jury administration became as creative with financing sources for road construction as its folks have been with constructing a parish-wide utility system. So the jury went looking for another transportation and road building funding source – and found it in the Northwest Louisiana Council of Governments.
Ford said NLCOG has “some monies available for the next five to eight years, so we have been guaranteed... we have the money to build the northsouth. It may take some time, but we’re going to build it.”
But jury representatives haven’t stopped there. Ford also said “right sizing,” a state program that allows parishes/cities to take a state road into the parish/city road program – after the state has put the roadway into good repair. In addition, the state provides the gaining entity with 40 years of maintenance funding of about $400,000-$500,000 per mile.
Ford said judicious use of this program could provide funds that could be applied to other projects – so the jury is looking at this option. But he emphasized the jury already has 800 miles of road to maintain currently – the question is whether jurors want to take on any more.
Altimus, who sits on a transportation steering committee for the National Association of Counties, discussed some of the issues that determine the availability or lack of federal transportation funding. He said when the price of gas goes up, people drive less – and that newer vehicles are much more fuel efficient, so less gas is purchased – so fuel tax collections are declining.
Altimus said he attended an event at which innovative ways of financing infrastructure were discussed, including private entities funding toll roads or bridges, or whatever the need. “I don’t know how successful that would be here,” Altimus said, but he suggested that studying innovative methods of paying for needed improvements should be an ongoing local discussion.
The Bossier Parish Police Jury is the most conservative elected body in this corner of Louisiana when it comes to budgeting and finding ways to keep local taxes low – while planning and executing some of the most significant parish improvements in decades.
Bossier Parish residents may want to take a few minutes to let these folks know how much that dedication and work is appreciated.
Marty Carlson, a freelance writer, has been covering local news for the past 13 years. She can be reached via email at m_carlso@bellsouth.net.
