Gotta Give Him Credit, Kip Holden Is One Hard-Headed Son Of A Gun
This fall, Baton Rouge Mayor-President Kip Holden will put forth a third attempt at a bond issue in four years.
Holden got all of 35 percent of the vote for his last attempt at passing a tax increase to fund a bond. That was in the fall of 2009; Holden then attempted to highlight a $900 million package with a riverfront amusement park to be financed with public investment.
This time, there’s no theme park. But Holden’s $748 million bond issue is otherwise nearly the exact same plan voters have rejected twice. It’s $150 million less than the 2009 proposal. The amusement park was supposed to cost $230 million and it’s not in there. Instead, this plan has $80 million for bridge improvements.
To wit, the bond issue is broken into three parts. The first is a $350 million “Public Safety” improvement plan, the elements of which are…
- A $151 million brand-new Parish Prison complex;
- A $45 million Juvenile Services facility;
- A $102 million “Public Safety Complex,” in which the City Police, Sheriff’s Office and firefighters will all be together in the same headquarters; and
- A $52 million City Hall consolidation (the building is all of 40 years old).
The Public Safety part of the bond issue, which appears to be proposed as a line on the ballot all to itself, would raise a quarter-cent sales tax plus 2.15 mill-property tax. Holden says the City Hall retrofit project would trigger an $8.6 million federal grant.
The second part is an “Infrastructure” improvement plan, with a price tag of $366 million. It includes…
- $54 million for replacing and synchronizing traffic signals, which supposedly would attract $17 million in federal funding;
- $195 million in drainage improvements;
- $80 million for bridge replacements and repairs, which has already been an extremely controversial measure given that Metro Councilman Chandler Loupe has challenged Holden’s characterization of the city-parish’s bridges as in crisis and questioned the need for this level of spending; and
- $38 million for a parking garage downtown. Let’s say that again, with feeling – $38 million FOR A PARKING GARAGE! Is it a magic parking garage?
Holden’s infrastructure package will be another line on the ballot and it calls for a sales tax increase of a quarter-cent and a 0.75 mill property tax hike.
And the third leg of the bond issue plan is styled “Economic Development & Recreation,” and it consists of a $32 million “Phase II Completion” of the city’s downtown River Center. Holden says that spending would help position Baton Rouge as a “Tier 2″ convention venue. Again, this will be a separate ballot line, and if it passes we’ll add a quarter-cent sales tax, plus a 0.25 mill property tax. But Holden says no bonds will be issued for this component and these taxes will cease within five years.
All told, he wants to jack sales taxes up by three quarters of a cent and property taxes up by 3.15 mills.
The chances of this passing? Slim and none, based on both the history of the previous attempts at enticing the parish’s voters to pay for all of these projects and Holden’s repeated examples of questionable management of the funds available to him – examples which haven’t gone unnoticed.
But it will be on the ballot in November, as three separate tax increase proposals. And it will be touted as absolutely necessary by all the “responsible” opinion-makers in town,
It’s up to the voters to decide whether to give Holden what he wants. But by now it ought to be unmistakable that if he’s denied this time he’ll just come back with another bond issue in the future.
You Go Red Stick City !!!
Just keeping telling the man “no, no , no, no, no,” and if you h ave to say it, say, ”h*ll no”
Maybe all the dummycrats will get the message
Fat chance….it’s genetic
If that proposed riverfront amusement park had been built, then it would have flooded last month during the high water.
If that proposed riverfront amusement park had been built, then it would have flooded last month during the high water.
our city is in desperate need of major infrastructure improvements. we are so far behind our peer cities is pathetic. the need for the tax doesn’t have anything to do with Kip’s “questionable management”. Its the result of 60 years of city officials and anti-tax stalwarts passing the buck.
Disqus generic email templateAre you attempting to say that Holden is running a tight fiscal ship?
He’s not.
Since your screen name is “redsticker”, does that mean that the Kool-Aid flavor that Ol’ Kip’s been mixing up (and you’ve obviously been drinking) is “red” Kool-Aid? Wow, although it wasn’t my intention, even I have to marvel at the possible double meaning that this conjures up……
If the city is in “desperate need of major infrastructure improvements”, then why has Kip “frittered” money away on consultants and frivolous things (like spending $20MM on tearing down and rebuilding a perfectly good, but totally un-used and un-necessary library or promoting “downtown” when only those with a financial interest in “downtown” want to go there) instead of doing the “major infrastructure improvements”? Could it be that repaying campaign contributors by letting them “feed at the public trough” is more important that making “major infrastructure improvements”?
Here’s a news flash: the country is broke, the state is broke. Anyone who plans a project banking on paying for it with federal or state grant dollars that will likely NEVER materialize is, likewise, “sipping the Kool-Aid”, and Jim Jones, had he not have already “gone on to his reward (?)”, would have been very proud of them.
Funny, but we’ve been paying a “sewer user” fee for how many years now? And, they haven’t got enough money yet to repair the sewers? Oh, that’s right, they spent it all on studies, and God knows what else.
Sounds like Kip promised someone a contract to build this thing. Maybe a campaign contributor? Anyone….., Anyone…..?
38 million for a parking garage? And I suppose that if I park in it i will have to pay to park there. Its kinda like the general public pays for it twice. You would think if tax money builds it then the tax payers would be allowed to park there free anytime. Never works that way though. The lowest floor parking spaces will be reserved and free for the City, State, and Federal, ”elite”. The rest of us will be way up high and charged to park. And as for the lights, do you think its an accident that when traveling down any street you catch every single light. The light you are sitting at turns green and just as you approach the next light it turns red every single time. I dont need anymore of the traffic light sychronization. Its the main reason we have some of the worst traffic in the whole country now. The only vote I will cast is to get Holden out of office. I know the editors at the Advocate will disagree with me. They neve met a tax they didnt love and have been sleeping with Holden since before he was first elected Mayor.
At least he’s got the guts to try to improve our city, but, as usual, the “naysayers” will have their way. No Mayor since Woody Dumas has really tried to improve the city because they knew it was a lost cause-just like the St. Helena Parish School District. As they say in Brooklyn– “You pays yur money and you makes yur cherse”!
The $38 million parking garage is for the over-sized Riverside Library project which has insufficient parking for the thousands of patrons which are supposed to materialize. Real cost of the Rivereside Mega-brary has been hidden to the public by calving off off its unfilled parking capital costs into another seemingly unrelated issue (this bond and tax increase). The Library Board, Board Director, Mayor, and some members of City Council think voters can be fooled by the maneuver.