The best reason for Bossier Citians to vote down all three charter amendments on March 29 is not so much what they do but what they don’t do.

Two of the three would relax term limits, allowing city councilors and the mayor to serve up to three consecutive terms while still permitting them to return to office after sitting out one term. These amendments were crafted by a Charter Review Commission whose final members were appointed by councilors hostile to strict term limits—and their own appointees. In isolation, these changes might seem reasonable, but they don’t exist in isolation.

That’s because on May 3, another, more stringent, term limits amendment hits the ballot. This measure, three terms lifetime and retroactive, was brought forth through a citizen-led petition and is the superior option if the goal is to prevent citizen-politicians from being captured by government.

That seems overwhelmingly destined to pass. With the disqualification of a District 3 council candidate, every city election will have been resolved as a result of the March 29 ballot, and unless something unusual happens in the next month, nothing but this one amendment will appear for Bossier City voters at the polls on May 3. As a result, thousands of citizens—who fought twice to put this measure up for a vote—will show up in force, while fewer general voters comprised of only lukewarm supporters or opponents will do the same–because no partisan contests will stir them up. This disproportionate turnout will favor heavily passage.

The small group of political insiders who oppose term limits—those who personally benefit from the same people staying in power—will try to obviate this advantage by arguing that a term limits proposal was just put into the charter if the two items on March 29 pass. Thus, to remove this objection, those items must fail, which would thereby argue against their passage. Yet even if they succeed, the dynamics of the May 3 vote suggest the citizen measure will pass regardless.

By far, the most critical amendment to defeat in March is the omnibus amendment, which changes dozens of charter items. There are a number of reasons to vote against it, beginning with its foundation being replete with legal infirmities that likely would void it if challenged in court. For that reason alone, it’s a waste of time and money to send the city through that process.

Moreover, the small coterie of hardcore term limits opponents in and interacting with city government may hope–even as they publicly disclaim this–that if first the changes pass then the strict limits pass five weeks later that they could argue successfully in court that what really happened  was a “new” charter went into effect and that the citizens’ proposal was to amend the “old” one, so the latter would be moot. It’s a long shot strategy but it becomes completely unavailable if strict limits supporters prevent the changes by enough voting down the set.

Finally, the omnibus content experiences little beyond cosmetic restyling. A good chunk of it is rephrasing, and another significant portion changes things imperceptibly, such as with the City Council’s power to investigate. Almost none of the changes rises beyond this, and, except for two, have little substantive impact. The extremely minimal impact alterations include creating separate at-large Council seats that would elect only one councilor per position, getting rid of an ignored appeal board for building code appeals, giving the mayor a freer hand in appointing to the Personnel Board that reviews disputed personnel actions in the city civil service outside of public safety, creating an Animal Services division within the Police Department, and clarifying muddy language for amending the Charter.

Not putting these into effect will have next to no impact on how the city runs, and nobody will miss not having these go into effect. The only two that would alter that assessment is one that murkily guarantees regular pay raises for all employees outside of public safety (who already have a mechanism that provides for that) and another set strewn among several sections dealing with discrete city departments that allows for contracting of that particular function.

Both are mistakes. The salary hike language is so vague that it either forces the city to give raises regardless of budgetary conditions or it codifies in the Charter current city practice of deciding at some point it has enough dough to do that; one interpretation is counterproductive to good city management and the other is useless in a city governing document.

The contracting language is half-baked and more likely to drive up costs than reduce them. The piecemeal approach encourages that outcome, where the best strategy is to do what Central does, which is to contract out everything to one vendor except policing (done by the city) and fire protection (performed by a special district) and parish-level functions, such as libraries and parks. Central solicits requests for qualifications and then hires a firm to run most everything (it currently uses one of several who do this all over the country). The procedure of a request for qualification or proposal to encourage the best offer, rather than awarding sweetheart deals to political-connected firms, is entirely absent from the omnibus amendment.

All of these shortcomings absolutely disqualify a vote for the change amendment. Worse, it ignores more consequential reforms—such as ethics improvements, procurement policies, and stronger budgeting measures—that could genuinely improve Bossier City governance, including better budgeting and fiscal policies. Just as the two term limits proposals should be rejected because something better is on the way, the omnibus proposed changes should be trashed in favor of reconstituting a new review commission in a couple of years that actually produces meaningful reform.