One of the things which is blisteringly obvious, if you live in Baton Rouge, is how utterly screwed up the city-parish of East Baton Rouge has allowed its finances to become. We blow so much money on frivolous things that were sold to people as necessities to make this place the “next great American city” that the meat-and-potatoes items like cops and infrastructure get utterly ignored.

Great cities do those things really, really well. Why? Because if your city is safe and it actually works from the standpoint of things like roads, drainage, electricity and so on, you attract commerce. And when you do that, there are job openings and people will come to your city to fill them. And as those people come, and stay, some of them start their own businesses, and hire people, and so on until you find yourself a growing and prosperous place.

But we don’t prioritize things like cops and infrastructure, and while we do spend a pretty good amount on education around here it would be inaccurate to say we spend that money wisely. As a result, Baton Rouge is a place where the basics of governance aren’t all that well-handled.

This problem has gotten worse throughout the 21st century, and as a result you have some very weird dynamics that Sid Edwards, the first Republican mayor of the place in two decades, is now trying to address.

Specifically, Edwards is trying to move some money out of places where it isn’t needed to places where it is. He’s calling this the ThriveEBR plan.

The voters have to sign off on this, and we’ll get a chance to do that in November when it’s on the ballot. ThriveEBR is about adjusting the property tax millages dedicated to three overfunded areas and setting the surplus free in the general fund.

Specifically, the overfunded areas are the East Baton Rouge Parish Library System, Mosquito Abatement and Rodent Control, and the Council on Aging. The people running those agencies are all publicly backing Edwards’ plan (he didn’t give them much of a choice, but at least they’ve agreed to the compromises ThriveEBR represents).

The elements are:

None of this reflects any new taxes. It’s all a renewal of the existing property tax regime, just repurposing some of the money to insure the city-parish government stays funded in the wake of the St. George incorporation.

And Edwards’ team is doing something which hasn’t been done in 20 years, which is to attempt to bring all these elements together into a coherent strategy for governing East Baton Rouge Parish. Prior to now, you’ve had a situation where the politicians periodically decided they wanted some shiny new toys to play with, like a big bus system or more parks or FOURTEEN public library branches in a parish of less than a half-million people, and they’d run to the public demanding higher taxes that would go toward these dedicated pots of money.

And they’d go about it by rounding up some influencers and taking them on junkets to more successful, prosperous and larger cities and then engaging in some cargo-cult economic narratives. Phoenix has it going on more than Baton Rouge does? It can’t be because that part of Arizona is a mecca for rich retirees or a major center for tech or banking – no, it’s because Phoenix has an efficient bus system, and so we need to raise taxes to have empty buses in Baton Rouge.

Edwards isn’t doing that. He’s not lowering taxes, which is something we’ll eventually want to do in Baton Rouge but can’t because of the fiscal shape the city-parish is in, but unlike his two immediate predecessors he isn’t raising them.

And that deserves some support.

We’re backing the ThriveEBR plan. Hopefully our readers in East Baton Rouge will join us.