The next couple of weeks may make or break Bossier City’s transformation from big small town to an economic growth machine.

A lot of very consequential decisions are coming down the pike in short order. It looks to implement a key personnel move just as it faces a big strategic decision, all with the backdrop of erasing a mountain of debt and the possibility of nabbing a huge water and sewerage customer.

City Chief Administrative Officer Amanda Nottingham will leave her post at year’s end to become, in effect, the chief lobbyist for Southwestern Electric Power Company. She has been a steadying influence for Republican Mayor Tommy Chandler, who tends to avoid deep involvement in the nuts and bolts of administration, but her efforts have often been hamstrung by the City Council, which has frequently altered or outright rejected administration proposals.

Chandler’s choice for the position–and the Council’s decision to ratify it–will say much about the city’s future direction. He could follow Shreveport’s lead from several years ago by selecting outgoing Fire Chief Brad Zagone, who has 14 years of experience running one of the city’s largest departments. Although most of that tenure occurred under the previous free-spending Council and like-minded Mayor Lo Walker, Zagone would likely follow the Council’s lead if it continues to clamp down on spending.

However, Chandler has a preference for loyalists, which may push him in the direction of Carol Andersen, also retained from Walker as executive assistant who has risen through the ranks and now directs the Civic Center. This would signal greater passivity from the mayor’s office and no real policy change.

An outside candidate would be GOP Councilor Brian Hammons, but only if Chandler intends to leave office after this term. Hammons has experience running a successful large business, but the CAO position previously served as a launch pad for Walker. With a number of political activists seeking a more visionary chief executive focused on smaller, more efficient government, Hammons fits the profile of a potential challenger to Chandler–one the incumbent would likely prefer not to empower if he intends to seek a third term. Other potential picks from the Council would operate under the same dynamic.

Whoever ends up with the job has at least one big decision coming up. The Council, led by its presiding officer Republican Chris Smith, with Chandler tagging along, has launched a strategy for accelerating economic development. The Walker years featured vast sums of money wasted on low-to-negative return concrete and steel objects, but one of its few (mostly) wise expenditures was gussying up Barksdale Boulevard from Traffic Street east. Now, the Council wants to put this East Bank District–along with the casinos, the new Chasin’ Aces golf/entertainment complex, and the troubled Louisiana Boardwalk–into a special district designed to attract more development and buildout.

The strategy would involve tax incentives, but here the city must be careful. The two options are either 1) an additional sales tax levied within it with subsequent funding dedicated to improvements, or 2) a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes arrangement, where for a number of years any concern locating or expanding would pay some monies to the city–but at an amount lower than what the improvement would have brought in if full property taxes were paid.

Relatively nearby examples should raise cautionary flags about a sales tax hike. Shreveport attempted to do this with a district solely encompassing its Mall St. Vincent (minus two anchor stores with their properties owned by themselves, not the mall) with most of the proceeds going to help the mall. Instead, little has changed–if not further deteriorating the experience–by the mall in the decade-plus since.

West Monroe also has tried this strategy with three such districts: one narrowly confined to the area around a city-owned civic center, another spanning just a few blocks along the Ouachita River, and a third intended to provide a property-tax break but which has yet to attract any participants. While both economic development districts that rely on a one-cent sales tax increase are performing better than the Shreveport example, it remains unclear whether the developmental benefits outweigh the business lost to higher taxes. Moreover, the city’s contemplated district would be foisted on a far broader swath of economic activity involving businesses of vastly different sizes, some of which would feel the resulting commercial pain far more keenly than others.

A sounder strategy would use the PILOT mechanism, which assumes that additional sales tax collections from increased activity would more than compensate for the difference between the PILOT and forgone ad valorem revenues. If it’s going to happen, that’s the direction the city should pursue (and not a property tax increase, which would have the same deleterious impact as a higher sales tax).

Potentially in the background of all of this is a data center of Bossier’s own. Public legal filings suggest that property outside the city limits in the parish could house one of these, even as Shreveport is openly trying to land one with the next big decision coming later this week. It’s unknown whether recent actions by the Bossier Parish Police Jury have occurred on the basis of Bossier acting as a fallback position for the Shreveport center if government bodies don’t give it the green light, or whether this is an entirely different center under consideration.

The city’s involvement would be limited to water and sewer services, which could result in water sales in the range of 13 million gallons. Ratifying an ordinance at this week’s meeting to permit those sales–if it ultimately facilitates development of the center–would open a can of worms over whether the city can supply that volume, or whether it would have to rely on a prior decision that involves some tricky economics to ensure taxpayers don’t end up subsidizing the activity.

If not by year’s end, all of these uncertainties should have resolution in the first weeks of 2026. They will have a significant impact on the city’s policy direction for the foreseeable future and whether it takes additional steps to outgrow its spend-first, ask-questions-later past.