Bossier City put forth a solid 2027 budget, despite a few dark clouds ahead, though perhaps one that is a bit too optimistic.

This week, the City Council held a budget information session, where Chief Administrative Officer Shane Cheatham presented it publicly. The plan concentrated on maintaining core services and continuing existing ones, with a 3.71 percent bump upward in general fund spending to nearly $86 million. As it is, that increase is driven almost entirely by a predicted rise in sales tax collections.

That might flash one sign of trouble. It forecasts that property tax revenues would actually suffer a tiny decline, meaning property resales would increase only at the margin at best, with little new, higher-valued property coming into service. In other words, this indicates economic stagnation with little upward movement in population.

Yet that shouldn’t cause undue concern because of the predicted sales tax bump – if in fact that happens. The most recent sales tax collection report has the city down 0.6 percent through August from last year, yet the forecast for this year is nearly a million bucks higher than last year’s. That makes a jump to the desired level less likely. It’s questionable that the nearby data centers that should break ground soon will add that much more to these collections, especially as one of the new fiscal prudence ordinances will divert some of those collections to a savings fund prompted by data center arrival.

Even more worrisome, projected spending increases mainly in general government and public safety put the budget in a deficit of nearly $2 million. That’s an amount easily covered by the existing fund balance, but it’s not a habit worth picking up.

Culpability behind these higher expenses comes from uncompensated state-mandated pay raises and from sharply escalating employee benefit costs and risk management insurance. The latter constitutes an own goal, courtesy of the former graybeard Council members who left office last year voluntarily or otherwise and who, just before their exit, muscled through a scheme of dubious legality to fund parking lots built for private citizens, paying for it with that kind of insurance.

But the erosion of the general fund budget seems minor compared to that of the city’s enterprise funds, specifically water and sewerage. So far this year, utility revenues are flat and expenses are up 12 percent, leading after debt service to income falling by half to just over $1 million. The rolling replacement of water meters might be leading to lower revenues than the previous estimated usage, and even a pair of increases in water rates over the past couple of years doesn’t seem to have helped, with debt service gnawing away at balances for now.

However, the sewerage system is much worse off. Rates weren’t increased recently, and for the 2027 budget the forecast is that expenditures would exceed revenues by about $5 million, or nearly 25 percent. Ideally, enterprise operations should be self-sustaining, but the city can step in and redirect money from other funding mechanisms to prop up sewerage. Given that at the end of 2025 the dedicated fund for sewerage operations had only about $6 million in reserve not already tied to debt service, and so far this year revenues are down 2 percent and expenses up 16 percent, a bailout may have to happen during next year unless the city increases these rates as well.

This budget does well with what it has, but the warning signs can’t help but attract attention. A lot of spilt milk from free spending on unneeded or low-return capital items over the past three decades continues to haunt the city, sucking revenues away from other priorities or tax relief that would promote growth and, with increased customers, alleviate pressure on enterprise funds. As a result, the current crop of councilors wasn’t dealt the best hand, but they’ll have to play it the best they can.