Take a look at what Shreveport elected officials stump for in increased spending and you can tell it’s an election year.

Last week, Republican Mayor Tom Arceneaux announced, because of presumed higher sales tax collections from a data center siting in the city, that he would put pay raises and other potential bonuses for public employees into the budget and start them a month before the next fiscal year (after the general election but before the runoff). He thought the cost for police of around a 5 percent bump plus things like recruitment bonuses and incentives for other achievements that could push it toward 8 percent, plus a 6 percent firefighter raise, would end up in the neighborhood of $7 million annually.

In essence, Arceneaux basically declares that the data center – apparently more its construction than operation, as he indicated he saw this upward pop lasting only four or five years, or about the time a second term of his would end – will add 4 percent more sales tax revenues for a sustained period. Yet that asks for some optimistic math.

Keep in mind that for a few years the city’s general fund, from where the extra dough will come, basically has operated at a deficit, drawing money from other funds and drawing down its reserves to cover costs exceeding revenues. This year’s budget was predicated on a transfer and drawdown worth about $6 million, and Arceneaux has pledged to keep the reserve at 8 percent of spending, which because of additional spending, such as that on police compensation, may mean having to add to it for 2027.

Thus, that seems like an optimistic rendering. Although the center activities have just started, sales tax collections have risen just 1.5 percent year-over-year through the first half of the year, or about $1.5 million. But Arceneaux faces reelection in 50 days and there’s nothing like giving a voting bloc a good reason to vote for you, plus encouraging the rest of the electorate to consider how crime rates have come down in Shreveport and emphasizing his support for the data center bounty, which raises far fewer residential objections in an urban environment than in a rural one.

This tack can prove especially helpful to prevent the siphoning of votes to a Republican challenger, Caddo Parish Commissioner John-Paul Young. Like a terrier nipping at his master’s heels for ignoring him, Young symbolically stakes his campaign on improved public safety and also has taken a lead role in trying to slow down, if not stop, data center deployment in the parish. Pumping more money into public safety and saying data center activity permits it aces Young’s agenda completely.

But then there’s the City Council to complicate matters, with most of its members running for reelection and its five Democrats in the majority preferring to have one of their own party installed as mayor. Last month, sanitation truck drivers got a $2.20 pay hike as a shortage had built up, but now the Council Democrats want to double that or more, putting additional strain on an enterprise budget that has struggled to stay out of the red.

And there’s nothing like getting an assist from a former Democrat mayor to pump up their chances. Now head of the Downtown Development Authority, Cedric Glover has worked a deal with the city to hire private security to prowl around Shreveport’s downtown, in exchange for office space in the ghost town Red River District with which the city is saddled. That could be approved as early as next month.

While the security guards won’t be much more than glorified hall monitors, unable to arrest but able to tattle on alleged miscreants to the police, it conveys the impression of greater security downtown triggered by elected officials. That cost will considerably exceed whatever savings would come from free digs, but the DDA, because of its contracts with the city for parking and street beautification and the property tax it collects from downtown owners, runs a six-figure surplus with reserves over $2 million, so it can afford to keep its reserves from spiraling upwards, which could make it look like it taxes too much.

The most interesting thing to watch as the election draws closer while simultaneously next year’s budget comes front and center will be whether more spending promises appear from elected officials in a city that recently has faced tough budget sledding.

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