By Ian Robinson | The Center Square
(The Center Square) – Shreveport Councilman Grayson Boucher is reflecting on what he got done, what he couldn’t finish and what he hopes comes next for the city.
Boucher, first elected in 2018, is nearing the end of his second term representing District D on the Shreveport City Council. He is term-limited, meaning he cannot seek a third consecutive term this year.
He said the council’s biggest accomplishments included passing bond measures to pay for major city improvements and starting construction on a new police station.
“We’ve been able to get the police officers out of horrible conditions at the old police station,” Boucher said. “We’ve been able to construct three police substations that are brand new. We’ve replaced the majority of the police cars. If you look, you see very few police cars on the streets anymore. All of the black ones that you see are new police cars.”
Boucher said the city had gone more than a decade without buying a new fire truck but now nearly all its frontline trucks are less than two years old.
Boucher said what concerns him now are the things that the council has not accomplished such as getting the police and firefighter pay closer to the regional average and the city’s water system.
“The next council really needs to work to get police and fire a more substantial pay raise that’s been proposed by the mayor,” Boucher said. “Our water system, we’ve got the consent decree hanging over our head. That’s something that we really need to be putting at the top of the list.”
He said no one talks about the unfunded pension liability. He said the city has a tremendous amount of liability that’s owed to the employees that are going to retire in the city.
“Our unfunded pension liability is out [of] the roof,” Boucher said. “I don’t know what the latest number is but it’s in the multi-million dollars. That, along with debt from the consent decree, really keeps me up at night.”
Boucher said he hopes for the next four years to include better pay for police officers and firefighters as well as a resolution for the city’s longstanding consent decree. He said the city should negotiate with the federal government to address the requirements without risking bankruptcy.
“We’ve already spent half a billion dollars on it and we’re looking at another half a billion dollars,” he said. “That’s a lot of money and the only way to sustain that is water rates and I don’t know, the CAO has been on record saying and so has the mayor, that water rates are going to have to go up. I just don’t know if our citizens, with a large majority of them living under the poverty line, are going to be able to afford an increased water rate.”
Boucher will be replaced by Tim Euler, who was not challenged when qualifying for the District D seat in August.