The newly-passed ordinance limiting the increase is aimed at accounting for vacancies and giving property owners time to rework lease agreements and pass the costs to tenants, Councilmember Craton Cochran, the ordinance's sponsor, said Monday.
Before the vote, Mayor Tommy Chandler read a statement against the ordinance, giving his thoughts on the measure publicly for the first time. He said keeping the full amount was necessary for budgeting purposes.
"If this ordinance passes, apartment complex owners will not pay their share of the fees for five months, and they will pay a reduced fee after that," he said. "No one else in the city is getting that deal."
His statement kicked off some vigorous comments from the councilmembers.
Hammons spoke strongly in favor of the amendment, raising concerns that the deficit in the public works fund hadn't come up in prior years and alleging that apartment complex residents actually don't benefit equally from the services paid for by the money because some services aren't carried out on apartment properties.
Councilmembers Maggio and Cochran also spoke in favor before Council President Chris Smith raised rhetorical questions directly to Chandler.
"You have a few rent houses in Bossier City, Mayor Chandler," he said. "Should we bill you if your rent houses are vacant and you're not collecting income on them and you don't have a water account set up there? ... It's not fair."
"Even if this fails today, we're going to have a $124,000 deficit," he added later. "So the budget's not balanced. So to chastise us here in front of everybody because you don't like it, and say we're running a balanced budget is the most far fetched — I mean, we're living in gaga land."
Chandler then countered again that pausing the fees for apartment owners was unfair to those who will have to pay through February. He also noted that the council voted to make the increase law.
"In my opinion, this is politics at its worst. This is taking a opportunity to pit some citizens against other citizens, citizens against the city council," Smith retorted before acknowledging that he voted for the increase and lamenting that he didn't ask more questions about how the increase would be implemented.
"I'm sorry to the citizens that I did not ask the right questions at the time," he said. "I thought I did, but I'm man enough to say that the implementation was less than, less than ideal."
The new amendment was approved one day after the city held a workshop where the mayor's administration gave a presentation justifying the increased fees and where a public input session shed light on residents' perspectives.
At that session, Bossier City's Chief Administrative Officer Amanda Nottingham said the increase was aimed at balancing the city's public works budget and bringing the fee assessment in line with statute.
The fees feed into the city's Public Works and Sanitation Fund, which is an enterprise fund, meaning the city covers its expenses by taking in fees for services rather than just pulling from sales taxes, for example. The money goes to the city's public works department for services like animal control, herbicide and mosquito control, solid waste collection, and more.
That fund has run a deficit for four of the last five years, and the last two years have seen deficits over $1 million, Nottingham said. Even with this year's increase, the city is still anticipating a deficit in 2025. The fund's reserves are dropping, meaning the city may have to borrow money from its general fund to cover expenses.
"If we grab from the general fund, we tend to make that a habit, and then there's never an appetite to raise the fees to cover the costs," Nottingham said. "And to charge the fee, that's always the intention, is that it would cover the cost of the services provided."
"I would say, essentially, that the citizens who either own or they are renting single family units, I mean, they're subsidizing the services that are provided to all the residents throughout the city," she added. "And so we feel, the administration feels, that the most fair way to implement this fee is to do it regardless of the type of housing where someone resides."
The amendment passed Tuesday will reduce the city's revenues this year and thus cut into progress on closing the deficit. The city is anticipating a decrease in revenues of about $80,856 per month for the rest of 2025, Nottingham said, for a total of about $323,424.
However, the city's projected expenses for this year anticipate a higher pace of spending in the second half of the year, prompting Council President Chris Smith to suggest expenses may be lower than expected this year. On Tuesday, Finance Director Angela Williamson said there may be some unanticipated expenses that close in Q3 or Q4, and that the expenses they presented Monday don't include capital expenditures, so there may be a higher rate of spending to come.
Input from residents on Monday was a mixed bag. Roughly three dozen people attended the meeting, and most who spoke voiced concerns about the quality of the city's public works services, a core take-away for Smith.
"You know, we only have eight people that work in that department, grass cutting and ditches and all of that, and street sweeping," he told The Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate. "And it's just a lot of work. We could probably hire more, but we don't pay the greatest in the world either, and so I think that was the biggest take-away is, you know, people don't mind paying it if they're getting the service that they're being promised, and we're probably not delivering that."
One South Bossier resident, Christina Turnipseed, was supportive of the fee hike if necessary but urged the officials present to be cautious about how higher rates may impact lower-income people.
"It sounds like it has to be, it doesn't sound like there's a lot of room around, and thank you for explaining everything," she said of the increase. "But we do want to make sure everything's being done only because it has to be done, because $12 is a lot of money to some people."