Election advice for Caddo citizens: We must help
A call to remember the difficulties of public service before blasting
The column reflects the opinions of its author, Tom Arceneaux.
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The candidates for Shreveport mayor and City Council and Caddo Parish School Board have qualified.
Let us first be grateful that good people have offered themselves for public service. Running for office requires stamina, dedication and courage. The current climate of Twitter and Facebook, plus email and texting, places huge strains on every office holder’s and candidate’s psyche and temperament.
It is easy to sit on the sidelines, critiquing without facts or a total perspective, or awareness of the push and pull of competing factors and factions, and make rude and vulgar comments in attacks on candidates or people in office. Just stop!
In my nearly 40 years of political involvement, almost exclusively at the local level, I’ve met hundreds of candidates and office holders from all over the country. Almost without exception, they wanted to serve because they wanted to make a difference in their communities. They were honest and fervent, hoping to do the right thing, to make the right decisions for the right reasons. We should remember that when we sit at our Facebook and Twitter keyboards.
More:Here's who has qualified for Bossier, Caddo election 2018
Local government is intimate. The city carries away your waste and picks up your trash. The school system educates your and other people’s children and disciplines them, or tries to discipline them. It does not get more personal than that in government.
On the whole, we ask local government to do more than we give local government the funds to finance the long list. That does not mean that we should just tax and spend. It means hard choices. One person’s frivolous spending is another person’s most important priority.
And local governments cannot just borrow to meet demands. They must balance their budgets. Every year.
All that said, what are the issues that the community faces that likely will come up, or that should come up, in the fall campaign? I’d like to focus on three.
Crime
When residents hear gunshots in their neighborhoods and see news reports of violent crime, statistics do not comfort them. However, no mayor, no police chief and no city council has direct or immediate control over the level of crime. The origins of crime is in homes and neighborhoods. It will be interesting to see proposals for how to address the underlying causes as well as enforcement.
Blight
There is a correlation between blight in a neighborhood and crime in a neighborhood. That is why enforcement of property standards and condition-of-premises regulations are important. Little things like parking in front yards, accumulating trash and failing to maintain yards, and other symptoms of blight affect how people feel about their neighborhood and how they care for it. Enforcement of permit and zoning laws are also critical to the look and attractiveness of a neighborhood.
Low-performing schools
The greatest obstacle to improvement of low performing schools is the economic and social climate of the homes of the children. Even with great teachers, when children do not have enough to eat, when they alternate attendance with siblings based on how many uniforms or shoes are available to wear, when they move from school to school because the family has to move from house to house, when they have not slept well because of family strife or economic struggle, they are not prepared to learn.
To a great extent, the problem of low-performing schools is not an education problem. It is a social problem that affects everyone in Shreveport and the region.
Do school board candidates acknowledge those facts? Are they willing to speak frankly, but kindly and tactfully, about addressing those issues and allocating additional resources to children with additional needs?
Issues are related
A common factor relates all these issues. To the extent that a candidate proposes additional resources be applied to address a particular need, where will the money come from? Will it come from increased taxes or fees? Reduction of operating reserves? Reduction of other services, and which ones?
Finally, none of these issues can be resolved by government alone, and perhaps government has little power successfully to address some of them at all. We each have a responsibility to do what we can to make our community better.
While we’re demanding performance by candidates, let us ourselves be accountable for our own performance in contributing to solutions rather than problems. Let us not leave it to the government alone.
Tom Arceneaux has been involved in master planning for Shreveport as well as many civic organizations. He is a lawyer and vice president of practice development at Blanchard, Walker, O’Quin & Roberts. Follow him on Twitter at @TomArceneaux.
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