Mayor Cedric Glover Proposes New Plan to Fix Streets

Shreveport Mayor Cedric Glover is working on a new plan to fix Shreveport's bumpy streets.

The Mayor has presented a new plan to the City Council. Here's that news release:

The City Council today was presented with another proposal, this one requesting approval to issue up to $65 million in street improvement bonds to help tackle one of the city’s most aggravating quality-of-life issues.  Like previous proposals, the source of the funding to repay the debt would be a portion of the franchise fee received from AEP/SWEPCO that is dedicated to the Streets Special Revenue Fund.

The City Council has rejected three plans Mayor Glover has offered to provide more than $100 million to fund street repairs. In an effort to compromise, Mayor Glover laid outa $75 million plan for street improvements at the Oct. 14 council meeting. Councilmembers Jeff Everson, Rose McCulloch and Ron Webb cast votes supporting that compromise, but the other four councilmembers voted to table the discussion until after the review sessions for the 2015 budget are completed.

``The streets won’t fix themselves, there is no magic pot of money for streets,’’ Mayor Glover said following that disappointing vote.

The compromise that’s on the table for discussion tomorrow would allocate 40 percent of the funds toward repairing arterial streets; 30 percent for collector streets; and 30 percent for neighborhood streets.

The council meets at 3 p.m. tomorrow at Government Plaza.