The Louisiana Tech - Indy Bowl fiasco

Everyone is talking about the Louisiana Tech – Independence Bowl fiasco. Here is a video with ESPN’s take on it. For a good, detailed account go over to Tim Fletcher’s blog and read this blog post.

Benton Christmas on the Square next Saturday

Benton Christmas on the Square is next Saturday (December 8th). Bring the family up for a good time; the parade rolls at 3PM.

Christmas on the Square Website 

Fundraiser for BCPD Officer

The Bossier Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 39 and Bossier City Police Local 645 will host a lunch fundraiser Friday, Sept. 21 beginning at 11 a.m. in front of the Bossier City Police Department, 620 Benton Road, to benefit Bossier City Police Officer Chris Davis who has spent these past several weeks battling the West Nile virus.
The money raised Friday will help offset out of pocket medical expenses for Officer Davis.
Lunches of grilled hamburgers, hot dogs, sausage, chips and drinks will be available for purchase to the public as well as to all city employees including police and fire personnel for a donation in the amount of their choice

BCPD promotes two

Bossier City Police Chief Shane McWilliams promoted two officers to Sergeant.
Scott Gray and Bernard Grant are both assigned to patrol.
Sincere congratulations to both.

Pilot Pride Sunday, March 18th

LSUS Students will be conducting a rally on Sunday to show their support for LSUS in response to the proposal to merge LSUS and Louisiana Tech. The rally will be held at LSUS University Center Mall at 2PM.

Among the speakers will be Ceceilia Vergo, candidate for SGA President, Matt Kay, Candidate for Vice-President and LSUS student Marion Fabre.

Caddo DA packing heavy heat

I’ve been trying to ignore this all day, but there is no way I can leave it alone.
Caddo Parish Sheriff Steve Prator is upset that the State Division of Administration has sent six M-16 rifles to the office of DA Charles Rex Scott.

Prator maintains that the sheriff has to give written pernission permission for any seller to deliver such a weapon to an authorized person in the parish.
Further, Prator maintains that the sheriff is sworn to maintain the peace, not the DA.
He has further asked the DA not to use them and to either return them or donate them to a law enforcement agency. Prator said that the DA has been told that his investigators, who are commissioned officers, are only to carry pistols.
The weapons were acquired through the Louisiana Federal Property Assistance Agency, which is a program supervised by the Division of Administration to give out all sorts of federal goodies to local governments.
In a side note, the DA investigator who notified the sheriff of the weapons was fired by Scott.
But not for telling the sheriff about the weapons.
Thankfully, Schuyler Marvin said his office has no such weapons, and that when he took office he collected a bunch of guns from employees.
DA investigators are commissioned and do carry sidearms.
I just think the whole episode is curious, and it will be interesting to watch and see what develops.
Sidenote to the Times: M-16’s are not machine guns.
Here is the Times article about this.

Time to take the flag down

Today the Caddo Parish Commission voted 11-1 to remove the Confederate flag from the front of the courthouse.
I think that it is time to fold the flag and put it up.
I have heard the arguments both pro and con. On the pro side is the argument that it is part of our heritage. Generally speaking that might be true, but the flag at the courthouse doesn’t represent that heritage. It is true that the last Confederate flag to come down was at that location, and that should be properly noted. The flag at the courthouse isn't there to commemorate that event.
I love history, and I love the history of our area. I love the history of my family and try to pass it down to the younger people in the family.
Three of my four great-grandfathers fought in the Confederate army.
But that flag doesn’t represent them, the history of the location or even of the era. That flag was put up in my lifetime, and it was put up in defiance of an ever growing civil rights movement.
There were things that had to change, and needed to change. The flag at the courthouse was put up in opposition to that change. Simply put, the change came and it is time to take it down.

Ching Ching

It seems that everyone was taken by surprise with the announcement that Paradise Casino LLC wants to move a low performing riverboat Casino from Lake Charles to Bossier City.
The plan is for the city to sell land just north of Bass Pro Shops to Paradise Casino for the riverboat casino and a 400 room resort hotel.
This will have to be approved by the Gaming Control Board and by the voters of Bossier Parish in the November election. If those approvals are forthcoming, work would start on the $170 million project immediately and completion would be in mid-2013.
Bossier City Council President David Jones said ‘I believe the citizens of Bossier and of Bossier Parish actually understand the importance of this market’. The new casino is expected to employ around 1200 people.
According to Forbes Magazine, the five riverboats and the Louisiana Downs track casino in the Shreveport-Bossier City market won $61.7 million in April (of 2011), compared with $64 million in April 2010. That market also caters to Texas residents who have had more of their attention drawn to Indian nation casinos in Oklahoma.
Overall the casino market in Louisiana has begun to rebound from the recession.
Will another casino push that revenue up, or will it pull its share from the existing casinos?
That’s the gamble.

Part of it went on gambling, and part of it went on women. The rest I spent foolishly.
 - George Raft

This is a 'Must Read' for everyone in Louisiana

Particularly in Bossier, because the story revolves around Bossier Parish and Olde Oaks and some local members of the Municipal Police Employees’ Retirement System (MPERS).
It's costing you money - a lot of money.
The story is from Bloomberg News and is shocking.  Everyone knows of the problems with the golf courses, but this is an account from the beginning to the present time, and explains the bad judgment and criminal activity that have contributed to a very serious problem.
Municipal contributions to MPERS have skyrocketed in a time of severe budget cuts. Bossier City and other municipalities now pay 25% of police payrolls into the the system, as opposed to 11% last year. According to the article, it is expected to rise to 28% in the new fiscal year beginning July 1st.

• “It was like a gigantic playhouse,” says Nick Congemi, 68, chief of the Greater New Orleans Expressway Police in Metairie, who for years criticized the system’s leadership and investments. “These people have taken the futures away of good, decent law-enforcement officers who thought they could depend on this for the rest of their lives.”

Read the entire story

Dempsey promoted to second-in-command at Bossier Sheriff's office

Sheriff Deen congratulates Undersheriff Dempsey

Bossier Sheriff Larry Deen on Wednesday promoted Chief Doyle Dempsey to the rank of Undersheriff.
With the promotion, Dempsey, 44, assumes the position of being the Bossier Sheriff Department’s second-in-command. The new Undersheriff was hired by Deen in March of 2004, and since that time he has steadily moved up from deputy to sergeant to lieutenant to captain to major to lieutenant colonel to chief.
“Doyle Dempsey has excelled in everything we have asked him to do,” said Deen. “I have total confidence in his ability to handle the job of Undersheriff.”
The Bossier Sheriff’s Department becomes the first agency in Louisiana to include the position of Undersheriff. The rank was created by Deen, who says Dempsey will have complete authority to run the Bossier Sheriff’s Department when Deen is away on sheriff’s department business.
“I am deeply humbled by Sheriff Deen’s decision to promote me to the rank of Undersheriff,” said Dempsey. “I am excited about what lies ahead as we seek to continue to provide around-the-clock safety for the wonderful citizens who live, work and worship in Bossier Parish.”
“Undersheriff Dempsey is a man of great integrity,” said Deen. “I have no doubt he will represent the Bossier Sheriff’s Department with honor and distinction.”
The promotion is effective immediately for Dempsey, who lives in Bossier City with his wife, Michelle, and his two daughters, Caitlin and Regan.

Local political bodies receiving attention from Tea Party activists

Local Shreveport-Bossier Tea Party member Evodna Springer questions the Bossier City Council on the process that led up to the increase in sewage rates.  Council members tell Mrs. Springer that lead-up meeting, 'workshop' sessions were advertised in the Press-Tribune as required by law.  Minutes, however, were not kept.  Asked directly by Ms. Springer about minutes, City Attorney Jimmy Hall says that the law does require that minutes be kept, but none were.  Ms. Springer suggested that the council do more in the future to advertise any public meeting addressing the issues.
The exchanges are very cordial, and there is no accusation of wrongdoing involved, just a citizen attempting to keep the public body on its toes.  I will note that Ms. Springer is active in the Republican Women of Bossier and was a delegate to the 2008 Republican National Convention.
So what is the point?  That the city council is getting oversight from citizens as never before, and that's a good thing.  We will keep you updated on Ms. Springer's efforts to obtain other public records.


Louisiana's Open Meetings law

Bossier Sheriff needs to re-think his attitude toward his constituents

By law, Sheriff Larry Deen had to hold a hearing on his announced increase in property taxes. Rather than providing a decent space and amount of time for the hearing, the sheriff crammed the people who attended into an office and then put an arbitrary time limit on the meeting.
The sheriff apparently had no interest in hearing the citizens and showed total disdain for them when he told the people at the meeting that ‘state law’ required that he could only give 15 minutes to public comments.
Either the sheriff doesn’t know the law, which is a scary prospect, or he was being disingenuous with his constituents.
Or perhaps I’m wrong, perhaps state law does say that. If someone with the sheriff’s office will send me a copy of the law, I will be glad to retract that and publish an apology to the sheriff.
In the meantime, we will address the sheriff’s bad performance as we see it.
Citizens have a right to speak out. That’s what a ‘hearing’ is for, hence the name. According to Drew Pierson in The Times, the sheriff's budget has more than doubled in the past six years, going from $15.6 million in 2004 to $35.5 million in 2009. That’s a hefty increase. The budget of the entire parish is $45 million. If the sheriff needs another million or so, he needs to get specific as to where a potential shortfall lies and why. I don’t understand why, if it is a legitimate need, the sheriff didn’t open up and explain it to the people.
I also don’t understand why the sheriff didn’t use a larger space, such as the police jury room, to hold the meeting. This ‘them and us’ attitude doesn’t serve the sheriff well at all, and creates division where there really wasn’t any. The group that did gather was not a bunch of malcontents, but citizens who are genuinely concerned.
Matt Sciba of the Shreveport-Bossier Tea Party said it best. “"The integrity of the sheriff's department is not hinged on this tax. If the millage is not raised, that professionalism will not disappear."
Overall, I believe the sheriff has done a good job. That makes it harder to understand his actions. He would serve himself well to listen to the citizens of Bossier Parish – all of them, not just the ones who tell him what he wants to hear. They are not his enemies.

Bigfoot, Shreveport-Bossier Tea Party and The Huffington Post

Shreveport-Bossier Tea Party organizer Rob Gaudet received some attention from The Huffington Post this week in an article by Jason Linkins. Mr. Linkins seems to be upset that Mr. Gaudet apparently has a hobby – Sasquatch, or, in our part of the world, Bigfoot. He also is ‘outing’ Mr. Gaudet for being opposed to Cap and Trade legislation.
Linkins says: But this is where it gets more interesting. According to his registered address, he lists his business as "Discover Bigfoot." It seems that Mr. Gaudet is also an active member of a community of people searching for the whereabouts of Bigfoot (aka, the Sasquatch). Yes folks. THAT Bigfoot.
Okay, aha! He is interested in Bigfoot, so he’s a nut. He opposes Cap and Trade so that makes anyone who opposes Cap and Trade a nut. AND – he organized the Shreveport-Bossier Tea Party, so that make the Tea Party people nuts.
So Bigfoot is a hobby of his? So what. I went to his YouTube channel and found it entertaining.
Big woop. I had my concerns about the local Tea Party movement and expressed them here, along with my endorsement of what they are doing. My concern was that the local movement not turn into a cheering squad for one party over the other, that it truly remain non-partisan, and that it not turn into a forum for local politicians to gain votes. Gaudet has done a great job of keeping it party-neutral and has a policy of not inviting elected officials to speak. A lot of local Tea Party organizations have marginalized themselves by having politicians speak at their events. Gaudet has not made this mistake, and that is to his credit.
True, at the Shreveport-Bossier Tea Party website you can find some blogs containing some pretty extreme views. Again, so what? It is an open forum and members are free to post their views and opinions, and yes, even write blogs. I expressed my thoughts on the forum, as others have. The important point is that the direction of the local Tea Party events has been, so far, exemplary.
You will continue to find a link to Shreveport-Bossier Tea Party in my sidebar.
Sorry Mr. Linkins, to use a great southern expression, that dog don’t hunt.

Shreveport Bossier Tea Party online

If you haven't done it yet, check out the Shreveport Bossier Tea Party online. They have a great website, well organized. I am all for organized protest - vigorous protest. Our founding fathers were the ultimate protestors.

I am particularly impressed that Rob Gaudet is making the effort to keep it non-partisan. Although I personally believe both parties are evil, Republicans naturally gravitate to the site, but there are a lot of Democrats out there who are unhappy and this site is trying to reach them.

Too often during the initial movement it seemed like a cheering squad for the Republican Party. If they can succeed in keeping it neutral, it will have a great effect.

Go sign up today - it's free!

You can also find the link on our right sidebar.

Shreveport Bossier Tea Party

Will Shreveport be Gannett's next hub?

From Alexandria blog CenLamar:

Gannett Blog: Could Shreveport Be Louisiana’s Regional Hub?

Benton Christmas Festival & Parade

To see the pictures in a larger format, go to the My Bossier Forum.

A well decorated Benton PD car kicks off the parade.










The Benton High School Tiger Band










Benton High AF ROTC










Bossier Clerk of Court Cindy Johnston waves to the crowd.










Alvin Cox, wife Donna and a trainload of grandchildren.










Stephanie Johnston enjoys the ride

We all know this guy!