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When Mayor Kip Holden talks about his $901 million bond issue, his urgency his palpable.

Standing before the Metro Council, he cites public projects identified 25 years ago by the Horizon Plan. He describes collapsed bridges and flooded streets, problems that can be solved by passing the first capital improvements package in 50 years.

His face glows as he talks about a thriving downtown, outlining his vision for what East Baton Rouge Parish is capable of becoming. There’s no doubt he has charisma and political capital. It doesn’t matter that some of the fears that he outlines aren’t addressed in the proposal. The mayor is in politician mode. He’s selling.

So Holden is back for Round Two. But the question is, does he have the public support?

At stake: The second incarnation of a bond issue that addresses infrastructure, public safety, drainage and economic development in one fell swoop.

With a $989 million package failing last November by 3,000 votes, Holden returns with revamped project costs, economic projections and a political strategy that leaves no room for a Plan B.

But parish voters traditionally are against taxes. A gloomier economy for some residents—combined with low voter turnout and dissent over Holden’s vision—could again spell defeat.

The solution? Sell, sell, sell. Holden and his administration are adapting the best of last year’s message along with this year’s improvements to invoke a sense of public responsibility and a wallet-opening attitude.

That sentiment could prove difficult to foster. Holden was forced to rescind a special taxing district that would have excluded anti-tax Central and Zachary, erasing an edge in passing the proposal.

Now with the Metro Council voting to place the proposal on the ballot in one package, the time has come for Holden to marshal young and black voters—who are traditionally pro-tax—in order to overcome opposition from the northern municipalities and unincorporated southeast East Baton Rouge.

The administration’s pitch is beginning to coalesce. The Alive project—a point of contention with many parish voters—will, according to the administration, provide jobs, spur private investment in downtown and reduce the time residents will pay on the bond from 30 years to less than 20.

But will voters buy what Holden is selling? The local economy is feeling the effects of the national downturn, and residents are watching their expenses as well as their 401[k].

Like a shopper on a budget, voters are weighing the long-overdue needs of infrastructure, public safety and drainage against the economic-development wants of Alive and the River Center expansion.

Is this the right investment at the wrong time? Voters will choose the answer at the polls on Nov. 14.

To tax or not to tax?

Conflict over the direction of East Baton Rouge Parish is nothing new, especially as residents continue to settle in its unincorporated areas and its smaller municipalities. Voters in Central and Zachary were heavily against the bond issue last year, and Baker voters passed it by a narrow margin.

After embarking in January on a listening tour in all 12 of the parish’s council districts, Holden heard citizens and political leaders in those three cities ask to be absolved in voting the next time he brought the package to voters. He complied, asking the Metro Council to create a special taxing district that eliminated all of the northern part of the parish.

Politically, the move made sense. By eliminating Baker, Central and Zachary, Holden would have made it much easier to pass the bond issue in the remaining parts of the parish while appearing to concede to the public’s wishes.

However good the arrangement might have looked on paper, the reality was that criticism erupted over excluding part of East Baton Rouge from voting on a parish-wide package. Although the Metro Council approved the measure in July by a 7-3 vote, Holden changed course after the Baker City Council passed a resolution calling for inclusion. A conversation with Zachary Mayor Henry Martinez—who last year said his city should be exempted from parish sales and property taxes because they don’t do enough—also undercut Holden’s argument they be excluded from voting.

“When you have a community that unanimously states, ‘We want to be included in the bond issue,’ that’s a major statement,” Holden says. “You can’t take that lightly.”

The action also pre-empted a similar motion by Metro Council member Joel Boé, who had vehemently protested against the special taxing district, and avoided a public debate at a heavily attended council meeting.

“It [the special taxing district] was pulled down because it made it harder to pass,” political consultant Roy Fletcher says. “The implications are that we still have one parish, and that this is going to be a hard sell.”

Dissolving the special taxing district could come back to haunt Holden at the polls. Baker and Zachary, who argued for inclusion in the vote, have since passed resolutions against the bond issue in its current form. The package includes more than $190 million in improvements for District 1, which covers the northern part of the parish—including all of Zachary and the northern parts of Baker and Central; more than $108 million in improvements for District 2, which includes the southern part of Baker and all of Scotlandville; and more than $22 million in improvements for District 4, which includes most of Central.

Central Mayor Shelton “Mac” Watts has been keeping quiet, despite the return of $33 million in draining projects for his city from last year’s bond issue. Watts opposes the package and does not believe it will pass in Central—but he will not publicly campaign against it.

“We’re doing a lot of work on economic development,” Watts says. “We are looking at developing a nice city center. If we go to 10 cents on the dollar in sales tax, that hurts us economically.”

Ironically, Holden is responsible for Central’s incorporation. As a state senator, he told residents who wanted to create an independent school district they would first have to become a municipality.

Media consultant George Kennedy says the northern municipalities’ mind-set of insularity from the rest of East Baton Rouge is debunked because each uses parish services. For example, Central relies on the parish’s Sheriff’s Department in lieu of its own police force. If the bond issue does not pass, the sheriff might have to cut back on some of that coverage area because of funding problems, Kennedy says. That directly impacts the quality of parish services to Central.

“Folks in Central are typically conservative and don’t like taxes. Who does?” Kennedy says. “But at what point do you sit down and say, ‘I have to pay for some services here in order to have a quality of life?’”

Dead or Alive?

For the Holden administration, improving the quality of life means facilitating downtown development. By bringing back the controversial Alive project and River Center expansion from last year, the mayor is committing himself into breathing some life along the Mississippi River.

But if you ask an East Baton Rouge Parish resident about Alive, you’ll likely receive one of three responses: Enthusiasm, disdain or a shrug. Mid City resident Tom Oswald falls into the first category.

“For Baton Rouge to become something more than a sleepy Southern backwater, we have to take steps to improve our quality of life and bring the urban experience into our community,” he says. “This bond issue is a step in that direction. We have to get away from this mentality that taxes are just for roads and drainage.”

Because Alive details were hard for voters to come by last year, it was left for the media to define the project. But the lack of information presented to voters shouldn’t be a complaint this time.

Progress Is… , the grassroots organization started with a handful of the young professionals Baton Rouge is supposedly preoccupied with keeping, brought New York-based Thinc Design founder Tom Hennes last month to explain Alive’s concept to a full house at the Manship Theatre in the Shaw Center for the Arts.

The 324,000-square-foot project combined free public space with an admission-accessed interactive museum and research center with a river theme. The project accounts for $225 million of the overall bond package and will be administered by the Audubon Nature Institute, which oversees such facilities as Audubon Park, Audubon Zoo, Audubon Aquarium of the Americas and the Audubon Insectarium in New Orleans.

Holden and his administration have identified Alive as the economic driver of the bond issue. Based on projections by LSU economics professor Jim Richardson, the project is expected to bring in 600,000 visitors—each paying—and $467 million in new spending for 2015 while creating 22,000 new jobs and $1.1 billion in new spending by 2031 from private investment in the riverfront. Holden says tax collections generated by Alive and subsequent downtown development will pay off the bond issue in 17 years instead of 30 years. Estimated all-day ticket prices range from $17 to $20.

But a majority of residents in Central and Zachary say they don’t see any benefits from downtown Baton Rouge and should not have to pay for its development. It’s a position also taken by voters in the southeastern part of the parish, who also came out heavily against last year’s package.

“We don’t use downtown Baton Rouge,” Audrey Ardoin says. “I live in Central. We shouldn’t have to pay for downtown Baton Rouge. It’s nothing to do with us.”

Walter Monsour, the city-parish’s former chief administrative officer who now is the president/CEO of the East Baton Rouge Redevelopment Authority, says residents don’t have to leave their neighborhoods in order to benefit from Alive and the private development it’s projected to bring—including more jobs that will help to retain young professionals and a growing economy.

“They’re suburbanites. They have all of the amenities around them where they live, and they don’t choose to get out of their immediate area. That’s fine,” he says. “Our position is that for a vibrant economy and a city that is going to flourish long term, there has to be a vibrant downtown. We would suggest their lives would be better for it.”

Whether or not voters accept that logic is unclear—although it’s no secret residents want more information about the project. The prevailing attitudes about Alive aren’t going to be easy to change no matter how much information is available, Fletcher says. Regardless of how hard the Holden administration—assisted by organizations like Progress Is…—push Alive, it might not make much of a difference to voters who don’t see the benefits associated with the project.

“Downtown has always had a significant number of people opposed to it for whatever reason,” Fletcher says. “Holden has made a good case that it’s a good economic driver. The problem is that there is about half or more people in the parish that have heard that argument before and don’t believe it.”

How the debate over Alive translates at the polls is difficult to gauge and depends on which side is more effective at getting out its vote. Kennedy says most voters won’t come to a decision until a couple of weeks before the vote, giving the Holden administration a chance to state its case.

“They are such good communicators, the way people feel about [Alive] now may be low, but a week from the election, it’s going to be different,” he says. “It looks like they’ve found a way to make it [capital improvements package] pay for itself. You can’t beat free.”

The form’s the thing

The discussion over the responsibility for downtown development spills over into how the bond issue is presented to voters. The Metro Council voted last week to send it to the ballot as one package—a move that likely make its passage more difficult.

That’s the reason council member Joel Boé introduced a motion to separate Alive from the rest of the package.

“I felt I would be remiss if I did not place public safety in the best possible position to pass,” he says. “In my opinion, and I think in the opinion of most people I represent, the best way for that to pass is for the Alive portion to be a separate item.”

Although a substitute motion placing the proposal on the ballot as presented won the day, it did so with rumbling from other council members that Holden’s position was the wrong one to take based on what they had been hearing from constituents—even though it did not impact their votes for the proposal.

Holden argued to send the bond issue to voters as an all-or-nothing package because the infrastructure, public safety, draining and economic development portions are linked. By separating the different pieces, the chances of Alive failing is much higher if voters have a choice.

If Alive failed while the infrastructure, public safety and drainage portions passed, the additional property and sales tax would take 30 years to pay off the bond issue.

By passing Alive, taxpayers would cut the time it takes to repay the bond by 12 or 13 years, Chief Administrative Officer Mike Futrell says, noting that Alive’s attendance estimates are based on similar projects in other U.S. cities, are very conservative and likely will be higher than what’s projected.

“Rather than say, ‘Here’s what we think,’ we started out with a low number,” he says. “We wanted to be honest, conservative and not over-promise, so we started with a bottom-tier figure. We think we’ll actually do much higher than that.

“It’s not like driving to the bank to take out a 30-year mortgage to dig a ditch and build a prison. Financially, [Alive] is a huge incentive for voters because it reduces the amount of time they are paying the tax. After the bond is paid off, the tax goes away.”

Monsour theorizes that advocates of the menu option don’t want the rest of the package to pass, either.

“I think that several people that advocate for a split in the proposition really have the intent of defeating the entire bond issue,” he says. “If you look at it, you quickly understand how the economic development piece of it, in essence, pays for at least two-thirds of the bond issue.”

It’s too early to tell whether or not the bond issue’s presentation will count against it at the polls. Fletcher says the all-inclusive approach causes more problems, but passing any tax one year after it has been defeated is difficult.

“In politics, when you have to make a case that is not believed by the people, you’d better have a lot of money to make that case, because they don’t believe it in the first place,” he says.

The package does, however, have a lot of support from the bedrock of the community. The Baton Rouge Area Chamber and Baton Rouge Area Foundation supported last year’s bond issue, as did the Downtown Development District and the founding members of Progress Is….

BRAC’s board of directors has not formally declared support for this package, but President/CEO Adam Knapp says Alive fits in with the best practices of other cities for economic development.

“From what we’ve seen to improve quality of life, public funding spurs investment,” he says. “We’ve seen the riverfront development portion of the proposal improved and refined. By tying it to LSU research and development, there is a much better connection to the community and the state. The research center means innovation and intellectual property coming out of it.”

With board support bolstered by the meticulous proposal that has been submitted and publicized, Kennedy says the tide of negative public opinion following Alive could dissipate as the terms of the bond issue become more widely known.

“They have so many things in this package that aren’t pork, are needed and pay for themselves,” Kennedy says. “Once voters see this, even the ones that are against it will soften. It will literally come down to whether or not voters trust Holden to tell the truth.”

Getting out the vote

Last year, the bond issue was just one item on a ballot that included the presidential election and attracted 72% of East Baton Rouge Parish voters.

The Nov. 14 election will not have that same luxury. It’s the same day as LSU’s homecoming football game against Louisiana Tech and Southern University’s neutral-site game against Alabama State in Mobile, Ala.—factors that point to a low voter turnout.

But Secretary of State Jay Dardenne says interest created by the capital improvements package could drive more people to the polls than expected. Regularly scheduled municipal elections such as this one tend to draw a higher turnout than most proposition elections, which see single-digit percentages in some parishes. A turnout between 15% and 20% is expected, with the possibility of more depending on how much money is spent to publicize the vote.

“There is a lot of interest in this tax,” Dardenne says. “It was defeated last year. There is going to be a lot of money spent promoting it this year, and I would assume that there would be some formal opposition. That means it’s going to be top of mind with voters.”

While last year’s election garnered a huge turnout that definitely won’t be repeated, almost 20,000 fewer voters cast their ballot on the bond issue than for president. This year, the package is the only item on the ballot.

“Who is going to go vote—people who want to see themselves taxed more, or people who don’t want themselves taxed more?” Dardenne says. “People who believe this is important for the future of the community, or people who believe they should be given a choice, or menu, of taxes?”

Those are the $901 million questions. Individuals between the ages of 55 and 64, who tend to be more conservative and are less likely to support new taxes, historically turn out in large numbers for every election. The same can’t be said for young and black voters, meaning Holden will have to work hard to get these typically pro-tax voters to the polls.

That’s where Progress Is… comes in. Founded by a core group of 10 young professionals after the failure of last year’s bond issue, Progress Is… has committed itself to backing Holden’s revised proposal by sponsoring voter education efforts. While the group takes exception to the label of “young professionals” by trying to include Baton Rouge residents of all ages, Holden says they might make a difference when it comes to generating support for the bond issue among their peers.

A recently concluded two-week radio advertising blitz sponsored by the Committee for the Future of East Baton Rouge, a political action group formed last year to support the bond issue, touted the positives of this year’s package, Progress Is… organizer Todd Teepell says.

“Our goals are to try to get as many people as possible aware of who we are and what we’re trying to do,” he says. “Then we want to get them involved on a greater level, even if that means only learning about the bond issue for themselves so they’ll be informed.”

Rannah Gray, the consultant overseeing the campaign, says this year’s message will focus on more communication with voters about the different parts of the bond issue, including Alive. That also includes reminders to get voters to the polls. A radio ad campaign has been launched and television spots will follow as election day draws closer.

“I think overall what you’ll see with the campaign is a lot of dialog and conversation in the community,” she says. “[This year] we don’t have the distractions of other races.”

Fletcher says black voters will go to the polls in support of the proposal if Holden sends the right economic message—jobs, jobs, jobs—and makes a strong effort to get out the vote. Whether or not Holden allies himself with former state senator Cleo Fields in that effort remains to be seen.

While Holden’s relationship with black voters is said to be one of distrust, perceived differences won’t matter when it comes to the actual vote.

“I would suggest that that issue pops up often against African-American politicians in mixed communities,” Fletcher says. “It amounts to backbiting. When the time comes to vote, I’m sure Kip can count on, if not 100%, at least 92% [of the black vote].”

The question, however, is how many of those black voters get to the polls, especially if Fields’ well-run election machine is not involved?

Early voters are another demographic wild card that is becoming a major dynamic in elections across the country. Registered voters can cast their ballot in advance of an election without an excuse at four locations in East Baton Rouge Parish. The convenience factor—combined with LSU fans choosing to tailgate and Southern fans choosing to drive more than two hours to Mobile—might boost absentee ballots.

“Efforts to get out the vote on the pro-tax side will be very cognizant of the fact people’s home game-day activities are fairly regimented and often don’t include going to vote,” Dardenne says.

The legacy question

Zachary resident Steve Maggio says Holden is concerned about one thing: his legacy. It’s a concern some parish voters have as the mayor continues to push Alive as an economic development engine and the bond issue as one comprehensive package. After all, it’s difficult to put a brass plaque on infrastructure or drainage projects.

A riverfront development with the potential to bring thousands of people and billions in revenue into the city, however, is a legacy by which many politicians would like to be remembered. Monsour says if Holden has any legacy, it’s that he’s always tried to do the right thing as mayor.

“Kip Holden is not concerned about a legacy,” he says. “He is extremely concerned about the future of East Baton Rouge Parish. You’ve never heard of a person running for re-election that puts a bond issue on the same ballot. I think that speaks directly to who he is.”

Holden’s vision seems clear, and as a second-term mayor, voters have decided on his credibility. Clearly Holden has a large amount of political capital, but it is enough to pass the first bond issue in East Baton Rouge Parish in 50 years come to fruition?

“If you’re going to have a bond issue passed, this is the way to do it,” says Kennedy, who frequently works with Gray. “These people are not thieves, and have demonstrated that they’re going to do what they say they’re going to do. I think with those common-sense things going for it, it’s going to pass.”

Voters who don’t have a problem with Holden could have a problem with government in general because of the economic downturn and the debate over health care. If public sentiment is against government fingers in the lives of voters, that atmosphere could be enough to shape the debate despite Holden’s reputation. Economist Loren Scott’s warnings of upcoming layoffs, especially in the petrochemical industry, might also cause some voters to want to be more conservative with their money.

“This time, if he loses, I think he’ll say, ‘I got the message. We’ll do this as a menu. We’re going to do this piece by piece, but we’re going to get it done,’” Fletcher says.

Hard sell or not, Holden is committed to seeing his vision for East Baton Rouge Parish through without recognizing the possibility of defeat a second time.

“I don’t have a fear factor,” he says. “You accept challenges and you move forward, because if you try to weigh the unknown factors, you become virtually paralyzed. Why should I complicate my life with a ‘what if’ when I feel very confident we’re going to pass this bond issue? We’re going to win.”

Click here to see how the $901 million capital improvements package breaks down by council district and project.

Click here to see where your money will be going if the proposal passes in November.

Click here for more information on the $225 million Alive attraction.