Mayor Kip Holden’s $335 million bond proposal went from debatable to dead over the course of a mere two days this week.
After the Metro Council voted 8-4 against placing the bond proposal on the May 2 budget at its meeting on Wednesday, Holden announced he won’t push to have it placed on the Oct. 24 ballot—which will carry his name as a candidate for lieutenant governor.
With the bond issue now dead, Metro Councilmen John Delgado and Ryan Heck—who were among the eight members who ultimately rejected sending the measure to voters—are looking for ways to bring at least one project in Holden’s package to fruition without raising taxes. They want the Finance Department to bring them a report outlining tax-neutral options for building the mental health facility and have submitted request to have the item added to the Jan. 28 regular council meeting agenda. If their fellow council members approve the item later this month, Delgado says he hopes the Finance Department would be able to deliver the report by the council’s Feb. 11 meeting.
Also this week, local department heads of state agencies began grappling with the possibility of significant budget cuts as lawmakers start looking at ways to fill a projected $1.4 billion hole in next year’s state budget.
With the state’s higher education institutions facing upward of $350 million in cuts, university officials are putting pencil to paper to determine just how serious the damage could be—and what they’re coming up with isn’t pretty. On Thursday, State Senate President John Alario suggested as many as 16 campuses could be closed, including the Pennington Biomedical Research Center.
While that’s admittedly a worst-case scenario, LSU officials are trying to figure out what a reduction of 35% to 40% would do to their budgets. Bill Richardson, vice president for agriculture at the LSU AgCenter and dean of LSU’s College of Agriculture, says that while the college may be able to absorb some of the cuts by raising tuition, the LSU AgCenter would be “decimated.” —Steve Sanoski
