By: Prentiss Smith • Contributing Columnist

The seven members of the Shreveport City Council will be an important component as to whether these next four years will be successful for the city or not. Shreveport is at a crossroads right now, and the relationship between the new Republican mayor and the five Democrat city councilmen and women will be the key.

I am one who likes divided government, because it can force both sides to come to the table and compromise. Compromise is what moves the political ball forward. There is going to have to be a lot of give and take at Government Plaza between the new administration and this Democrat-controlled legislative body. The mayor is not going to be able to govern if he does not figure out a way to count to four votes, which is needed to move anything forward in the city.

The Democrat-led city council is not going to be effective if they come across as being obstructionists. They have to find common ground with the new mayor, because at the end of the day, it is the mayor who drives the agenda. He received more votes. He is accountable to the whole city, and he did get more votes than anyone in city government, and it is incumbent upon him to find common ground in order to get the people’s work done. The new mayor appears to be someone who wants to do that.

During the election season, everyone talked about unity and working together, especially the new mayor. He made working together one of the cornerstones of his campaign, and it would be disingenuous of him to deviate from that. He has the requisite experience and skills to do that. If he can manage to build a working coalition with the council to get some things done, he will certainly give citizens hope that this administration is different from previous administrations.

Are there going to be differences? Of course, there are, but can those differences be mitigated? Of course, they can, and they have to be for the benefit of the city. Shreveport is crying out for competent and experienced leadership that sees the big picture, and the big picture is moving Shreveport forward. The ability for the new mayor to communicate with the council will be paramount if Shreveport is going to change its narrative of being a lost city with no direction.

The fact is that no councilperson garnered more than 2,800 votes in his or her election. The mayor got over 20,000 votes, which is understandable because he was running citywide. The point is that the mayor is accountable to the whole city and not just one specific district. His votes came from all across the city, and he is the person who citizens are looking to for leadership.

Council members certainly have to represent their constituents, and people understand that, but those council members cannot be seen as obstructing the will of the people as put forward by the mayor, who is elected by a majority of the citizens. In other words, the council members are going to have to go beyond their partisan motivations and work with this mayor to move the city forward. 

That does not mean go along with everything this mayor puts forward, but it does mean that they cannot be seen as obstructionists. Some of them will have to move out of their ideological comfort zones and figure out a way to meet the mayor in the middle in order to make the government work. Compromise will be a well-used word over the next four years, and compromise is a good word for any government entity that has the welfare of the people as its prime motivation.

The city council has its work to do, but that work should not be to impede the new mayor and his agenda. The Democrat council members have to work with this mayor, and they have to put whatever petty political games they may want to engage in aside. Citizens are tired of the chaos at City Hall. They want results.

It is about Shreveport, and the citizens want this mayor to succeed, because if he succeeds, the city succeeds, and maybe, just maybe, this long era of malaise and bad leadership will come to an end. That is the hope for all of us who care about the city. The mayor needs the council to help him govern effectively, but the council needs the mayor to be competent enough and wise enough to understand the dynamics of the city he leads and act accordingly. And that’s the way I see it. smithpren@aol.com