Adrian Perkins

Public safety was one of three major planks in Adrian Perkins mayoral campaign platform. He stressed the need for more community-oriented policing that focuses on positive, relationship building non-law enforcement interactions between police and citizens. Mayor Perkins first year in office, Part 1 crime fell 8 percent, reaching its lowest point since 1975.[8] When compared to 1989, the highest point for Part 1 crimes on record in Shreveport, 2019 was a 60 percent decrease. Homicides saw the sharpest decline, down 29 percent from 2018.

Perkins and Police Chief Ben Raymond implemented a Supplemental Patrol Program, requiring officers not assigned to the Uniformed Services Division to ride supplemental patrol shifts periodically. This initiative contributed to the 400 added patrol shifts and 3,200 additional patrol hours logged in 2019.

Mayor Perkins and Chief Technology Officer Keith Hanson were also able to roll savings from cuts to city phone contracts into FirstNet onsite internet for police officers and fire fighters.[9]

Mayor Perkins has focused on expanding Shreveport's healthcare corridor.[10] He has also worked to expand Shreveport's budding aviation maintenance industry[11] and the local tech sector.[12] In July 2019, Indiana-based SuperATV announced a $4.35 million investment at its Shreveport site, bringing 117 direct and indirect jobs.[13]

Mayor Perkins campaigned on a smart-city platform. Once in office, he appointed the city's first Chief Technology Officer, Keith Hanson, a former software executive.[14] Mayor Perkins' administration used technology to create an online interactive city budget, dubbed the "People's Budget."[15] Under Mayor Perkins leadership, the city hired its first data-scientist who discovered an accounting oversight from previous administrations that disclosed several million dollars, which was used to bolster the city's anemic reserve fund.[16] The IT department also renegotiated its phone contracts, saving the city tens of thousands of dollars.[9]

Mayor Perkins inherited a $1.2 million deficit. To address this issue, the Perkins administration cut expenditures and increased revenues. Perkins' first proposed budget was passed by City Council on December 10, 2019, and it was Shreveport's first balanced budget in nearly a decade.[17] This budget cut expenditures by 4.5 percent and was projected to bring the city's Operating Reserves up from the $1.2 million deficit in 2019 to a $2.6 million surplus by the end of 2020.[18]

Perkins called for a monthly sanitation fee for residential and commercial garbage pick-up to be added to municipal water bills to provide sanitation workers with a pay raise and to reduce the $8.4 million subsidy from the general fund for curbside solid waste collection. The City Council passed a $7 user-fee increased on March 26, 2019.[19]

As a result of the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic, the City of Shreveport experienced a projected $25 million shortfall. The Perkins administration was able to avoid furloughing or laying off city employees or eliminating essential services by proposing $25 million in cuts, including everything from "non-personnel-related expenditures to deferred capital projects and funded vacancies in nearly every department."[20]

Mayor Perkins was quick to act in response to the COVID-19 Pandemic. He utilized technology to geo-locate cases of COVID-19 in the City of Shreveport, noticing a concentration in densely populated, predominately African-American neighborhoods. Mayor Perkins immediately shifted resources and messaging to increase awareness of the virus and promote safe practices in these areas. He drew attention to the disproportionate toll exacted on communities of color by the virus.[21] His response garnered national attention and a front-page story in the Washington Post.[22]

Perkins announced in May 2019 that he opposes his city's ban on persons wearing saggy pants in public.[23] The Shreveport City Council introduced legislation to repeal the ordinance, eventually voting to repeal on June 11, 2019.[24] The matter promptly attracted national attention. Opposition stemmed from the fact that 98 percent of those arrested for violation of the ordinance are Black, and 100 percent of youth cited for violation of the law are Black.[25]

Mayor Perkins changed the city's insurance policy. His stated goal was to "inject competition into the process and ensure that minorities, disadvantaged business owners, and Shreveport’s middle class—people who have been excluded from government work for decades—received the same opportunities as everyone else."[26] This new policy with the Frost Company cost more for less coverage.[27] The change took place the day before he officially took office, apparently through a staff error.[28]