Ruston

words, not a lot of graphs or pictures or anything. So, I wanted something that not only people could read,but theycould seewherewewere trying to take the city in the next 15 to 20 years. So,we created Ruston Re-imaginedwhich is a document that wewill be re-doing everyfive years.It kind of tells you the vision that we have for the cityandwe use it whenwe are recruiting a company,if a family’s thinking about moving here,anything like that.” First and foremost, the plan meant grasping what Ruston was as a community, because al- though Louisiana Tech University is in Ruston, and Grambling State University is just a fewmiles down the road, for some reason, Ruston always saw itself a town with a university in it, rather than a university town.The city has 24,000 residents, 13,500 of which are associated with the Universi- ty. It is a big part of who the city is. “Grambling has another six thousand and many of them live in Ruston,” says Walker,“but let me RUSTON, LOUISIANA give you an example of what I am talking about. I know this is going to sound weird to you but, up until 12 years ago, the city of Ruston was dry. There was no alcohol sold anywhere; you couldn’t go into a restaurant and sit down and have a glass of wine.Twelve years ago, the Chamber of Com- merce passed an ordinance where you can’t have a stand-alone bar, but you could have a bar with that restaurant. But part of that ordinance was that the bar had to close at 12 o’clock at night, which, in a college town…it all seemed crazy. So, in the last year,we have changed that ordinance to where they can stay open until 2 AM.And, instead of having their full menu until 2, they can actually go to a bar menu or appetizer menu at 9 o’clock. So that helped not only drive new restau- rants here, but also helped the ones that were here. I mean, college kids don’t even go out until 9:30 or 10 now.The old rules made no sense.” Walker mentions some other ways in which Ruston re-imagined itself: “In my first year in office, I actually went to the people and said,‘Look, we got a hundred and fiftymillion dollars’worth of infrastructure needs.We need to have more quality of life things like bike trails, things that we did not have.’ So, bottom line is we passed a three-quarter cent sales tax increase just nine days after the state had added a one percent sales tax increase.The people went for it and we are in the process, right now, of starting about 80 mil-