Landrieu cool to money for Citizen Participation Project

In his final meeting to get public input on next year’s budget priorities, Mayor Mitch Landrieu on Tuesday questioned whether the city should pay for a new program to encourage public input.

David Welch of the Gentilly Civic Improvement Association asked the mayor to fund the Citizen Participation Project, an effort included in the city’s recently approved master plan. As envisioned, it would set up a new series of neighborhood councils to solicit and pass on to city leaders the residents’ comments on myriad issues facing the community.

“Do you want to pay for this?” Landrieu asked skeptically.

Addressing a standing-room-only church in Gentilly, Landrieu asked rhetorically why people would pay for a program that lets them talk to him through a paid intermediary bureaucracy.

Nothing in the Citizen Participation plan prevents individuals or existing neighborhood organizations from taking concerns directly to officials.

Keith Twitchell, president of Citizens for a Better New Orleans, the organization that has fostered the creation of the Citizen Participation Project, did not attend the meeting. Reached by phone Wednesday, he said,  “We are actively working with members of the city council and Deputy Mayor Cedric Grant to identify a specific funding source.”

The proposed project is projected to cost $2 million,  but Twitchell said that “people want a dedicated funding source” to ensure that the project does not become a victim of political whim.

Though City Council members and Landrieu say they support the civic-engagement concept, they have not found a firm source of money to pay for it. Those involved have considered redirecting an existing property tax dedicated to civic improvement, or seeking an additional tax.

As he did most of the evening – and at similar gatherings in the other four council districts – Landrieu reinforced the message that money is limited and residents must set priorities.

The administration last week reported that an already-imposing $67 million deficit facing the city this calendar year has grown to $78 million. Because the city can’t run a deficit – and because the administration of Mayor Ray Nagin burned through all the reserve money the city once had – Landrieu must cut expenses to eliminate that gap.

One controversial move among Landrieu’s tactics to address the shortfall was to furlough city employees, requiring them to take an unpaid day off in each of the remaining two-week pay periods this year.

To avoid the same budget-gap problem next year, Landrieu this month initiated a series of priority-setting meetings across the city, with one in each of the five City Council Districts.

Each was well attended, with residents eager to not only push their priorities, but to vent about an array of problems with the city, from broken streetlights and potholes to police misconduct and lousy customer service at City Hall.

City posts contracts for Joe Brown, riverfront park work

Less than a week after announcing his administration’s plans for more than 100 projects, Mayor Mitch Landrieu on Monday signed a contract for another recreation effort.

The $1.7 million contract to renovate the Joe Brown Park was posted to the city’s website today. Also posted was the $23 million contract for a new riverfront park in the Bywater, which was signed at the end of June.

Landis Construction landed the big contract for the first phase of what’s officially called Reinventing the Crescent.

The work will start in the Bywater neighborhood, and eventually the 6-mile, $300 million linear park will stretch from Poland Avenue to Jackson Avenue.

Eastern New Orleans residents have been eager to see improvements at the 135-acre Joe Brown park, which sustained significant damages after Hurricane Katrina.

Face to face with Ray Nagin. Register now!

Catching up with former Mayor Ray Nagin on the fifth  anniversary of Katrina is now possible if you sign up for this free online speaker series.

“From Recovery to Revival, A Conversation with Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and ‘Katrina General’ Russell Honore” will take place Sept. 1, online.  An installment of Keppler Speakers‘ “Face to Face series, the talk will be a first open-registration gig sponsored by the agency Nagin signed with when he left office earlier this year.

Keppler bills itself as having “expertise in today’s professional marketplace of ideas,” describing the Face to Face series as an “opportunity to experience today’s most important thought leaders as they discuss their work and ideas.” The company’s face-to-face discussions happen online.

As of late, Honore has been keeping busy opining on the oil spill. The “government needs to change the game and make this a punitive effort,” the general wrote in an op-ed published in May on the CNN website.

This most recent disaster began on April 21, a week and a half before Nagin left office, ceding media attention to his successor, Mayor Mitch Landrieu.

Everything old is new again, and vice versa

” Man, by his very nature, tends to give himself an explanation of the world into which he is born. And this is what distinguishes him from the other species. Every individual, even the least intelligent, the lowest of outcasts, from childhood on gives himself some explanation of the world. And with it he manages to live. And without it, he would sink into madness.”
— Elsa Morante (History: A Novel)

With a little more than three weeks until the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the levee breaches, many of us in the region are taking time to consider the progress we have made as a city.

For anyone who wants a little knowledge with their brooding, the New Orleans Index at Five, issued today by the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center and The Brookings Institute, should be your reading of choice. The report opens with an economic timeline of the region. To look back at this two-page overview is to see the dramatic history of the region, from the founding of the Quarter in 1718, to the invention of the cotton gin and granulation of sugar in the later 18^th century, “helping launch a plantation economy,” as the timeline puts it, marking one of many intersections of injustice and prosperity.

Other highlights of the timeline include the first publication of local cookbooks in 1865, and the (blessed) introduction of ice manufacturing in 1868. A century later, the turbulence of the 1960s shows in the simultaneous rise of the petroleum industry  and the Civil Rights Movement.  In 1966, the city sounds its first integrated cheers with the introduction of the region’s first NFL franchise.

New Orleanians excel at feeling alone in struggle, feeling exceptional. Among other things, this timeline reminds us that the churn of history, with all its painful injustices, sundry advances and occasional victories will march on. Saints Super Bowl keg tap, anyone?

Jail advisory group will not open meetings to the public, administration says

Though top city officials have convened a group to advise on a controversial proposed expansion of the Orleans Parish Prison, the group’s meetings are not open to the public because it is not a “formal working group,” Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s director of intergovernmental affairs told The Lens.

The Landrieu administration has “convened different stakeholders” to gather and share information, Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Michael Sherman said in an interview. He said the group will present findings to the mayor’s top staff and Deputy Mayor Andy Kopplin will “study the issue.”

It is unclear how, beyond its freedom to ignore public meetings law, the group differs from a formal working group. Internal group correspondence includes references to the group as a “working group.”

Landrieu assembled the group in response to public outcry over Sheriff Marlin Gusman’s plan to expand the jail from about 3,800 beds to about 5,800 beds. In recent weeks, the group has met once to begin addressing concerns and making recommendations to the City Council, which will need to give final approval to a zoning measure before Gusman can proceed.  When the jail expansion came up July 1 on the council’s agenda, members of the council said they want to hear findings from the group before making a decision.

The group is comprised of council staffers, law enforcement officials, U.S. Department of Justice representatives, representatives from the nonprofits VOTE-Nola, Safe Streets, Access to Justice and the Vera Institute as well as representatives from Loyola University and Tulane University Law Schools. Kopplin led the first meeting.

It’s unclear if the mayor or the police chief have much control over the process, other than speaking from their respective pulpits. Gusman can finance the building project using a combination of FEMA money and bond money issued after voters approved a jail-building referendum by a 3-to-1 margin in 2008. Opponents to the plan say the ballot measure was introduced at the last minute and voters were not informed when they checked yes in 2008.

One person who was at the first meeting, Allen James, the Executive Director of Safe Streets, said that while he does want the meetings to be held in accordance with public meetings laws, his primary concern is that the city offficials make a informed decision.  “Making sure that the organizations that have technical information are able to present that information to decision-makers is the most important issue,” he said.

Another group member, Jon Wool, the director of the Vera Institute’s New Orleans office, said that in addition to discussions about the capacity of the jail, “[The] working group and advisory group have been expressly tasked with making recommendations about a critical issue that should be addressed in tandem.” That issue, Wool said, is “How should the city fund the operating cost of the jail?”

And that is one question taxpayers should have a right to weigh in on, he said.

City officials have said the public spoke when the ballot referendum was approved in 2008 and will have a chance again, when the council votes on the zoning measure. “The public process will continue” then, said Sherman.  A date has not yet been selected for the council vote.

Landrieu’s group studying jail meets in private; no plans to take comments from public

A mayoral advisory group examining the controversial planned expansion of the Orleans Parish Prison apparently held its first meeting recently, but Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration said the group is meeting privately and is not open to public input.

“The public process will take place at City Council when they hear the recommendations,” of the group, said Devona Dolliole, Landrieu’s communications director. (Note: Earlier versions of this story incorrectly quoted Dolliole referring to a “working group.”)

However, the state open-meetings law applies to advisory boards.

Public officials are often under the “mistaken impression if they just meet to talk about an issue and not actually take action they can meet privately,” said Jennifer Pike of the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana.

Additionally, she said, “an important aspect” of the public meeting laws is that “minutes are taken and made available at some point.”

Thursday evening, Dolliole referred to the July 9 gathering as a group of “stakeholders,” insisting they’re not subject to the open-meetings law.

Landrieu formed the advisory group after public outcry over Sheriff Marlin Gusman’s plan to expand the jail from about 3,800 beds to about 5,800 beds.

It’s unclear whether the mayor has much control over the process, other than speaking from his bully pulpit. Gusman has the money for the building project using a combination of FEMA money and bond money issued after voters approved a jail-building referendum by a 3-to-1 margin in 2008.

The City Council, however, needs to give final approval to a zoning measure before Gusman can proceed, and members said at their July 1 meeting that they’re waiting for the advisory group to make recommendations, particularly on the size of the prison.

In advance of the meeting, a number of organizations expressed concerns over the size and cost of the facility.  The American Civil Liberties Union questioned the expansion in the face of budget cuts and deficits, as well as “making the city of New Orleans potentially home to the largest per capita jail in the world.”

Council members were told that Landrieu’s office formed a working group to address the concerns and to make recommendations to the council as it moves to approve the final phases of the zoning requests.

The group met last week with Deputy Mayor Andy Kopplin taking the lead on the issue, and additional meetings are taking place with “various stakeholders to collect data,” Dolliole said.

Kopplin will continue to meet to “review information to make informed recommendations to Mayor Landrieu” over the next few weeks, she said.

Dolliole said the following people were invited (Earlier versions of this story said this was the list of those attending, but Dolliole has since changed the description and said she’s trying to figure out who was really there):

Kopplin

Gusman

Budget Director Cedric Grant

City Attorney Nannette Jolivette-Brown

Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas

Councilwoman Stacy Head

Councilwoman Susan Guidry

Councilwoman Jacquelyn Clarkson

Jackie Cole, Clarkson aide

Deborah Langhoff, Guidry aide

Amy Chandler, Guidry aide

District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro

Michael Cowan, Common Good

Rafael Goyeneche, Metropolitan Crime Commission

Allen James, Safe Streets/Strong Communities

Municipal Court Judge Paul Sens

Criminal Court Judge Terry Alarcon

Reduced! Fancy sink included

Businessman and unsuccessful mayoral candidate John Georges put his French Quarter property on the market recently for $1.5 million.

That’s more than double the value the city assessor put on the property – and upon which Georges has been paying property taxes.

Georges bought the property in 2006 for $800,000 and paid taxes on that amount in the next year, but the assessment has dropped since then to $617,970. He said he pays about $24,000 in taxes and insurance on the property.

The recently listed Chartres Street property, which is not his residence, has a street-level boutique and an apartment upstairs. With 2,625 square feet of space, the asking price breaks down to $571 a square foot.

In a telephone interview, Georges said the assessment hasn’t caught up with the extensive renovations he’s done to the property, even though he notified the city through the permit process of all the work he did. For instance, you wouldn’t believe what the kitchen sink and refrigerator are worth, he said.

He said he did the renovations after marketing the property for a little over $1 million and getting no offers.

This property isn’t indicative of the city’s notoriously uneven property tax assessments, he said.

“There is a problem and this in not an example of the problem,” he said.

He said his commercial tenant has gone 10 months without paying rent because of the recession, suggesting that, along with a perceived lowering of the rental value, this is part of the reason the city reduced his assessment.

“The revenue does not equal” the tax burden, Georges said.

Georges’ mansion on exclusive Audubon Place brought him some ribbing during the mayor’s race. Candidate Mitch Landrieu, working to portray Georges as a detached member of the city’s patrician class, said he looked up the bill for George’s property on the private street.

“I didn’t laugh at your property tax bill –  I was in awe of it,” Landrieu said on a WIST-AM radio appearance in January while on the campaign trail.

The city assessor website shows a value of $3,322,200 for that property, and Georges said he pays more than $40,000 a year in taxes on that property alone.

With 9 percent of the vote, Georges finished a distant third behind Landrieu.

If Georges gets anywhere near his asking price on the Charters Street property, the owner may have a little sticker shock when the tax bill comes due. That’s because the new assessment is based on the sales price.

After a lengthy interview with The Lens, Georges said Thursday that he planned to call his agent to reduce the price to $1.25 million.

Indeed, the new listing price Friday is for that lower amount.

Landrieu fills position for environmental affairs after all

Though Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration initially was vague on whether it would continue to have an Office of Environmental Affairs during the nation’s largest oil disaster, the position has now been filled.

Charles Allen, formerly at Tulane University in the Tulane/Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research, started running the office two weeks ago.

Allen is a Xavier University undergrad and received his master’s degree in public health from Tulane in 1998.

Allen helped form the Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development post-Katrina, an organization dedicated to the rebuilding of the Lower 9th Ward.

Check back at The Lens soon for a developing question-and-answer session with Allen.

Old Earhart plan causes new concerns among neighbors about appropriateness

The intersection of Earhart Boulevard and Carrollton Avenue has reduced Earhart to a single lane temporarily.

Few people would argue that the 1.3-mile bone-jarring portion of Earhart Boulevard from Jefferson Parish into the Gert Town neighborhood was sorely in need of improvement.

But neighbors in the area have a host of questions over whether the $8.9-million, 16-year-old plan now being executed – suddenly brought to life through last year’s federal stimulus package – reflects either the post-Katina needs of the smaller population or the evolved thinking of urban roadway planning:

• * Are six lanes still necessary where there used to be four?
• * Why aren’t there bike lanes?
• * Shouldn’t we get improved sidewalks and crossings?
• * Where’s the landscaping that would minimize the traffic noise?
• * How safe will it be to cross this wider roadway?
• * Doesn’t this just encourage more and faster traffic?

The Regional Planning Commission, the agency primarily responsible for the project, stands by the plan, even though the underlying traffic studies were conducted in 1997 and the federally required public comment was recorded in 1998.

But the plan by wasn’t designed with neighbors in mind. The “purpose and need statement” provided by the state Department of Transportation and Development says the concerns of business owners were paramount.

“In order to help end the decline and loss of business within the Industrial Park (Tulane-Earhart Business Park) and provide the potential for renewed economic development, the current delays and congestion associated with poor pavement conditions and the inefficiency of signalized intersection must be resolved” the report reads.

The seven-page report, prepared in March 1998, was part of a larger study required by federal regulations. The report cites traffic counts, which are now more than 13 years old.

Jenel Hazlett, president of the Northwest Carrollton Civic Association was struck by the term “Tulane-Earhart Business Park,” used to describe the area where the work is being done – and a term that she had never heard despite her involvement in many post-Katrina planning processes.

The plan outlines the need to “provide improved access between the Tulane-Earhart Business Park and Interstate-10 by increasing travel speeds and reducing delays.”

The green neutral ground on Earhart at Pine has been taken out during the construction. It's unclear whether the raised, grassy strip will be replaced.

Hazlett was incredulous reading the report.

“What about the people?” Hazlett asked. “This project is all about the trucks and freight. What about people walking . . . what about bikes?”

Data that would track population shifts and roadway usage since the 2005 flooding of New Orleans are still unavailable, and the Regional Planning Commission is relying on 2000 census data as well as other data sources such as the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, to estimate the traffic patterns that inform the project, said Jeff Roesel, principal planner at the Regional Planning Commission.

For now, at least, officials have accommodated some concerns of the neighbors, though the project will proceed in a way that will make future expansion as easy as repainting the stripes on the expanded pavement.

The federally mandated environmental assessment for this project was completed in 1998, but the project did not proceed, presumably for lack of funding, Roesel said.  It was during that phase that public comment was sought.

“There is no expiration date” on public comment said Doug Hecox of the U.S. Highway Administration, which oversees the funding for this project.

He added that the city had a public meeting on the plan in August of 2004 to determine if this were still a viable project. The minutes of that meeting were not made available as part of the documentation provided to The Lens and prepared for the City of New Orleans, the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development, or the U.S. Department of Transportation. Area residents have no recollection of the meeting.

Plans for the project show that in addition to the much-needed resurfacing and roadbed reconstruction, the state bought portions of private property to widen the boulevard.

View Earhart Construction Orleans Parish in a larger map

That’s what concerns the neighborhood most, Hazlett said.

“What we see is a very car-centric plan,” she said. “We take pride in being able to walk to our grocery store, and local restaurants.”

Residents drive meetings

Hazlett, who lives two blocks off Earhart, spotted a small ad in the classifieds in May of 2008 that gave notice of the project, prompting her to invite city officials to a neighborhood meeting.

Hazlett said she and her neighbors were shocked to see plans for a wider road, as well as two left turn lanes onto Carrollton Avenue, eating up the grassy neutral ground there.

Hazlett said the Regional Planning Commission was “gracious in listening to our concerns” and responded with a traffic modeling study. That looked at various road and lane options but did not include any hard data on the amount of traffic using Earhart. She said “no one wanted to talk to us about sidewalk plans or bike lanes and greenspace which could act as a sound buffering.”

She contends that the two public-input meetings since 2005 were not instigated by officials, but by the neighbors.

And finding the right people wasn’t easy:  “We had to figure out who to talk to, which part was Public Works, which part was Regional Planning, which part was the New Orleans traffic engineer.”

Roesel pointed out that the community-led meetings brought  significant changes, such as reducing the travel lanes to two in each direction, striping the intended third lane as a breakdown area.  Further, he said, the community concerns over the turn lanes scuttled that part of the plan. Instead, cars will have to do the usual New Orleans left – cross the street, do a U-turn and then turn right.

While Hazlett concedes that the community was able to influence the plan, she feels the process was made more difficult than it needs to be. She said there needs to be more chances for community input and better two-way communication between neighbors and officials.

“Considering that the plans were in the works and on the shelf for more than 10 years before they got dusted off in 2008,” she said she believes that the process could have been smoother.

Neighbors want “complete streets”

Hazlett continues to have concerns about the lack of what planners call  “complete streets.” This line of thinking on street redesign takes into consideration all road users,  not just cars.

Barbara McCann, the national director of the Complete Streets Coalition, pushes for a broader approach to roadway design.

“A complete-streets policy makes sure that opportunities are not missed to improve the environment for all travelers,” including pedestrians, cyclists and those taking public transportation, she said.

McCann said officials all over the country are rethinking transit planning with “over 130 communities adopting the complete-street policies, including most recently a law passed by the state of Minnesota.”

Hazlett said the Regional Planning Commission seems to have “completely ignored concerns and queries on sidewalks, green space, traffic calming and noise abatement.”

Roesel didn’t respond to requests to explain the lack of bike lanes, sound buffering or landscaping to enhance the area for pedestrians.

Jennifer Ruley a pedestrian-and-bicycle engineer for the Louisiana Public Health Institute notes that Earhart is identified in the city’s master plan as a potential bike route.

She echoes Hazlett’s concerns for not just bike lanes, but added “the use of trees and pedestrian friendly design…can enhance the quality and safety, and improve the community in general.”

Interchanges to nowhere

The Earhart project has a long and storied history. Back in the 1960’s, a plan to connect Earhart Boulevard to Jefferson Parish was developed with the construction of the Earhart Expressway, with the goal of creating a more direct path to the airport.

Funding fell short and so did the expressway, which ends at Dickory Avenue, about 4 miles from the airport. Though the expressway, by definition, has limited access, this one has even less than designed.

The last major improvement to the 4.8-mile Jefferson Parish portion of the roadway was in 1986 with the addition of off-ramps to nowhere and major connecting points unfinished due to a lack of money.

Improvements are coming to the expressway soon, though. Construction of an interchange at Dakin Street is scheduled to start in December. Another interchange  at Causeway Boulevard, as well as improvements at Dickory, are in the planning stages.

All of which could invite more traffic to Hazlett’s neighborhood, leaving her concerned that she’ll end up feeling like she “lives on the freeway.”

Prison expansion on hold until advisory group speaks out

In response to community concerns, the New Orleans City Council on Thursday said it will delay final action to let the Orleans Parish Sheriff greatly expand his prison.

Though council members approved a zoning matter for the prison Thursday, they said they will wait to vote on a related measure until a newly formed mayoral advisory group studies the issue and makes a recommendation.

In advance of the council meeting, the American Civil Liberties Union issued a statement asking that the council reject the plan to increase the capacity to more than 5,800 beds.

That statement came after a report by the Mid City Neighborhood Association said that Sheriff Marlin Gusman had “informed the group that the new jail will have 4,500 beds but the filing with the City Planning Commission indicates there will be 5,832 beds.”

Residents lined up at the podium to speak against the proposal, demanding that the issues be brought before a vote of the people. Gusman was not at the meeting.

Albert “Chui” Clark called it “business as usual,” but Councilwoman Jacquelyn Clarkson insisted the people had spoken with a 3-to-1 vote in favor a bond issue.

Speaking on behalf of the ACLU, attorney Barry Gerharz stressed the need for the advisory group to make decisions based on “evidence and expertise, not politics”

According to the ACLU, the proposed prison would create the largest per-capita prison in the country.

Councilman Arnie Fielkow answered the opposition by stating emphatically, “Your voices are being heard that is why it is being slowed down”

Councilwoman Stacy Head, whose district includes the prison near Tulane Avenue and Broad Street, said the advisory group is a sign of new collaboration between all parties interested in the criminal justice system.

“This group will start immediately evaluating the proper sizing of any to-be-constructed prison facilities, along with other necessary considerations that impact the size of the prison, including payment methods, arrest and detention policies and alternatives to pre-trial detention,” she said. “I believe that the current structure of this group will allow meaningful debate and different perspectives to be considered.”

The group will include a representative from the mayor’s office; a yet-to-be-hired criminal justice coordinator; the deputy mayor in charge of capital projects; and representatives from the city attorney’s office, the police department, district attorney’s office, the sheriff’s office, Head’s council office, the council’s criminal justice committee, Safe Streets/Strong Communities, and The New Orleans Crime Coalition.

Technical assistance will be provide by The Vera Institute, the deans of the local law schools and a representative from the U.S. Department of Justice.