The City Council voted six to one this morning to hold an extra meeting on Saturday at 10 a.m. in a dash to approve another property tax increase for the city’s 2011 budget, at the behest of Mayor Mitch Landrieu.
Even as President Barack Obama agrees to keep Bush-era tax cuts, a consensus is still lacking on an extension of tax credits needed to rebuild New Orleans’ Big Four housing developments, as well as other Gulf Coast complexes.
The recycling program for most of the city, announced in the recent contract negotiations with Metro Disposal and Richard’s Disposal, will not start with the new year, an attorney for the companies said.
Three weeks after heralding major concessions in the Metro Disposal trash-contract negotiation, the city has yet to begin drafting the new contract or amendment that will lock in the details of this new agreement.
The crash of a key city computer server is stymieing work across New Orleans’ already strained government and making it tougher for residents to get the services and information they need.
While city officials struggle to tame blight, a key piece of the administration’s strategy – selling seized property at sheriff’s sale – has been hampered by the Clerk of Court’s computer crash, now in its second month.
In approving a 2011 budget today, the deadline set by the City Charter, the council scaled back the 8.74 mill tax increase sought by Mayor Mitch Landrieu.
For the first time since Mayor Mitch Landrieu proposed raising property taxes to balance the city’s 2011 budget, the tax-paying public on Wednesday will have a chance to weigh in on the issue.
The New Orleans City Council has failed to accommodate a request by an open governance group to turn the city’s budget over a few days early so the public can scrutinize last-minute changes.
