Sitting on the fringe of the French Quarter, Iberville has long attracted interest from developers. Earlier this month, the housing authority issued a request to find interested and qualified developers, a precursor to the competitive bidding that will decide who gets the job.  The deadline for submission is Sept. 13.

The solicitation states that the “successful respondent shall demonstrate the ability and experience to implement a large-scale comprehensive mixed-finance, mixed-income and mixed-use revitalization plan.”

In addition to housing, the plan should include commercial space for retail, offices and community facilities, the request states. Such mixed-income redevelopments are in varying stages of completion at the city’s other large public-housing complexes, known collectively as the “Big Four”: B.W. Cooper, C.J. Peete, Lafitte and St. Bernard.

The project will be done in line with federal urban housing policy of replacing dense low-income developments of the post-war period with small-scale neighborhoods, which provide fewer units for the very poor mixed with housing for working and middle-class occupants.

In New Orleans, the redevelopment of the Big Four replaced a pre-storm total of 4,500  occupied public housing units with 3,343 public housing units, as well as 900 market-rate rental units and 900 affordable market-rate homes, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The agency does not specify the size of the units.

In April, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, speaking to a crowd of visiting urban planners in New Orleans, cited Iberville as a place ideal for the federal housing agency’s newest mixed-income, mixed-use redevelopment program – Choice Neighborhoods.

About 40 developers showed up for a pre-submission conference held Wednesday at HANO’s Touro Street headquarters, said one of those in attendance, HRI Properties CEO and President Pres Kabacoff.

“I am very interested in this project,” Kabacoff said.

In 2001, the same HANO competitive bidding process won the developer the right to redevelop the St. Thomas development into River Garden, a mixed-income development that includes affordable and market rate single-family homes and apartments, in addition to the highly subsidized units traditional to public housing. River Garden also includes retail, notably a Wal-Mart supercenter. Like Iberville, St. Thomas was located within a short walk of a more affluent neighborhood, the Garden District.

Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Executive Director James Perry said that he did not know of  any public outreach done about the redevelopment.

“I’ve heard nothing outside of (closed) meetings,” he said. “Before HUD and HANO start talking about redeveloping Iberville, they should honor commitments to completing the rebuilding of the Big Four redevelopments they’ve already started.”

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu will join Oscar-winning actress, Sandra Bullock, to announce the opening of the Warren Easton High School health clinic on Sunday, August 29.
…
The Warren Easton school-based health clinic is scheduled to open this fall as a full-service medical and dental facility. It is the product of a partnership between Tulane Medical Center, Louisiana School Health Connection and the Warren Easton Charter High School Foundation. Major funding for the $700,000 facility comes from the Kellogg Foundation, Sandra Bullock and The San Francisco 49ers Foundation.

Bullock deserves congratulations for generously investing her personal wealth in New Orleans. Nonetheless Bullock raised eyebrows a few weeks ago when she pulled out of the Be the One petition drive for Gulf Coast restoration, after she learned that one of the sponsors, America’s WETLAND, received funding from Shell Oil. Then, shortly thereafter, Bullock reversed course and rejoined the Be the One campaign after representatives from Women of the Storm allayed her concerns, and changed America’s WETLAND from “sponsor” of Be the One, to “partner.”
Note: Be the One is strictly concerned with Gulf Coast restoration, it shouldn’t be confused with the abstinence education site of the same name which encourages “Pants on for Safety.” (I joined that group by mistake, but, like Bullock, quickly pulled out.)

Bullock’s views on the Be the One effort were apparently influenced by Brendan Demelle’s post at DeSmog blog. DeMelle makes a big deal out of funding America’s WETLAND gets from oil companies. He claims Big Oil wants to restore the wetlands in order to protect their drilling and refining infrastructure. They’d prefer taxpayers pay to fix the wetlands damage they helped cause.

This is news?

Stripped of all the guilt-by-association insinuations, DeSmog blog’s argument is pretty thin. While it’s true that King Milling is president of America’s WETLAND (and former President of Whitney Bank), and his wife, Ann Milling, is president of Women of the Storm, and neither are known for being anti-Big Oil, does that mean their coastal restoration isn’t genuine and important?

If King Milling is a simple shill for Big Oil, he’s not doing a great job. In the past, he has praised in-depth articles that do not gloss over the oil industry’s responsibility for coastal loss, and forcefully criticized an oil-friendly White House whose policy on coastal restoration, when it was intelligible, was basically “run out the clock and let someone else handle it.”

Granted, America’s WETLAND web site always emphasizes the oil and gas industry’s importance to the nation, while rarely acknowledging their contribution to the coastal problem. But that’s about what you’d expect. On the other hand, their emphasis on the  “Energy Coast” might be the best way to draw bipartisan Congressional support to address Louisiana’s coastal crisis.

Naturally, I’d prefer that the site included quotes like this one from Times Picayune columnist Bob Marshall’s recent series on the disappearing coastal village of Delacroix:

If levees were all that had happened to the delta, the wetlands in place at the turn of the century would have remained largely intact for hundreds of years, coastal scientists have said. But in the 1930s, oil and gas was discovered in the coastal zone, unleashing a frenzy of canal dredging that would compress the wetlands’ demise into 70 years.

A “frenzy” of dredging following oil and gas discoveries accelerated wetlands loss by hundreds of years. The point is rarely made: industry accelerated the wetlands crisis into our lifetimes. While it would be nice if America’s WETLAND inform its audience about this fact, they wouldn’t be the first to gloss over it.

As you read America’s WETLAND’s explanation of the Causes of Wetlands Loss, you’ll notice that they often categorize the erosive canals that kill our coast as a “shipping” issue (parts XI and XII), without noting the obvious connection of “shipping” to the oil and gas industries. When it explains the causes of wetlands loss at length, but doesn’t clearly acknowledge the role of oil and gas-related channels, they do open themselves to Demelle’s charge of “greenwashing”.

But that’s not the whole story. The site does address oil and gas issues that you might not expect. In their section on “subsidence” they note that oil and gas extraction might be a contributor. Then in part IX, they cite highly-salinated Produced Water as a cause of wetlands loss:

In the late 1980s, it was estimated that about 730 million barrels (almost 31 billion gallons) of produced water were discharged annually in Louisiana waters.  Not only is the brine potentially harmful, but there may be many other toxic substances present.  Produced water has been shown to contain up to 2800 picocuries per liter of Radium 226 (the maximum allowable for the Riverbend Nuclear Plant near St. Francisville is 30 picocuries of Radium 226).

That’s an informative paragraph that would’ve been helpful in the New York Times story I discussed here.

At the very bottom of AW’s “Causes” section, they cite a “recent” study from 1996, which enumerates and categorizes the localized causes of wetlands loss. It shows that when direct and indirect impacts are considered, “Oil and Gas Canals” are the leading cause of localized coastal land loss.

Yes, the information is buried, but it’s there. If America’s WETLAND was a total “greenwash”, it wouldn’t contain such information.

America’s WETLAND will host a conference in New Orleans about the world’s deltas in October. In their press announcement, President King Milling says

“In the working deltas of the world we have provided the infrastructure and resources for great economies and progress, but the key question is, at what price?… We are asking all interests to consider the future and tie the economics to environmental sustainability for a livable world after we are gone.”

I can get on board with that statement. Sure, in my perfect world, Milling would directly tell Big Oil that they should do the right thing – stop downplaying their role in the wetlands disaster and volunteer to help pay for the damage they’ve caused. For example, Milling could’ve weighed in on a dispute recounted in this important Bloomberg article on wetlands loss:

A consensus of coastal scientists puts wetland losses attributable to oil and gas activities at 36 percent, says Douglas Meffert, a deputy director of Tulane University’s Center of Bioenvironmental Research. The Gulf Restoration Network estimates the share as high as 60 percent, says Aaron Viles, the group’s campaign director.

“The idea that we’re mostly to blame is crap,” says Don Briggs, president of the Louisiana Oil & Gas Association, a 1,100-member trade group based in Baton Rouge. He cites a U.S. Department of Energy estimate that the industry accounted for no more than 15 percent of coastal loss.

Environmentalists say 60 percent, industry and the DOE say 15 percent, and the scientific consensus is around 36 percent. Milling could’ve said, statesmanlike, “Hey, Big Oil and environmentalists, given the urgency of this issue, why don’t we all compromise, split the difference and agree to use the scientific estimate? Then we can work to solve this crisis together, after broadly agreeing about the oil and gas industry’s responsibility for the mess.”

(And speaking of things Milling might’ve said, it would have been ideal if he had excoriated oil industry spokesman Chris John when John said oil companies were already doing their “part” to save the coast because they already “pay taxes.” John’s comment is still one of the most outrageously smug things I’ve ever heard. Big Oil pays to fix the wetlands by paying taxes –  sometimes, kicking and screaming, to other countries. Yeah, give them a medal.)

But while I’d love for America’s s WETLAND to sound more like… me, that preference shouldn’t get in the way of the larger mission to save the coast. The window of opportunity is closing, and King and Ann Milling’s organizations are able to unite officials, celebrities, and industry to increase nationwide awareness about the crisis. I don’t think they are pure shills for Big Oil. And while I’m sure Oil companies will never fully pay for their damage to the coast, I will note that a figure like King Milling is in a unique position to get them to admit fault and contribute large sums directly to Gulf Coast restoration.

Truly, if Big Oil can cry like stuck pigs over a drilling moratorium (a policy that seems increasingly justified as more blowout preventer problems come to light), and if they can come together and spend $1 billion on a project to create a solution for oil gushers created by blowouts, then why can’t they unite to address our wetlands crisis and contribute to a fund to protect their $100 billion of assets on the “Energy Coast?”

No time like the present.

City bulldozers demolished Katherine Benson Clinic in the Ninth Ward last year. There are no plans to rebuilt the facility.

See a photo slideshow of other projects not being immediately financed by Mayor Mitch Landrieu.

Maddie Trepagnier can’t remember exactly when she gave up on City Hall.

Maybe it was when no one could explain why the city-owned Digby Park in her eastern New Orleans subdivision wasn’t getting fixed up, even though FEMA had obligated money for it. Or maybe, she said, it was when no one returned calls about a spewing water main flooding her block. Or when she saw rebuilding dollars pay for palm trees in less-affected parts of the city, while the road leading to her neighborhood was barely passable.

Her lack of faith makes sense given her surroundings. It’s difficult to tell five years have passed since Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters pushed down the levees and flooded 80 percent of the city, including Trepagnier’s neighborhood. Looking around, it may as well be just a year or two after the storm.

An abundance of vacant homes give her block a checkerboard look. Construction workers smoke cigarettes outside trailers parked on muddy lawns. And if you start talking about the city’s future, good luck at avoiding jargony post-disaster phrases such as  “shrinking the footprint” and turning a neighborhood into a green dot.

“If often feels like we are being punished for coming back to our homes,” she said on a recent evening, following a civic-association meeting in her freshly repainted living room. Hours earlier, Mayor Mitch Landrieu had announced that the neighborhood’s park would finally be rebuilt with the $122,969 in FEMA money that residents had begged the previous administration to spend.

“It was a victory that should not have been this hard to win,”  Trepagnier said.

The park was among the 100 projects (pdf) on city property that Landrieu recently released and committed his administration to completing. It was welcome news to a city eager for a detailed plan after years of former Mayor Ray Nagin’s vague, bellicose promises and anemic follow through.

But the list of Nagin-era projects that Landrieu did not immediately commit to starting, let alone finishing, is just as revealing for a city still on the mend. Along with a list of finished or nearly finished projects frequently touted by the city, and a state-generated status update of FEMA-financed projects worth more than $55,000, The Lens has put together one of the most complete accountings of the city’s efforts to revitalize its own properties and improve the lives of residents, employees and visitors.

The records illustrate the winding, red-tape-ridden road New Orleans has traveled over the past five years and see more clearly the priorities of the previous administration.

OF CLIPBOARDS AND RESPIRATORS

The streetlights were still out when FEMA field workers arrived in New Orleans to assess hundreds of damaged or destroyed city-owned facilities. Wearing respirators, these federal employees or contractors treaded through molding buildings and sodden parks with engineers and city employees or contractors. Their job was to make sense of what Katrina’s wind and the subsequent flooding had done to these facilities so they could document the cost of repair, or wholesale replacement, in worksheets assigned to each project.

The 655 project worksheets (pdf) that came out of those chaotic early days and the hectic months that followed would be the foundation for all damage claims payable by the federal agency to the city. But as virtually anyone who was working with the city at that time recalls, the worksheets set a relatively low basis for reimbursement. In short, the city was low balled.

“Someone underestimated,” said John Marini, chief operating officer for a disaster recovery consulting company, Adjusters International, that was hired by the city in the immediate aftermath to expedite negotiations with FEMA. “They didn’t take into account latent damage. They didn’t realize how old the buildings were and how that would add millions to the cost of renovating.”

The process ended with the city establishing project worksheets for 655 projects. (pdf)

Even before Landrieu marked his first 100 days in office by releasing the sure-thing100 projects, 70 of them non-road projects, he warned residents that it was time to scale back expectations to fit government’s modest post-recession, post-Nagin checkbook.

Landrieu’s practical approach — the term compassionate pragmatism comes to mind — received widespread approval across most of the city.

“It’s better now to know, for real,” said Councilwoman-at-large Jackie Clarkson at a press conference announcing the mayor’s 100-project plan, “to say this is what you will have, and this will be what you won’t have.”

His point man on the city projects did his best to bring people back to earth.

“It was clear off the bat that everything everybody imagined wasn’t going to get done. I want to inject a sense of reality about this. There’s a lot of dreaming going on here,” Deputy Mayor for Infrastructure Cedric Grant told The Times-Picayune earlier this month. “I don’t see a boatload of money coming. We’re at the point where this is what we get.”

Grant told The Times-Picayune that 273 projects of the 655 recovery projects tracked by the city are completed or are nearly completed at a total cost of $367 million.

When a list of these projects was requested by The Lens, the city provided a summary of 270 projects (Excel) ranging from minor jobs such as a repair of an elevator in Criminal District Court, or the repair of sidewalks in the French Quarter, to large projects, such as the renovation of Mahalia Jackson Theatre for the Performing Arts. No project costs were included on the list supplied by the city.

The handful of larger projects correlate to the state list of FEMA-financed projects, though that list shows that only seven reconstruction projects have satisfied state requirements for being considered complete.

The mayor’s to-do list reflects a commitment to building the city back with a more concentrated urban grid in mind, as well as an awareness of needs in lower-density sections of the city. For instance, Landrieu chose to build back all major public facilities in the Lower Ninth Ward, as well as many projects in the east, including Trepagnier’s Digby Park.

But instead of scattering resources between various human service facilities in Hollygrove and Carrollton, a large $1.8 million senior center with a health clinic and a community facility is planned to rise. Similarly, a pre-storm health clinic in the Desire/Florida section of the Ninth Ward will be replaced by a larger $12 million multi-service center.

Even with these big ideas evident behind the modest plan, the vision is best described as a compromise.

“We are all going to have to make sacrifices,” Kristin Palmer, City Councilwoman for District C, said.

Analysis shows that the council district that includes the Lower Ninth Ward and eastern New Orleans, City Council District E, is on tap to receive the largest allocation of FEMA money — $47 million. Bringing up the rear is District D, which includes Gentilly as well as parts of the east, the Upper Ninth Ward and the Seventh Ward, with $13 million for rebuilding facilities. Pre-storm realities determined the flow of resources – as the post-storm refrain went, FEMA cannot build better; it can only build back.

Source: Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness

MANY PROJECTS NEED TO BE UPDATED

Yet as residents grow used to continuing life in a city that is neither quite the New Urbanist Xanadu envisioned in the many lofty planning meetings right after the storm, nor a refurbished version of the old New Orleans, a look at state records raises new questions about how many of these projects could’ve come back to life if the city had negotiated more effectively with FEMA earlier on.

Landrieu holds out hope that he can still bargain with the feds.

In the five years since the failure of federal levees sent 8 feet of water surging into Trepagnier’s neighborhood, FEMA has committed about $600 million to New Orleans for rebuilding public facilities and infrastructure — roads and bridges, pumping stations, parks, community centers, courts, libraries, health clinics, police stations and fire houses. About a third of that, $232 million, has been set aside to pay for buildings and parks, while the remainder will pay for roads, bridges, pumping stations, drainage facilities and emergency protective measures and debris removal, an analysis of city records shows. Before negotiations on infrastructure and facilities are complete, another $300 million is expected to flow down, said Mark DeBosier, disaster recovery chief for the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. All FEMA money passes through the state to reach New Orleans. DeBosier handles that transaction.

Even with this money, the city has not managed to complete more than a handful of projects.

Only seven of the city’s 333 FEMA-funded major reconstruction projects – including roads, bridges, pumping facilities and drainage but excluding emergency protective measures and debris removal – are complete, records from the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness show. The list includes a new Emergency Operation Center for the city, fueling stations for city vehicles, the Orleans Parish Criminal Courts Building and other public safety infrastructure as well as work on pet projects of former Mayor Ray Nagin: Louis Armstrong Park and the Mahalia Jackson Theatre.

The longer list of 270 complete or nearly complete projects provided by the Landrieu administration includes road repairs and smaller facility repairs.

“Those are things like a roof on a small building or an air-conditioner or elevator,” DeBosier said. “From a recovery standpoint, they are almost non-issues.”

None of the rebuilt major facilities lie within the sections of the city most devastated by Katrina.

The state lists the projects somewhat differently, with some combination of city projects and breakout of others. So while the city is tracking 655 projects, the state figure is 491.

Five years later, a majority of the city’s 491 total project worksheets (Excel) have never been fully updated, state documents obtained by The Lens show. This means that FEMA has not revised early damage assessments to reflect years of inflation, or even the fully vetted cost of repairing old facilities that in many cases were more damaged than initially realized.

The documents show that 14 percent of the city’s 491 FEMA-funded projects are still being funded according to the initial assessment done immediately after the storm. Another 43 percent are in line for funding based on a first or second revision.

Source: Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness

In stark contrast, the worksheet for the City Hall building, a priority for the last administration, was revised eight times, the NOPD building was revised nine times, and Orleans Parish Prison was revised 10 times.

Left unremedied, the failure to update more assessments could cost the city the hundreds of millions of dollars – and the option of paying for all 655 recovery projects, rather than restricting rebuilding to the 100 priority projects in the pipeline and the 270 complete and nearly complete, said Nagin’s former Capital Projects Administrator Bill Chrisman.

“You can say the projects are under budgeted, but that is because the worksheets are based on numbers from 2005,” Chrisman said.

CITY SEEKS TO FOLLOW SCHOOL DISTRICT’S LEAD

Chrisman said he left City Hall after a series of disputes with other members of the Nagin administration about how much money the city was spending on consulting contracts. One 2009 consulting contract that Chrisman approved of, however, went to a firm hired to work with FEMA on those project revisions.  Chrisman estimates that the work earned the city $250 million in revised assessments, with another $100 million in the pipeline, before the consultants’ contracts ended when Mitch Landrieu became mayor.

He estimates that the original project worksheets, before any revisions – or “reversionings” in FEMA-speak — are done, cover about 30 percent of 2010 costs.

“What the city got from FEMA in the first three or four years after the storm was essentially chump change,” he said. “It was in the reversioning that the real dollars came in.”

Landrieu seems to understand this process. At a press conference announcing his 100 priority projects, the mayor explained that he is only going forward with projects that have “been through the mill with FEMA.”

If a project is not on the list “it could mean still in a discussion phase with FEMA, still in version phase,” he said, adding that his administration will continue to negotiate “so we can make sure that we get every dollar the federal government owes us.”

Although Landrieu said he is up for the challenges of negotiating with FEMA, it remains to be seen how much human capital he is willing, and able, to put into what is sure to be a massively laborious burden for a cash-strapped city with a workforce already compromised by furloughs and mandatory paycuts.

This summer, the Landrieu administration requested that FEMA reassess only one project worksheet, FEMA records show.

The Recovery School District, by way of comparison, requested seven reassessments.

A federal official suggests that the city, not the school board is the aberration. In response to a question from The Lens about the city’s success with the reversioning process, Rep. Joseph Cao’s spokesman, Taylor Henry, wrote in an email:  ”Re-versioning, in many of the applicants in the region, were very successful and continue to advance the obligations and recovery.” He went onto add that “the city of New Orleans continues to move the re-versioning process forward, but in the current administration, a new pair of eyes and team members may be what will make the difference as they communicate the level of expectation and pace needed for the city to recover.”

“Within the framework of two administrations encompassing a transition from Mayor Nagin to Mayor Landrieu, the level of engagement has increased dramatically,” Taylor wrote.

Recovery School District Budget Director Ramsey Green said that the district “spent 2008 and half of 2009 versioning all the project worksheets” before settling with FEMA on a lump sum payment of $1.8 billion covering all the damages laid out in the revised project worksheets.

“You want to make sure you get your dollars up before you agree on a settlement,” Green said.

Neither FEMA nor the city responded to public records requests for correspondence between each other and neither entity responded to questions about the reassessment of project worksheets.

What is known is that the city is pushing FEMA for a single settlement, like the one won by the school district and paid out this week.

“The lump-sum settlement could help us move faster on projects,” Landrieu spokesman Ryan Berni said.

FEMA declined to comment on the ongoing discussions.

In the meantime, budget woes have motivated Landrieu to cut down on contracts with outside consultants such as those handling FEMA revisions for the Nagin administration. Adding to the complications is the unfortunate fact that FEMA requires stringent documentation of all project spending – something that, from all indicators, City Hall, does not have.

Lower Ninth Ward organizer Vanessa Gueringer released a small, tight smile when asked if she is pleased that big projects in the Lower Ninth Ward – the C.J. Pete Sanchez Center and the neighborhood’s long-neglected playgrounds are on the mayor’s 100-project priority list.

“Finally,” she said. “And if they weren’t on that list,” Gueringer adds, “they would be hearing from me.”

Even so, there are other infrastructure repairs she continues to wait on, things like a stretch of Poland Avenue between Galvez Street and Claiborne Avenue where she said the street lamps don’t work.

In February, Gueringer filed a complaint with New Orleans Inspector General Edouard Quatrevaux asking his office to investigate the whereabouts of recovery dollars for the Lower Ninth Ward. The investigation never progressed but the question is still out there, and with it, a fiery challenge to the city’s new leadership.

“We were the poster child of this disaster for FEMA, for everyone,” she said last week, speaking to a reporter over a plate of meatloaf at the Lower Ninth Ward’s lone restaurant, Holmes One Stop.  “We see now that the money we got from putting our faces out there is being spent elsewhere and that is not something we plan to plan to stop fighting no matter how many anniversaries go by.”

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.

Seriously, can this manufactured story twist further into the absurd? It’s an election year, and we’re dealing with two wars, a lingering recession, and an environmental catastrophe in the Gulf. Thus, obviously, we’ve decided to engage in heated national debate… about the future of a Burlington Coat place in Manhattan. It’s an embarrassment reminiscent of the Terri Schiavo hullabaloo in the spring of 2005. Will we leave an American city to drown again in a few months so we can put this mosque distraction in perspective?

Justin Elliot traces the arc of the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” story in an informative Salon article. He shows how Islamophobic conservative blogger Pamela Geller pushed the “Monster Mosque” story until it finally gained national media attention. Then it was off to the races once politicians joined in. Elliot begins his piece with a quick set of helpful facts:

A group of progressive Muslim-Americans plans to build an Islamic community center two and a half blocks from ground zero in lower Manhattan. They have had a mosque in the same neighborhood for many years. There’s another mosque two blocks away from the site. City officials support the project. Muslims have been praying at the Pentagon, the other building hit on Sept. 11, for many years.

In short, there is no good reason that the Cordoba House project should have been a major national news story, let alone controversy.

I recommend you read the whole piece. Alternatively, you can read Elliot’s work in former Louisiana Insurance Commissioner Jim Brown’s widely published commentary, which lifts entire paragraphs from the Salon article without attribution. (It’s not the first time Brown has done this.)

Either way, you’ll see there’s no core “issue” here. Do American citizens have the right to legally build a house of worship in the United States of America? Clearly – YES!

But we want to object. It’s a mosque two blocks from the World Trade Center site. We have dark suspicions because the mosque involves… Islam, and the terrorists were Muslim, so… Well, you see it’s a very emotional issue. Remember that thousands died on 9/11. Those are the non sequiturs forming the empty “core” of this debate so far, as the end of this CNN interview inadvertently demonstrates.

Leadership has been in short supply. Politicians have mostly pandered to voters by condemning the mosque. (New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie being a notable exception.) They’re stoking this “emotional” issue for all it is worth. But that leads to questions. Precisely why is this an emotional issue? What’s at the root of it:

the complaint seems to boil down to a vague sense that doing Muslim stuff near ground zero is an unhappy reminder of terrorism…

And there you have it. We associate American Muslims with 9/11. But if that’s the case, why aren’t we “emotional” about the existing mosque standing five blocks from Ground Zero? Do we know what the imam at that mosque said after 9/11? Should the Manhattan mosque be closed out of “respect” to those murdered on 9/11? And what’s that earlier item about Muslim prayers in the Pentagon? Where’s the outrage about that?

John Stewart’s Daily Show captured the absurdity in this 9 minute segment ,which I consider essential viewing. It reviews the lack of national leadership on this issue, and concludes with the uncomfortably funny query: Should we build catholic churches near playgrounds? (The answer to that is “yes,” by the way.)

What in principle, is the objection to the mosque? Are opponents recommending a new law to address the situation? How would they apply it? Will it affect other properties, like the Ground Zero gentleman’s club? (Apparently a strip club near hallowed ground is okey doke, but a Muslim community center in an old coat store is an affront.)

And if we’re serious about not wanting tokens of Islam besmirching the vicinity of Ground Zero, let’s do this thing right. We’ll go block by block and cleanse the neighborhood around the site: no Arabic may be spoken, no middle eastern flags waved, no chicken shawarma served, no turbans worn, no facing Mecca while praying to the God of Abraham, no Al-gebra practiced… and, for good measure, tourists from New Orleans can’t refer to their home town as the “Crescent City”. All these freedoms will be curtailed, you see, out of “respect.”

As Americans, we’ll surely wreck ourselves if we respect ourselves this way.

The core principle at the center of this controversy is freedom. The United States strives to be a country that respects freedom even when –  especially when – a majority disagrees with a particular expression of that freedom. Actually, that’s precisely when our commitment to freedom counts the most. Over the years we’ve often failed, but that’s no excuse to fail again.

Yet suddenly we have conservatives – who are usually so keen on Constitutional principles – citing polls and people’s sensitivities to justify their opposition to the Park51 house of worship. Local columnist Jeff Crouere cited these reasons in a recent column. Then Crouere went for broke, declaring “no mosque should be built in any location until all questions are answered about the financing and support of the project.” It was unclear whether Crouere wanted to enlarge government in order to enforce his suggestion. New York authorities are satisfied that there are no law enforcement issues regarding the planned mosque, but Crouere is concerned there are questionable “ties.” He cites no specific information.

Must we remind Crouere that the Constitution is a majority of one, and the freedoms enshrined therein aren’t encapsulated in “if/then” clauses related to poll numbers or group sensitivities? If he knows something the authorities don’t about criminal funding or terrorist connections, he should bring it to their attention. He shouldn’t be coy or vague –  unless his goal is to fear-monger about vague “Muslim stuff”.

Worse than Crouere’s piece was New York Times’ columnist Ross Douthat’s recent effort. In it, Douthat identified an “American tradition” that stands alongside the Constitution. He describes it as a “cultural understanding of the country” which offers “real wisdom” apart from the principles in our founding documents. What sort of “wisdom” is he talking about? Well, Douthat believes many Americans suspect that “Islam in any form may be incompatible with the American way of life.” According to Douthat, this alternate, non-Constitutional “understanding” has historically used  discrimination and persecution to force new immigrant ethnic groups to assimilate into the American Way. How useful. (Tapped’s Jamelle Bouie responds to Douthat at more length here.)

While Douthat and other conservatives may believe this second American “tradition” is indispensable, I think it has always dragged us down. Our expanding, evolving American culture needn’t have an extra-legal enforcement division. Our cultural power comes from the things we do as a free people. It’s in our open example to the world. Far from being a source of wisdom, I view American provincialism as a hindrance to our success – a regression into “Know Nothing-ism.” Fear and discrimination have too often clipped the wings of our spirits.

Perhaps the only upside to this NYC mosque hysteria is that it interrupted a national discussion about the aforementioned “terror baby” nonsense. We had just concluded hearings for a new Supreme Court justice that included a lot of talk strictly interpreting the Constitution. Then, suddenly, many of these same strict constructionists want to change the 14th amendment. Why? Because illegal immigrants might come here to have anchor babies, and some of these anchor babies might also be terror babies.

Both of these “issues” were elevated into national discussion because they stoke that dark element in our national character – praised by Douthat – that we’ve spent centuries trying to overcome: fear of the fringe, the other, the different. When times are tough in an election year, we can just make something up – so let’s get tough on the Park51 mosque and terror babies! They’ve had it too easy for too long.

Local pols jumped into the fray, of course. Never one to privilege principle over grandstanding, Sen. David Vitter said the mosque was a “slap in the face to the American people.” His Senate-race opponent, Charlie Melancon responded with a lukewarm objection to the mosque that mirrored President Obama’s lukewarm “support” of it.

But Newt Gingrich was the one who really crystallized my view of what’s wrong with this controversy. While Gingrich is generally regarded as a thoughtful conservative, you wouldn’t know it by the way he’s handled this mosque issue. First, he caught flack from Pat Buchanan (of all people), when he compared the mosque developers to Nazis erecting a sign near the Holocaust museum. Shortly thereafter, Gingrich made a statement against the mosque that sounded like it was penned by Benito Mussolini’s speechwriter. It was this little fascist bon mot that actually inspired me to write this column:

There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia.

Outrageous! Since when do the policies in The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, or any other country for that matter, dictate the extent of our freedoms here in America? The Constitution is our guarantor, whether or not the House of Saud liberalizes its stone-age religious laws. That’s precisely what makes us exceptional: We are an experimental nation, bonded by shared truths in a national compact. Our freedoms are defined by the Constitution, not by our blood, and certainly not by our adversaries. Since when do we curtail inconvenient expressions of freedom based on the standards of a repressive, backwards oligarchy? Is Gingrich prepared to follow his logic and say that until Saudi Arabia opens Mecca to Christians, we will forbid Muslims to enter Manhattan? Is that how the enlightened American Experiment works now?

As embarrassing as this mosque kerfuffle is, the real embarrassment is that nine years after terrorists struck us, the hallowed ground which so many are “defending” is mostly empty space. John Poderetz brings some surprising perspective in his recent New York Post column. (Ignore the “in its place” misnomer):

Imagine that, in the weeks following [9/11], you had expressed the opinion that in nine years’ time… there would be no memorial, no museum, no nothing on the 16 acres on which the towers themselves sat.

Forget the whole question of whether there would be a mosque (or Islamic cultural center) in its place. Just imagine that you’d delivered the view that New York would so completely fail to maintain a sense of purpose regarding the salvation of Ground Zero. Imagine the scorn to which you’d have been subjected at the suggestion.

Yet here we are. Memories of the last nine years have turned Ground Zero from a site of horror, to a reminder of grief, to an occasion for ludicrous artistic posturing — and now to something very close to parody.

Four years ago, in his uniquely inept way, Mayor Ray Nagin observed that the WTC site was still a “hole in the ground.” Despite his horrible choice of words, Nagin might have had a point about the pace of rebuilding. Now New Yorkers like Podheretz are saying that the site is a disgrace. I’ll take it a step further: Isn’t it more shameful that we heatedly argue about a mosque 2 blocks from a hallowed site, yet barely care about the lack of progress rebuilding the site itself? Whatever you think of the Park51 complex, isn’t it a bigger insult to the memory of the victims of 9/11 that almost nothing – no finished memorial or building – exists on this site nine years after the attacks? Why doesn’t this embarrassing fact inflame our emotions like the mosque does?

I thought we were supposed to have a Freedom Tower by now; a monument showing the world that the United States can still take a punch and come back stronger; a dominating presence in a city where every ethnicity and creed peacefully co-exist; a symbolic testament to the fact that our shared belief in American freedom can’t be scared away.

Instead, we have terrorist babies and a mosque at the top of our national consciousness.

City officials hope the new plan will reduce conflict over development in neighborhoods and help attract new investment by setting clear and consistent rules for building.

“It tells investors that they can come back, that the rules won’t change in the middle of the game,” City Councilwoman-at-large Jackie Clarkson said.

But even as the council unanimously approved the legally binding land-use plan, questions remain about how the city will pay for implementing the reforms it lays out. The effort already has cost the city thousands of hours in manpower and millions of dollars in consulting fees.

In 2007, the city spent $2 million in recovery money to pay the Boston urban design company Goody Clancy to rewrite the city’s notoriously dysfunctional zoning law, redraft zoning maps and complete a master plan that promotes resident involvement in planning decisions and place-based development. While that upfront expense has already been swallowed, City Planning Director Yolanda Rodriguez told council members Thursday that she would be returning to the body with a request for money to carry out the demands made in the plan and “act more proactively and progressively” on neighborhood issues.

Rodriguez made her comment in response to council members who said they wanted each planning district to have its own planner to oversee development. The city’s planning director estimates an added expense of $900,000 on top of the existing $1.3 million annual budget to bulk up the department for increased demand for neighborhood planning. For context, the city’s 2010 spending plan totals $455 million, with officials estimating the year will end with the city $67 million in the red. Mayor Mitch Landrieu has dedicated much time throughout his first 100 days in office discussing the hard choices residents will have to make as the city makes needed cuts.

“This is a city of many needs but right now,” Rodriguez said. “But City Planning’s budget is less than 2 percent of the city’s spending.

Before Hurricane Katrina, the department operated with 30 planners on staff, she said.

“Now we have 14. It’s time to build back capacity.”

The cost of beefing up City Planning will come in addition to another new expense: creating a citizen participation plan. Both the increased planning staff and the creation of a system for resident involvement in neighborhood planning issues were unanimously celebrated Thursday. Yet no one has stepped up with answers for how to pay for the reforms, and Thursday’s council meeting ended with no substantive conversation of the impending financial burden. In the past, planners have discussed using an existing tax dedicated to neighborhood improvement to fund the $2 million annual expense of a citizen participation system.

“We are all excited,” said Gentilly Civic Improvement Association Vice-President Dalton Savwoir. “The citizen participation plan will help bring power to the people, it’ll help people. The hard part will be asking them to pay for it.”

The vote is largely symbolic because of an amendment to the City Charter approved by voters in 2008 that legally enshrined the plan even before consultants completed it in January.

The plan, subject to public input through a series of public meetings that occurred last spring, knits together neighborhood priorities expressed through post-Katrina planning processes into a single cohesive document that establishes new rules for land use.  It also lays the foundation for a rewriting of the city’s zoning code and mandates the city create a new system for public participation into zoning decisions. The new mechanism, which is outlined in only vague terms in the master plan, will remake the current informal process – instead of residents making their voices heard solely through testimony before the City Council, they will have the option of participating through a system of recognized neighborhood group committees that will advise the council on land use decisions in their districts.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu and the City Council have expressed support for the civic engagement tool, yet neither have come up with a surefire strategy for paying its estimated $2 million a year tab. And while the master plan mandates the creation of the new engagement tool, it does not provide any hints of how to pay for it.

Advocates of the reform say it should not be funded through the city’s general operating fund because doing that would make the program too vulnerable to budget cuts. “We need to have a dedicated funding source, something that wouldn’t let the council just kill it with one slash to the budget,” Committee for a Better New Orleans President Keith Twitchell said.

Planners believe that a millage passed years ago for neighborhood revitalization may be able to be used to support the new neighborhood offices, Twitchell said. If not, it is possible voters could pass a new millage or fee, he said. He estimates the cost per-family of the program is $70 annually, based on a 300,000-household population. “Will people want to put money towards more bureaucracy? No,” he said. “But will they be willing to put a modest sum towards more citizen participation? I think so.”

Legislation determining the structure of the participation system is expected to move through the City Planning Commission and City Council in the fall.

Designed by the staff of former recovery czar Ed Blakely and financed out of a $411 million pot of federal Disaster Community Development Block Grants given to the city, these programs generally have been on hold for the past several months. At a public budget meeting last week in the Lower Ninth Ward, Landrieu told the crowd that two of them – a $7 million program that provides financial assistance to businesses that sell fresh food and produce in low-income neighborhoods, and a $23 million program that provides assistance for commercial reinvestment – would be moving forward in the near future.  A spokesman for the mayor said Tuesday that “announcements” related to these programs, or others that are also funded by the disaster grants, would be made Friday.

Both the Fresh Foods Retail Initiative and the Neighborhood Commercial Investment Program were delayed in February when U.S. Housing and Urban Development officials, who are providing the money for the programs, balked at the bidding process the city was using to pick vendors to manage the programs. The state’s Office of Community Development approved the recovery programs in July, allowing the city to get started with a new bidding process. That approval came 13 months after the state approved the city’s recovery plan and opened the tap on the $411 million federal fund.

Pop philosopher Katy Perry inspired me. See, in a recent Rolling Stone interview she justified her vapid “California Gurls” hit song – about hot girls who will “melt your Popsicle” – by invoking rap legend Tupac Shakur:

It started in March, at a swanky Oscars afterparty [Perry] attended with guests like Oprah and Madonna. At one point, Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” came on the stereo, and Perry — who grew up surfing in her native Santa Barbara — watched as a room full of L.A. glitterati went crazy for a song about New York. “If 2Pac were here, he would not be OK with this!” she remembers thinking. “I felt like he was rolling in his grave.”

Clearly, something had to be done. So Perry summoned Tupac’s spirit and created this summer’s most persistent earwig about the “fine, fresh, fierce” girls “representin’” the West Coast. Take that Jay-Z! Hi five “2 Pac”! You didn’t die in vain.

In a way, Perry’s sun-kissed buffoonery liberated me to make a suggestion I probably should’ve kept to myself. I’ve been thinking a lot about new songs that could be inserted into the Saints’ game-day rotation. Obviously, nothing could ever replace “Crunk” which we all heard innumerable times last football season – and it never got old because it became the soundtrack to a championship. But here’s my suggestion for this year: I think the Glee remix of Madonna’s “Four Minutes” song could become a Who-dat hit.

Stay with me, now.

Admittedly, I’ve long admired the power of Madonna. But I’m not recommending “Four Minutes” merely because I’m a fan of the Material Girl. The “Glee” show reworked the song, and their version contains a key component that is also the reason why “Halftime (Stand Up and Get Crunk)” resonates so well among New Orleanians. Jeffrey at Library Chronicles blog explained it best:

[T]he main riff in “Halftime” is built from marching band music. In other words, it sounds like a friggin Mardi Gras parade coming at you. Is it really any surprise the whole city is into it?

Take a listen to the robust horns in the Glee version of “Four Minutes”. They’re catchy, like “Crunk.” Surely if a song by an Atlanta band can be successfully recycled for Saints fans, then “Four Minutes” might have a shot as well – especially late in the fourth quarter during a close game. What do you think?

If that doesn’t appeal to you, my other proposal is to have the Saintsations do one of their 45-second routines to the Ramones’ “She’s a Sensation”. Pretty obvious, but I think it would work.

The comments are open. Should the Gleek version of Madonna’s “Four Minutes” get some time in the Dome this season? And if not, what should?

Here’s a list of notable findings from the past week.

Board of Regents seeks new chief – The Louisiana Board of Regents is on the hunt for a new Commissioner of Higher Education, or Chief Executive Officer. The top officer will answer directly to the 15-member policy-making board that coordinates all public higher education in the State, and will replace Interim CEO Tom Layzell, who on Aug. 1 took the place of former embattled CEO Sally Clausen. Clausen resigned after public criticism of a hushed one-day retirement, which granted her a $90,000 payout. Info: 225-342-4253

Health Department wants services for drug-addicted teens and mentally ill – The Department of Health and Hospitals is looking for proposals from public or private organizations that wish to treat drug-dependent mentally ill patients. Facilities must be located in the seven parishes that Region IV serves. The department is also searching for organizations to provide separate facilities for treat drug-addicted teens. Info: 225-342-0777

Is your business disadvantaged? Here’s how to find out – The state Department of Transportation and Development’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program’s goals and conditions are available for public review during normal business hours until Sept. 15 at 1201 Capitol Access Rd. in Baton Rouge. Head to the capital to read them and see if you qualify. The program ensures non-discrimination in the award of Department of Transportation-assisted contracts.

Environmental Quality Department to set biochemical amount – Environmentally-conscious citizens, unite. The state Environmental Quality Department has drafted a Total Maximum Daily Load of biochemical substances for Grays Creek Watershed, which is located in the Lake Pontchartrain Basin. The department is taking public comment on the draft through Sept. 9. The draft can be viewed at http://deq.louisiana.gov/portal/default/aspx?tabid=1563.