VA Chooses Site for New Medical Center

VA Deputy Secretary to Join Local, State and Federal Officials for Announcement

What: VA Deputy Secretary Gordon Mansfield will join New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and other state, local and federal officials to announce the site of the future New Orleans VA Medical Center.

Who: Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs Gordon Mansfield

The Honorable C. Ray Nagin, Mayor of New Orleans

Louisiana State University President Dr. John V. Lombardi

Louisiana Hurricane Recovery Coordinator Paul Rainwater

Jim Stark, FEMA Gulf Coast Recovery Office

When: Tuesday, November 25, at 11:30 a.m.

Where: City Hall (2nd Floor)

1300 Perdido Street

New Orleans, La.

Background:

Deputy Secretary Mansfield is chief operating officer of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs the nation’s second-largest Cabinet department, providing health care, benefits and burial services to America’s 24 million living veterans and their dependents.

This year, VA expects to spend more than $1.2 billion in Louisiana for the state’s 350,000 veterans. VA operates major medical centers in Alexandria and Shreveport, eight community-based outpatient clinics, veterans counseling centers in Kenner and Shreveport, and a nursing home in Alexandria.

“The dumb just keeps on coming”:http://blog.nola.com/tpmoney/2008/11/plans_for_new_lsuva_hospital_c.html#preview

Karen Gadbois co-founded The Lens. She now covers New Orleans government issues and writes about land use. With television reporter Lee Zurik she exposed widespread misuse of city recovery funds and led...

7 replies on “Your one minute is up..tommorows news today..”

  2. What a disgrace that the VA appears poised to build a medical center on lands acquired though secret deals. Neither the Mayor nor the Council appear to believe that freedoms and rights inherent with democratic government apply to Lower Mid-City. How appalling that our armed services can defend democracy throughout the world yet be blind when it is denied to citizens in their own country.

  3. The time has arrived for us to shift our posture from stopping before it has happened to undo our civility and expose this scandalous decision to the world.

    [More public records to file …]

  5. Instruct me how to and I will be glad to
    [I will also follow up with our host and share the pdfs with her]

  6. Is anybody a lawyer? Have we contacted any who might help (Loyola Law Clinic, etc.?)

    Also, both CNN and the NY Times have shown interest…pdfs could also be sent to them.

  7. One can only hope national media see the bigger picture rather than doing puff pieces about doomed neighbors or running regurgitated propaganda from the city or project insiders.

    This story does not begin with Katrina. Look back to the era when the VA moved from Robert E. Lee Blvd. to the CBD. Look at the near-demolition of St. Joseph Church in the 1970s.

    Look at aerials of the lands adjacent to the LSUHSC. Why are these lands considered “off the table” for site selection? Whoever owns those lands is reserving them for something. But for what? A stadium? Condos?

    Nobody is arguing about the critical need for quality health care but there is no valid excuse for such a major project rushing to completion in secret. Indiscriminate overfunding of an unexplained project is idiotic. Anyone can collect money in the name of a good cause. But how much of the collected money is actually spent for that purpose? How many $6000 palm trees are we getting with this deal?

    How much of the documentary evidence supporting the RPC footprint was initiated, funded or staffed by those tied to interested parties?

    How much land acquisition was funded and/or initiated prior to “official” site selection?

    Even though the VA indicated in public meetings that the original November 2007 MOU had expired, ordinance 22,943 m.c.s. was passed in December and granted Nagin power to begin the process outlined in the MOU.

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