If the City Council ratifies a tax increase Saturday that members privately negotiated with Mayor Mitch Landrieu, it will take one of the final actions needed to produce a balanced 2011 budget.
Hours after the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education approved Superintendent Paul Pastorek’s to let Recovery School District campuses consider a return to local control, one board member said that she plans to introduce a competing proposal at BESE’s next meeting.
Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman has changed his position on work done by Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s Criminal Justice Working Group, saying he needs 1,800 more beds than the 1,438-bed facility recommended by the group.
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.
