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.
Despite a painfully embarrassing incident at an airport scanner checkpoint, I’m still not totally on board with the sudden backlash against the new security procedures, which strikes me as oddly timed and perhaps disingenuous.
With a week to go before the City Council must approve the city’s 2011 budget, New Orleans’ chief economist has revised his revenue estimates to project $1.74 million more going to the city next year than previously thought.
Despite an apparent agreement last week to drastically reduce the size of the city’s jail complex, Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman on Monday bristled at any decision now that he be required to demolish jail cells in the future.
No public agency’s budget is a bigger source of intrigue in New Orleans than Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman’s.
The State Bond Commission voted today to issue ExxonMobil Corporation $12 million more in tax-free, low-interest bonds to finance an upgrade of the petro giant’s Baton Rouge facility.
