Fresh off a financing fight that still leaves the city without the full services to round up stray animals and address related problems, Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s budget calls for further cuts to the contract that puts private dogcatchers on the street.
Galilee Housing Initiative and Community Development Corporation has failed to renovate even one of the more than 70 properties given to it by the city.
City Council leaders gave a cool reception Wednesday to Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s plan to finance an economic development office within City Hall as well as the new Nola Business Alliance, a separate nonprofit entity funded with a mix of public and private dollars to generate jobs and investment in New Orleans.
A month ago I griped about Gov. Bobby Jindal’s preternatural luck. Louisiana’s “part time governor,” as I called him, had radically scaled down his dubious sand-berm idea without any negative political fallout. All summer Jindal had touted the berms as being key to winning the “war” against oil in the Gulf. Then he retreated, scaling down the plan, and neither the media nor the public turned on him.
Though presenters at the second day of City Council budget hearings enthusiastically outlined their funding requests for city programs aimed at children and families, most council members said the time – and the budget – isn’t right to begin new projects and urged them to find money elsewhere.
Seated on the elevated dais at City Council chambers today, Councilwoman Stacy Head rubbed her hands together and mouthed “money.”
Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman partially will follow through Tuesday morning on his threat to pull some security from the Criminal District Court building unless the city pays him an extra $500,000.
The City Council decided this week that it’s ready to start a process to plan for formal citizen participation – a process that citizens actually have been working toward for years.
