Land Use
What should we do with Charity Hospital? | The Lens – Join our live chat at 12:30 p.m. to discuss your ideas about the future of Big Charity.
Sourcing jobs at the Whole Foods Market development on South Broad | Gambit – Neighborhood groups want to ensure that residents who live near the planned grocery store complex will find employment there.
Riverwalk announces outlet retailers, including Neiman Marcus | NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune – Anchored with high-end stores, the Riverwalk will become the first urban outlet mall. Mayor Mitch Landrieu hails the city’s “retail boom.”
Criminal Justice
Former Mayor Ray Nagin appears unlikely to get Danziger Bridge records detailing government misconduct | NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune – A federal judge was obviously unconvinced by Nagin’s arguments for reports and records detailing prosecutorial misconduct in the local U.S. Attorney’s Office. The judge noted that no precedents were cited. The Advocate also covers the judge’s skepticism of Nagin’s “Perricone defense.”
Sex trafficking’s Black and Brown victims | The Louisiana Weekly –Abuse and poverty lead to sex trafficking, which might be better described as sexual slavery. According to the article, the most recent FBI statistics show that 40 percent of sex trafficking victims are black.
Environment
BP, federal government fighting over leak totals in Gulf oil spill trial in New Orleans | NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune – Reporter Mark Waller summarizes the expert testimony at the BP oil spill trial. The focus for the next three weeks is on estimates of the total volume of oil spilled from the Macondo well site in 2010.
The Louisiana Coast: Last Call — The RESTORE Act | WWNO – David Muth, who directs the Mississippi River Delta Restoration Project for the National Wildlife Federation, explains the RESTORE Act and what’s at stake in the current phase of the BP oil spill trial.
Stephanie Grace: Ouster won’t quiet Barry | The New Orleans Advocate –According to Grace, John Barry, the (presumably) outgoing vice chairman of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East, “suggested that the nominating committee acted out of fear that the Legislature would gut the levee authority, but said they ‘gutted themselves instead.’”
Government & Politics
Informed Sources | WYES – In case you missed the popular political roundtable on Friday, local journalists discussed the controversial Tulane scholarship program, real estate developer Pres Kabacoff’s plan for the core of the city, the Danziger order and the “psychology of crime.” Guests included Informed Sources’ Errol Laborde, WWL’s Mike Perlstein, The Lens’ Tyler Bridges and Gordon Russell from The New Orleans Advocate.
City Council Budget Hearings Scheduled October 23 – November 12 | Preservation in the Present
The City Council announced the dates of its annual series of budget hearings to review Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s proposed 2014 City Budget.
Individual city department and agency heads will testify before the Council in morning sessions (10:00 a.m. – Noon) and in afternoon sessions (1:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.) on October 23, 25, 28, 29, 30, 31 and November 1, 4, 5, 6, 11, and 12.
Expect Lens coverage of all of these hearings.
At a Nissan Plant in Mississippi, a Battle to Shape the U.A.W.’s Future | The New York Times – “At a time when the U.A.W. [United Auto Workers] has fewer than one-third of the 1.5 million workers it had in 1979, its organizing push in the South has taken on urgency and is being watched closely by labor leaders across the country.”
Schools
Grant will give troubled Jeff schools real-time student feedback | The New Orleans Advocate – “Teachers in historically troubled schools in Jefferson Parish will have a chance to get real-time feedback about how their students feel about their education, thanks to a $286,500 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.”
Smart Strategies That Help Students Learn How to Learn | MindShift – “What’s the key to effective learning? One intriguing body of research suggests a rather riddle-like answer: It’s not just what you know. It’s what you know about what you know.”