Faith-based groups focus on housing as they shift into a new phase of Katrina recovery
Sunday, June 11, 2006
By Bruce Nolan -- Times Picayune
Staff writer
In the early morning light one day last week, Inman Houston, a Southern Baptist seminary student and a staffer at First Baptist Church New Orleans, climbed onto a makeshift table and called for prayer among a crowd of ragtag volunteers gathered in a 9th Ward parking lot. More than 100 men and women dressed for the heat in shorts, tool belts and work boots fell silent and stood temporarily bareheaded as Houston asked God to bless their work and the tattered neighborhood.
At the sound of "Amen," a baker, a cardiac surgeon, a group of collegiate golf coaches, some graduate students and scores of teenagers, retirees and vacationers from all over the country broke up and swarmed over the skeletal framing of 10 houses rising near Alvar and North Roman streets.
The three-bedroom, $70,000 homes are the work of Habitat for Humanity, an evangelical home-building organization, and the Baptist Crossroads Foundation, a partnership of several local Southern Baptist churches and ministries.
They are the first of 40 that more than 3,000 volunteers from 30 states will build in New Orleans this summer.
And those 40 are the first of more than 8,000 homes and apartments that evangelical, Catholic and Episcopal churches plan to build or repair over the next few years to partially restore the housing stock wrecked by Hurricane Katrina.
"These aren't homes, they're families," said Tobey Pitman, a Southern Baptist official gearing up a separate program to repair 1,000 homes. "This is kingdom-building work, a way to apply the Gospel that's in our heads and in our hearts and take it out into the streets where people live."
New phase of help
Nine months after the storm, church builders say the houses on Alvar Street are the first evidence of a new phase in the help that faith communities have poured into New Orleans since the first hours after the Katrina.
Relief that began with providing for the immediate needs of dazed families -- hot food, temporary shelter, electronic cash cards -- eventually gave way to supplying stabilized homeowners with tens of thousands of volunteers to help gut their ruined homes.
They work in programs like Nechama, Reform Judaism's storm relief agency, the Catholic church's Operation Helping Hands, and Samaritan's Purse, an evangelical relief organization. The Rev. Darryl Tate, who heads Louisiana's United Methodist storm relief effort, said his agency provided job assignments and housing for 2,500 volunteers this month alone.
The progress has not been uniform. Indeed, some pastors say the scale of the Katrina experience is so huge that some churches are still dispensing household supplies. "I'm still doing the same things now I was doing last October. The only difference is now I have electricity," said the Rev. Jerry Kramer, whose Episcopal Church of the Annunciation in Broadmoor doles out diapers, bleach and other goods five days a week.
But even so, church leaders say denominations are gearing up for the third and longest phase of their commitment to New Orleans' recovery: the years-long task of rebuilding ruined housing.
Katrina recovery in all its forms is "the biggest domestic relief effort we've ever faced," said Linda Beher, a spokesman for the United Methodist Committee on Relief.
Although the effort is massive, it does not yet imperil that church's other domestic works, she said. "Our donors have been incredibly generous," Beher said.
"I believe $77 million has been gathered just for hurricane relief. I'd say we're well-funded for hurricane relief and our other efforts."
Some of the housing going up now will be built by volunteer labor and sold at or slightly below cost to qualified buyers.
Some, like the 1,100-square-foot, wood-frame homes going up on Alvar Street, come with no-interest, 20-year mortgages that will leave new homeowners with a monthly note of only $500 to $600 -- including insurance and taxes, Habitat Executive Director Jim Pate said.
Other programs, like Pitman's Operation Noah Rebuild, a Southern Baptist/Salvation Army effort, will use volunteers to help under-insured homeowners complete repairs.
And some, like Providence Community Housing, a major new Catholic initiative -- and by far the largest of all the efforts -- will help homeowners rebuild and add thousands of new homes and apartments to the area's housing inventory, some targeted for people with special needs.
Playing to their strengths
The varied efforts reflect denominations' different strengths and fields of experience.
The Archdiocese of New Orleans has years of experience dealing with chronic poverty, building expertise by working with federal antipoverty programs to develop and manage housing for the poor and disabled. It plans to use that experience to seek federal tax credits to help attract $25 million, according to a summary prepared by Jim Kelly, the local head of Catholic Charities.
Providence Community Housing, the church's new post-Katrina housing initiative, hopes to use professional labor to help 1,000 families repair their homes, build 4,350 new homes and apartments, and repair 1,150 storm-damaged units owned by Christopher Homes, the archdiocese's housing agency, a local Catholic Charities spokesman said.
By contrast, autonomous but loosely linked evangelical churches are forming smaller partnerships to build fewer homes. But with strong traditions of aggressive, hands-on volunteerism and assets like Habitat for Humanity, which has learned to organize disparate volunteers into home-building crews, they have been able to launch sooner.
Actually, the Alvar home-building project predates Hurricane Katrina.
Conceived as an antipoverty initiative in 2004 by the Rev. David Crosby of First Baptist Church of New Orleans, the project had acquired its property, partnered with Habitat for Humanity and was trying to raise $3 million when Katrina struck.
In the weeks that followed, said Pate, donations poured in and volunteer interest surged, positioning the project for this summer's intense burst of construction.
In addition to the Catholic and Southern Baptist programs, several other church-based housing initiatives are under way.
Among them:
-- Habitat for Humanity plans to build another 350 to 400 homes elsewhere in the 9th Ward over the next two years, separate from the Baptist Crossroads Project. It has begun identifying property, Pate said.
-- Operation Noah Rebuild, the Southern Baptist/Salvation Army effort, expects to draw on Promise Keepers, the evangelical men's organization, to repair 1,000 homes and restore 20 Southern Baptist churches in two years. The $10 million operation is still assessing target homes. It hopes to put 50,000 volunteers to work over the course of the project, said Pitman, its executive director.
-- The Jericho Road Housing Initiative, named after the road that figures in the New Testament story of the Good Samaritan, is the first-ever housing effort by the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana. Using $2.3 million from the national Episcopal Relief and Development Office, the diocese expects to borrow $20 million over several years through a community development corporation at the Whitney Bank. It hopes to create 150 homes for low- and moderate-income families in Central City, according to Executive Director Brad Powers. It begins with a pilot program of five homes this summer.
Houses taking shape
In the coming week, activity on Alvar Street will quicken, Crosby and others say. Beginning this week and through mid-August, 200 to 300 volunteers will be on site any given day.
Although unadorned by the ornamental millwork that decades ago distinguished even blue-collar homes, the plain wooden houses are nonetheless recognizably New Orleanian. They are narrow and deep, with front porches across the width of the house. Concrete piers lift them 5 feet, 7 inches above the ground, well in excess of FEMA flood plain regulations, Pate said.
After volunteers dug out the foundations in the spring, contractors laid the subsurface plumbing, set the piers and laid the subfloor upon them in preparation for this summer's volunteer push. Professionals will install the electrical, heating and air-conditioning systems, but volunteers will do much of the rest.
Those volunteers include the homeowners themselves.
Under Habitat rules, each homeowner has to invest 100 hours of "sweat equity" in his or her home, and 250 hours on others' homes.
This week Margie Perez, a singer-songwriter who was flooded out of an apartment in Broadmoor, worked on what in a few weeks will be her house at 1801 Alvar. With other volunteers she put up walls and attached exterior sheathing. In time, she will hang drywall, then help paint its exterior blue, with white trim, a scheme she picked herself.
Pate said the homes appraise at $92,000; Habitat sells them to homebuyers for $70,000. Perez said her total monthly note will be less than $600, "less than I'm paying for a one-bedroom (apartment) now -- and I get to help, which is amazing."
"Right now the corner of Alvar and North Roman is the most hopeful place in New Orleans," said Houston, a staffer at Crosby's church who coordinates the project volunteers.
"This is my refuge. When you drive around town and see so much damage everywhere after all this time, this is the place to come to see something happening. Something hopeful."
. . . . . . .
-- Habitat for Humanity: Volunteer and donation information at http://www.habitat-nola.org. To inquire about home ownership, call 861-2059.
-- Jericho Road Episcopal Housing Initiative: To inquire about home ownership, call 251-6014.
-- Operation Noah Rebuild: To inquire about under-insured home repairs only, not church repairs, call 362-4604 or (877) 934-0808.
-- Providence Community Housing: To inquire about programs, call 596-3089.
News from Central Gulf Focus: La./Miss (Ala contributors)
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Audrey2Katrina
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Audrey2Katrina
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Golden Fisherman statue missing from Point Cadet site
City of Biloxi website: June 11, 2006
Biloxi’s Golden Fisherman, a 16-foot statue that once stood on Point Cadet in tribute to the seafood industry, has apparently been stolen from the former site of the Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum.
The city-owned statue, which weighed more than a ton, was last seen mid-afternoon Saturday near the museum site, where city workers had moved it a week ago. The statue, which was insured, was damaged and knocked off its pedestal by Hurricane Katrina.
“How someone could have the gall to do something like this on the weekend of the Blessing of the Fleet just appalls me,” Mayor A.J. Holloway said this afternoon. “On the other hand, if someone moved it for safe keeping, call the Biloxi Police and tell them where it is.
“This statue was not brass, or copper or even gold. It was made of an alloy, and one of the components of that alloy was melted-down winches and cleats and other fixtures from shrimp boats. They were donated by fishermen. So it had no huge value as far as precious metals, but it was precious to those families and to this community.”
Anyone with information about the whereabouts of the statue should contact the Biloxi Police Department at (228) 392-0641.
Holloway had launched an initiative in 2004 to update the list of seafood family names that were to be placed on marble tablets surrounding the fisherman’s pedestal on Point Cadet, where the city had moved the statue.
In fact, the city was to unveil the results of that effort in late 2005 until Hurricane Katrina interrupted those plans. The storm’s winds and surge destroyed landscaping, sidewalks and benches that had been installed at the statue's waterfront site at Point Cadet.
The statue was originally commissioned under Mayor Jerry O’Keefe in 1975 as part of the country’s Bicentennial. It was a golden figure of a beak-nosed fisherman with his arms outstretched and throwing a cast net. It was crafted by Ocean Springs sculptor Harry Reeks. It was believed to be made of phosphor bronzes, or tin bronzes, which are alloys containing copper, tin and phosphorous, which resisted corrosion.
“People had different opinions on what it looked like,” Holloway said this afternoon, “but the fact is this statue was a tribute to the people of our seafood history. It was tribute to our history and it was certainly going to continue to play a role in our future. It’s just a shame.”
City of Biloxi website: June 11, 2006
Biloxi’s Golden Fisherman, a 16-foot statue that once stood on Point Cadet in tribute to the seafood industry, has apparently been stolen from the former site of the Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum.
The city-owned statue, which weighed more than a ton, was last seen mid-afternoon Saturday near the museum site, where city workers had moved it a week ago. The statue, which was insured, was damaged and knocked off its pedestal by Hurricane Katrina.
“How someone could have the gall to do something like this on the weekend of the Blessing of the Fleet just appalls me,” Mayor A.J. Holloway said this afternoon. “On the other hand, if someone moved it for safe keeping, call the Biloxi Police and tell them where it is.
“This statue was not brass, or copper or even gold. It was made of an alloy, and one of the components of that alloy was melted-down winches and cleats and other fixtures from shrimp boats. They were donated by fishermen. So it had no huge value as far as precious metals, but it was precious to those families and to this community.”
Anyone with information about the whereabouts of the statue should contact the Biloxi Police Department at (228) 392-0641.
Holloway had launched an initiative in 2004 to update the list of seafood family names that were to be placed on marble tablets surrounding the fisherman’s pedestal on Point Cadet, where the city had moved the statue.
In fact, the city was to unveil the results of that effort in late 2005 until Hurricane Katrina interrupted those plans. The storm’s winds and surge destroyed landscaping, sidewalks and benches that had been installed at the statue's waterfront site at Point Cadet.
The statue was originally commissioned under Mayor Jerry O’Keefe in 1975 as part of the country’s Bicentennial. It was a golden figure of a beak-nosed fisherman with his arms outstretched and throwing a cast net. It was crafted by Ocean Springs sculptor Harry Reeks. It was believed to be made of phosphor bronzes, or tin bronzes, which are alloys containing copper, tin and phosphorous, which resisted corrosion.
“People had different opinions on what it looked like,” Holloway said this afternoon, “but the fact is this statue was a tribute to the people of our seafood history. It was tribute to our history and it was certainly going to continue to play a role in our future. It’s just a shame.”
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Audrey2Katrina
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Education Secretary announces big charter school grant for La.
6/12/2006, 11:07 a.m. CT
By JANET McCONNAUGHEY
The Associated Press
BELLE CHASSE, La. (AP) — The charter school movement, already bolstered in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina devastated public schools in and around New Orleans, got another boost Monday when federal officials announced a $23.9 million grant to create new charter schools in the state.
The grant was announced in a news release prior to a late morning appearance by U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings at Belle Chasse Primary School, near New Orleans.
In 40 states and the District of Columbia, more than a million children attend 3,600 charter schools, according to the Center for Education Reform, a charter-school advocacy group.
Nowhere are the percentages as high as in New Orleans, where 18 of the 25 public schools that are operating, or that are preparing to open post-Katrina, are charters.
Spellings' announcement of the new grant was planned at Belle Chasse in conjunction with an announcement that the organization First Book will donate 250,000 books to communities hit by last year's hurricanes across the Gulf Coast, from Florida to Texas. First Book is a group founded to give children from low-income families a chance to read and own their first new books.
Belle Chasse, the biggest city in Plaquemines Parish, is also the highest, and was spared most of the flooding that covered the rest of the parish. The four schools overseen by the Plaquemines Parish School Board don't include any charters, but the U.S. Navy base has a public charter, Belle Chasse Academy.
Charter schools get public money but have greater freedom than most public schools in budgets, hiring and purchasing. They can be opened by nonprofit groups, churches, universities, community centers, parents, groups of teachers and school districts themselves.
"Charter schools were not something that New Orleans or Louisiana was very high on prior to Katrina," said Jeanne Allen, founder of the Center for Education Reform. "New Orleans is such a great example of what you can do if you start over."
Before Katrina, charter schools were slowly gaining support in New Orleans, where the school system was in such bad shape that financial control had been turned over to a management company. Widespread destruction by Hurricane Katrina and the New Orleans School Board's inability to reopen schools rapidly gave new impetus to the movement.
At the start of the 2005-06 school year — just before Katrina hit — only four of New Orleans' 128 public schools were charter schools.
After Katrina, the state Department of Education took control of 112 of the city's schools. As the city repopulates, the department has the authority to reopen the schools — as charters or under some other type of administration.
The grant announced Monday is in addition to one announced by the U.S. Department of Education last September. That $20.9 million was for reopening charter schools damaged by the hurricane and to create new charter schools.
6/12/2006, 11:07 a.m. CT
By JANET McCONNAUGHEY
The Associated Press
BELLE CHASSE, La. (AP) — The charter school movement, already bolstered in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina devastated public schools in and around New Orleans, got another boost Monday when federal officials announced a $23.9 million grant to create new charter schools in the state.
The grant was announced in a news release prior to a late morning appearance by U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings at Belle Chasse Primary School, near New Orleans.
In 40 states and the District of Columbia, more than a million children attend 3,600 charter schools, according to the Center for Education Reform, a charter-school advocacy group.
Nowhere are the percentages as high as in New Orleans, where 18 of the 25 public schools that are operating, or that are preparing to open post-Katrina, are charters.
Spellings' announcement of the new grant was planned at Belle Chasse in conjunction with an announcement that the organization First Book will donate 250,000 books to communities hit by last year's hurricanes across the Gulf Coast, from Florida to Texas. First Book is a group founded to give children from low-income families a chance to read and own their first new books.
Belle Chasse, the biggest city in Plaquemines Parish, is also the highest, and was spared most of the flooding that covered the rest of the parish. The four schools overseen by the Plaquemines Parish School Board don't include any charters, but the U.S. Navy base has a public charter, Belle Chasse Academy.
Charter schools get public money but have greater freedom than most public schools in budgets, hiring and purchasing. They can be opened by nonprofit groups, churches, universities, community centers, parents, groups of teachers and school districts themselves.
"Charter schools were not something that New Orleans or Louisiana was very high on prior to Katrina," said Jeanne Allen, founder of the Center for Education Reform. "New Orleans is such a great example of what you can do if you start over."
Before Katrina, charter schools were slowly gaining support in New Orleans, where the school system was in such bad shape that financial control had been turned over to a management company. Widespread destruction by Hurricane Katrina and the New Orleans School Board's inability to reopen schools rapidly gave new impetus to the movement.
At the start of the 2005-06 school year — just before Katrina hit — only four of New Orleans' 128 public schools were charter schools.
After Katrina, the state Department of Education took control of 112 of the city's schools. As the city repopulates, the department has the authority to reopen the schools — as charters or under some other type of administration.
The grant announced Monday is in addition to one announced by the U.S. Department of Education last September. That $20.9 million was for reopening charter schools damaged by the hurricane and to create new charter schools.
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Audrey2Katrina
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National Hurricane Center issues a hurricane warning
Times Picayune NOLA.com 6/12/06
As of 1 p.m. CDT, Tropical Storm Alberto is moving quicker toward the Florida coast. The tropical storm unexpectedly picked up strength during its approach to the Florida coast. Forecasters said it's possible that Alberto could strengthen enough to become a hurricane. The storms sustained winds are just a few miles per hour short of hurricane status.
Alberto prompted The National Hurricane Center to issue a hurricane warning for the Gulf Coast of Florida from Longboat Key to Ochlockonee River. A tropical storm warning is in effect from south of Longboat Key to Englewood and west of the Ochlockonee River to Indian Pass.
A hurricane warning means that hurricane conditions are expected within the warning area within the next 24 hours.
The center of Tropical Storm Alberto, the first named storm of the 2006 hurricane season, is located about 155 miles south-southwest of Apalachicola and about 180 miles southwest of Cedar Key. The storm is moving toward the north-northeast near 10 mph and a turn to the northeast is expected over the next 24 hours. Maximum sustained winds have increased to near 70 mph and additional strengthening is forecast over the coming hours. Tropical storm force winds extend outward up to 230 miles to the northeast and southeast of the center.
Alberto's rain was already bearing down on florida and forecasters warned that isolated tornadoes were a possibility. According to an AP report, there were already two tornadoes spotted; neither caused any injuries of damage.
Alberto is expected to drop up to four to eight inches of rain along the projected storm path with isolated maximum amounts of ten inches. The National Hurricane center expects storm surge flooding up to eight to ten feet more than is normal in areas that are south or southeast of Alberto.
Times Picayune NOLA.com 6/12/06
As of 1 p.m. CDT, Tropical Storm Alberto is moving quicker toward the Florida coast. The tropical storm unexpectedly picked up strength during its approach to the Florida coast. Forecasters said it's possible that Alberto could strengthen enough to become a hurricane. The storms sustained winds are just a few miles per hour short of hurricane status.
Alberto prompted The National Hurricane Center to issue a hurricane warning for the Gulf Coast of Florida from Longboat Key to Ochlockonee River. A tropical storm warning is in effect from south of Longboat Key to Englewood and west of the Ochlockonee River to Indian Pass.
A hurricane warning means that hurricane conditions are expected within the warning area within the next 24 hours.
The center of Tropical Storm Alberto, the first named storm of the 2006 hurricane season, is located about 155 miles south-southwest of Apalachicola and about 180 miles southwest of Cedar Key. The storm is moving toward the north-northeast near 10 mph and a turn to the northeast is expected over the next 24 hours. Maximum sustained winds have increased to near 70 mph and additional strengthening is forecast over the coming hours. Tropical storm force winds extend outward up to 230 miles to the northeast and southeast of the center.
Alberto's rain was already bearing down on florida and forecasters warned that isolated tornadoes were a possibility. According to an AP report, there were already two tornadoes spotted; neither caused any injuries of damage.
Alberto is expected to drop up to four to eight inches of rain along the projected storm path with isolated maximum amounts of ten inches. The National Hurricane center expects storm surge flooding up to eight to ten feet more than is normal in areas that are south or southeast of Alberto.
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Audrey2Katrina
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I-10 construction has gone beyond bugged motorists
-- neighbors also feel the crunch
They note dust, noise and drivers seeking detours
Monday, June 12, 2006
By Mark Waller
East Jefferson bureau
For Interstate 10's motorists and Interstate 10's neighbors, the hassle of road construction is the price of progress.
Between Causeway Boulevard in Metairie and the I-610 split, where a three-year, $69 million effort is under way to widen the busiest stretch of highway in Louisiana, motorists measure the price in terms of congestion and delays. Neighbors measure it in noise, dust and speeding drivers who leave I-10 and use their streets to avoid traffic tie-ups.
Robert Heintz said his house at the intersection of the South I-10 Service Road and Helios Avenue shakes from passing trucks and heavy equipment. He thinks the jarring is sinking his foundation. He has given up trying to clean all the dust that descends onto his property.
"Between the breeze and the traffic and the machines grading and digging up and smoothing out, you live in a dust bowl," Heintz said.
A block away on Hesper Avenue, residents complain of drivers zipping past their homes, looking for detours around the heavy traffic on I-10.
"They fly down the street," said David Morgan, who worries about his two young daughters playing outside. "When it backs up, they come down here like maniacs."
Another neighbor, Darryl Schmitt, is more sanguine.
"It'll take a while, but eventually it's going to get better, hopefully," Schmitt said. "You have to suffer to get improvement."
The eventual benefits of the construction project, which began in February after a Hurricane Katrina delay, will be more lanes from the 17th Street Canal to Causeway, sound walls to dampen traffic noise in neighborhoods, better drainage and a new entrance ramp from Bonnabel to I-10. It is the fifth of seven projects that Louisiana undertook in 1998 to improve I-10 between Williams Boulevard in Kenner and the Carrollton Avenue interchange in New Orleans.
Workers are now excavating the strip of land in the I-10 median near Bonnabel Boulevard to prepare it for the additional lanes, one in each direction, said Bruce Perdue, assistant district construction engineer for the state Department of Transportation and Development. They also are widening the bridges over Oaklawn Drive, replacing drainage and sewer lines along both sides of the highway and installing the posts that will hold sound walls near the 17th Street Canal on the north side of the interstate.
"It's an ant's nest of activity right now," Perdue said.
Among the most noticeable features of the construction zone, visible to drivers and residents, are the two inverted U-shaped cranes that roll along the median on thick tires. Perdue said the apparatuses move concrete girders into place for bridge widening and ramp building.
They reduce traffic blockages by allowing workers to stockpile the girders between the interstate lanes, where the cranes pick them up as needed, Perdue said.
He said the contractor, Boh Brothers Construction, is operating on schedule to complete the project in 2009.
Perdue and other officials spoke to members of the New Bonnabel Place Civic and Improvement Association last month, and most residents seemed satisfied that the contractor has done as much as possible to minimize the disruption to neighbors, said Hugh Cowan, president of the group at the time.
"I think at this point they're doing a pretty good job of trying to keep from irritating people," Cowan said.
Cowan, who lives on Orion Avenue north of the interstate, said the residents bearing the brunt of the work are the ones closest to the highway on the south side. But even there, not everybody minds the commotion.
Marie LeBoeuf rocked serenely in her porch swing reading a book one evening last week as the traffic roared by just across the service road from her house on Hesper Avenue. LeBoeuf, 89, has lived in the same house since the 1940s. When the construction noise gets really bad, she simply turns down her hearing aids.
And even then, she said, she finds enjoyment in the work.
"It gives me something to look at," she said. "Now I can sit on the swing and watch that work. I feel all right about it."
-- neighbors also feel the crunch
They note dust, noise and drivers seeking detours
Monday, June 12, 2006
By Mark Waller
East Jefferson bureau
For Interstate 10's motorists and Interstate 10's neighbors, the hassle of road construction is the price of progress.
Between Causeway Boulevard in Metairie and the I-610 split, where a three-year, $69 million effort is under way to widen the busiest stretch of highway in Louisiana, motorists measure the price in terms of congestion and delays. Neighbors measure it in noise, dust and speeding drivers who leave I-10 and use their streets to avoid traffic tie-ups.
Robert Heintz said his house at the intersection of the South I-10 Service Road and Helios Avenue shakes from passing trucks and heavy equipment. He thinks the jarring is sinking his foundation. He has given up trying to clean all the dust that descends onto his property.
"Between the breeze and the traffic and the machines grading and digging up and smoothing out, you live in a dust bowl," Heintz said.
A block away on Hesper Avenue, residents complain of drivers zipping past their homes, looking for detours around the heavy traffic on I-10.
"They fly down the street," said David Morgan, who worries about his two young daughters playing outside. "When it backs up, they come down here like maniacs."
Another neighbor, Darryl Schmitt, is more sanguine.
"It'll take a while, but eventually it's going to get better, hopefully," Schmitt said. "You have to suffer to get improvement."
The eventual benefits of the construction project, which began in February after a Hurricane Katrina delay, will be more lanes from the 17th Street Canal to Causeway, sound walls to dampen traffic noise in neighborhoods, better drainage and a new entrance ramp from Bonnabel to I-10. It is the fifth of seven projects that Louisiana undertook in 1998 to improve I-10 between Williams Boulevard in Kenner and the Carrollton Avenue interchange in New Orleans.
Workers are now excavating the strip of land in the I-10 median near Bonnabel Boulevard to prepare it for the additional lanes, one in each direction, said Bruce Perdue, assistant district construction engineer for the state Department of Transportation and Development. They also are widening the bridges over Oaklawn Drive, replacing drainage and sewer lines along both sides of the highway and installing the posts that will hold sound walls near the 17th Street Canal on the north side of the interstate.
"It's an ant's nest of activity right now," Perdue said.
Among the most noticeable features of the construction zone, visible to drivers and residents, are the two inverted U-shaped cranes that roll along the median on thick tires. Perdue said the apparatuses move concrete girders into place for bridge widening and ramp building.
They reduce traffic blockages by allowing workers to stockpile the girders between the interstate lanes, where the cranes pick them up as needed, Perdue said.
He said the contractor, Boh Brothers Construction, is operating on schedule to complete the project in 2009.
Perdue and other officials spoke to members of the New Bonnabel Place Civic and Improvement Association last month, and most residents seemed satisfied that the contractor has done as much as possible to minimize the disruption to neighbors, said Hugh Cowan, president of the group at the time.
"I think at this point they're doing a pretty good job of trying to keep from irritating people," Cowan said.
Cowan, who lives on Orion Avenue north of the interstate, said the residents bearing the brunt of the work are the ones closest to the highway on the south side. But even there, not everybody minds the commotion.
Marie LeBoeuf rocked serenely in her porch swing reading a book one evening last week as the traffic roared by just across the service road from her house on Hesper Avenue. LeBoeuf, 89, has lived in the same house since the 1940s. When the construction noise gets really bad, she simply turns down her hearing aids.
And even then, she said, she finds enjoyment in the work.
"It gives me something to look at," she said. "Now I can sit on the swing and watch that work. I feel all right about it."
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Audrey2Katrina
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Kids get education on wheels
Bus also a mobile emergency station
By DONNA HARRIS
SUN HERALD
PASCAGOULA - Usually the wheels on the bus go round and round. But on this bus, it's the passengers who revolve.
Hundreds of children in Pascagoula and Gautier will visit the Pascagoula School District's new and improved Storyland Express bus this summer.
The bus will be open to children from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. each weekday through June 30.
It will be parked at the Pascagoula Wal-Mart every Monday, Wednesday and Friday; at the Boys and Girls Club in Gautier on Ladner Road every Tuesday; and at the Boys and Girls Club center on Tucker Avenue in Pascagoula every Thursday.
Children must be signed in by a responsible adult with a picture ID and the maximum stay on board is one hour per child.
Parents will be given a pager that vibrates when the hour is up, said Debbie Anglin, director of communications.
The original bus, which gave youngsters access to reading materials during the summer, was destroyed during Hurricane Katrina.
The new Storyland Express, a 2004 Harvester taken from the district's existing fleet, has been upgraded to more than just a minilibrary on wheels.
It got a new patriotic paint job, a new selection of books and a new name.
The Student Technology and Reading Bus, or STAR Bus, boasts 13 computers instead of three, Internet access, multimedia computer lab, Accelerated math lab, science lab and broadcast journalism lab.
What makes this bus more than just a learning center on wheels is the mounted satellite dish on top that allows the bus to serve as a mobile command center for the school district in emergency situations.
Anglin said the bus' computer network server can retrieve all school records and can even print paychecks.
"In the case of another hurricane, the bus can be converted into a mobile emergency operations center with access to student and personnel records, grades, transcripts, teachers, parents and state agencies via satellite telephone," she said.
When school resumes in the fall, the bus will be used as a professional development lab where teachers can receive training sessions at their school campuses instead of traveling for training.
It will also serve as a community outreach with scheduled lessons for adult learning, and provide mobile tutoring in neighborhoods for children who need extra help with classwork and homework assignments.
Next month, the bus will visit neighborhoods throughout Pascagoula and Gautier to make parent contacts, allowing parents to see what is available to their children and showing them how they can get more involved in the education process.
"We feel like they're a vital piece of the puzzle," Anglin said.
The district's bus is the only one of its kind in South Mississippi, Anglin said. And because of in-house labor, equipment donations and grants, the renovations did not cost taxpayers anything, said Superintendent Wayne Rodolfich.
The actual value of the bus is unknown, Anglin said.
"The bus is an invaluable tool," she said. "You can't really put a value on it because of the people we are able to reach with this bus. The Storyland Express was for reading, but this is so much more."
Bus also a mobile emergency station
By DONNA HARRIS
SUN HERALD
PASCAGOULA - Usually the wheels on the bus go round and round. But on this bus, it's the passengers who revolve.
Hundreds of children in Pascagoula and Gautier will visit the Pascagoula School District's new and improved Storyland Express bus this summer.
The bus will be open to children from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. each weekday through June 30.
It will be parked at the Pascagoula Wal-Mart every Monday, Wednesday and Friday; at the Boys and Girls Club in Gautier on Ladner Road every Tuesday; and at the Boys and Girls Club center on Tucker Avenue in Pascagoula every Thursday.
Children must be signed in by a responsible adult with a picture ID and the maximum stay on board is one hour per child.
Parents will be given a pager that vibrates when the hour is up, said Debbie Anglin, director of communications.
The original bus, which gave youngsters access to reading materials during the summer, was destroyed during Hurricane Katrina.
The new Storyland Express, a 2004 Harvester taken from the district's existing fleet, has been upgraded to more than just a minilibrary on wheels.
It got a new patriotic paint job, a new selection of books and a new name.
The Student Technology and Reading Bus, or STAR Bus, boasts 13 computers instead of three, Internet access, multimedia computer lab, Accelerated math lab, science lab and broadcast journalism lab.
What makes this bus more than just a learning center on wheels is the mounted satellite dish on top that allows the bus to serve as a mobile command center for the school district in emergency situations.
Anglin said the bus' computer network server can retrieve all school records and can even print paychecks.
"In the case of another hurricane, the bus can be converted into a mobile emergency operations center with access to student and personnel records, grades, transcripts, teachers, parents and state agencies via satellite telephone," she said.
When school resumes in the fall, the bus will be used as a professional development lab where teachers can receive training sessions at their school campuses instead of traveling for training.
It will also serve as a community outreach with scheduled lessons for adult learning, and provide mobile tutoring in neighborhoods for children who need extra help with classwork and homework assignments.
Next month, the bus will visit neighborhoods throughout Pascagoula and Gautier to make parent contacts, allowing parents to see what is available to their children and showing them how they can get more involved in the education process.
"We feel like they're a vital piece of the puzzle," Anglin said.
The district's bus is the only one of its kind in South Mississippi, Anglin said. And because of in-house labor, equipment donations and grants, the renovations did not cost taxpayers anything, said Superintendent Wayne Rodolfich.
The actual value of the bus is unknown, Anglin said.
"The bus is an invaluable tool," she said. "You can't really put a value on it because of the people we are able to reach with this bus. The Storyland Express was for reading, but this is so much more."
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Audrey2Katrina
- Category 5
- Posts: 4252
- Age: 75
- Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:39 pm
- Location: Metaire, La.
Red Cross: N.O.'s shelters unsafe
Trailer residents go above I-12, it says
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
By Leslie Williams
Staff writer : Times-Picayune/Nola.com
The leader of the American Red Cross announced Monday that New Orleans residents living in Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers will need to evacuate north of Interstate 12 if they want to stay in shelters managed by the humanitarian agency.
In remarks that painted a somewhat different picture from the impression created by Mayor Ray Nagin's administration about the safety of shelters in New Orleans, Red Cross interim President Jack McGuire and another agency official said the organization does not plan to staff the city's proposed shelters because they may not be the safest option and do not meet Red Cross requirements.
The Red Cross does not set up shelters, but it manages shelters opened by the state and parishes, including city shelters in the past.
Nagin last month announced that residents in mobile homes will be asked this hurricane season to evacuate even for a tropical storm, saying in-city evacuations would be possible thanks to shelters that would include the University of New Orleans and the Municipal Auditorium.
But McGuire said on Monday that, as a practical matter, shelters south of I-12 "are not a good idea" for those who live in trailers or regular homes. At this point, "the safest place for them to be" is on the north shore above the interstate, said McGuire, who was in New Orleans for a post-Katrina tour and meetings.
The Red Cross has looked at two or three New Orleans locations that the Nagin administration proposed as shelters, "but they do not meet the requirements of a Red Cross shelter," said Kay Wilkins, chief executive officer of the agency's Southeast Louisiana Chapter.
"Some of them are still being cleaned up from hurricane floodwaters," Wilkins said.
The agency has been working closely with the state to identify shelters and how to accept people into them. The Red Cross also has reviewed the process the state will use to move people to the shelters, McGuire said.
"We want to make sure that it's a safe place for them," he said. "We don't want to put them into a shelter that's going to be under water. We don't want to put them into a shelter where the roof might cave in."
Some panels on the Superdome's roof fell during Hurricane Katrina as the stadium was being used as a shelter.
In a written statement issued by Nagin's press office, Terry Ebbert, director of New Orleans' Office of Homeland Security, said the city "reassures citizens that we have developed a sound evacuation plan coordinated with the federal Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the state of Louisiana for the 2006 hurricane season.
"The city of New Orleans and . . . Wilkins . . . continue to work in partnership to identify safe and structurally sound facilities for residents living in temporary trailers to evacuate to those facilities in the event of a tropical storm or Category 1 or 2 hurricane," the statement continued.
If other locations in the city are proposed as shelters, they will go through a vigorous review, Red Cross officials said. McGuire said engineers must evaluate potential shelters to consider potential risks beyond whether the building may take water during a storm.
"You need to worry about whether or not there's too much exposed glass that's going to blow in. You need to look at whether there's sufficient facilities for sanitation and for food, whether there's access. You could very well have a location that's high, but no ability to get to it," said McGuire.
Discussing the steps the Red Cross is taking to better prepare for future storms, McGuire said the agency will have more resources at the ready than it did last year.
In 2005, the American Red Cross had enough emergency supplies on standby for 70,000 people, he said. This year, there's enough for 500,000 people, McGuire said.
The agency also should be better able to communicate its needs to the outside world during a disaster. It has acquired 21 more "major" satellite communication systems -- mobile and stationary, he said.
Debit cards to distribute immediate monetary aid should also be more bountiful for those who reach the shelters. At the moment, the Red Cross has about 1 million debit cards to dispense this year, compared to the 75,000 to 80,000 it had last year. The cards are worth $150 to $200 each and the number of cards may grow to 2 million, he said.
Changes also have been made to improve security to prevent cards from being lost, stolen or given to the people who don't qualify for assistance.
Trailer residents go above I-12, it says
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
By Leslie Williams
Staff writer : Times-Picayune/Nola.com
The leader of the American Red Cross announced Monday that New Orleans residents living in Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers will need to evacuate north of Interstate 12 if they want to stay in shelters managed by the humanitarian agency.
In remarks that painted a somewhat different picture from the impression created by Mayor Ray Nagin's administration about the safety of shelters in New Orleans, Red Cross interim President Jack McGuire and another agency official said the organization does not plan to staff the city's proposed shelters because they may not be the safest option and do not meet Red Cross requirements.
The Red Cross does not set up shelters, but it manages shelters opened by the state and parishes, including city shelters in the past.
Nagin last month announced that residents in mobile homes will be asked this hurricane season to evacuate even for a tropical storm, saying in-city evacuations would be possible thanks to shelters that would include the University of New Orleans and the Municipal Auditorium.
But McGuire said on Monday that, as a practical matter, shelters south of I-12 "are not a good idea" for those who live in trailers or regular homes. At this point, "the safest place for them to be" is on the north shore above the interstate, said McGuire, who was in New Orleans for a post-Katrina tour and meetings.
The Red Cross has looked at two or three New Orleans locations that the Nagin administration proposed as shelters, "but they do not meet the requirements of a Red Cross shelter," said Kay Wilkins, chief executive officer of the agency's Southeast Louisiana Chapter.
"Some of them are still being cleaned up from hurricane floodwaters," Wilkins said.
The agency has been working closely with the state to identify shelters and how to accept people into them. The Red Cross also has reviewed the process the state will use to move people to the shelters, McGuire said.
"We want to make sure that it's a safe place for them," he said. "We don't want to put them into a shelter that's going to be under water. We don't want to put them into a shelter where the roof might cave in."
Some panels on the Superdome's roof fell during Hurricane Katrina as the stadium was being used as a shelter.
In a written statement issued by Nagin's press office, Terry Ebbert, director of New Orleans' Office of Homeland Security, said the city "reassures citizens that we have developed a sound evacuation plan coordinated with the federal Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the state of Louisiana for the 2006 hurricane season.
"The city of New Orleans and . . . Wilkins . . . continue to work in partnership to identify safe and structurally sound facilities for residents living in temporary trailers to evacuate to those facilities in the event of a tropical storm or Category 1 or 2 hurricane," the statement continued.
If other locations in the city are proposed as shelters, they will go through a vigorous review, Red Cross officials said. McGuire said engineers must evaluate potential shelters to consider potential risks beyond whether the building may take water during a storm.
"You need to worry about whether or not there's too much exposed glass that's going to blow in. You need to look at whether there's sufficient facilities for sanitation and for food, whether there's access. You could very well have a location that's high, but no ability to get to it," said McGuire.
Discussing the steps the Red Cross is taking to better prepare for future storms, McGuire said the agency will have more resources at the ready than it did last year.
In 2005, the American Red Cross had enough emergency supplies on standby for 70,000 people, he said. This year, there's enough for 500,000 people, McGuire said.
The agency also should be better able to communicate its needs to the outside world during a disaster. It has acquired 21 more "major" satellite communication systems -- mobile and stationary, he said.
Debit cards to distribute immediate monetary aid should also be more bountiful for those who reach the shelters. At the moment, the Red Cross has about 1 million debit cards to dispense this year, compared to the 75,000 to 80,000 it had last year. The cards are worth $150 to $200 each and the number of cards may grow to 2 million, he said.
Changes also have been made to improve security to prevent cards from being lost, stolen or given to the people who don't qualify for assistance.
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Audrey2Katrina
- Category 5
- Posts: 4252
- Age: 75
- Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:39 pm
- Location: Metaire, La.
House passes $94.5 billion for Iraq war, hurricane relief
6/13/2006, 12:19 p.m. CT
By ANDREW TAYLOR
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House passed a $94.5 billion bill Tuesday to pay for continuing U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, hurricane relief, bird flu preparations and border security at home.
The House-Senate compromise bill contains $66 billion for the two wars, bringing the cost of the three-year-old war in Iraq to about $320 billion. Operations in Afghanistan have now tallied about $89 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The bill, which passed by a 351-67 vote, had only minimal debate Monday night.
It contains almost $20 billion in funds to further deal with the remaining hurricane devastation along the Gulf Coast. Much of the money would go to Louisiana for housing aid, flood control projects and a new veterans hospital in New Orleans.
It also provides funding for small-business disaster loans, rebuilding federal facilities and replenishing Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster-relief coffers.
The Senate is to clear the measure for President Bush's signature later this week. The big margin in the House reflected lawmakers' support for U.S. troops overseas despite whatever reservations they may have about the war.
Separately, the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday approved a $427 billion defense spending bill that includes another $50 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. The panel attached a provision to a measure to block the U.S. from operating permanent military bases in Iraq.
Both House and Senate gave overwhelming votes to such language in the Iraq war funding bill, but Republicans stripped it out in House-Senate talks on the bill that passed the chamber Tuesday.
The Iraq and hurricane relief measure's long legislative odyssey began in February as a $92.2 billion request by President Bush. He subsequently added another $2.2 billion in Louisiana levee projects and $1.9 billion for a border security initiative featuring the deployment of 6,000 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
The House largely stuck to Bush's demands when passing its version back in March. But the Senate, led by Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., responded with a $109 billion measure that drew a veto threat from Bush for add-ons such as $4 billion in farm disaster aid, $648 million for port security and $1.1 billion in aid to the Gulf Coast seafood industry.
But House negotiators killed a controversial Senate project to pay CSX Transportation $700 million for a recently rebuilt freight rail line along the Mississippi coast so the state could use its path for a new East-West highway. The project had earned scornful media coverage and protests from the White House and conservative activists.
Although the measure sticks with Bush's demand of $94.5 billion — including $2.3 billion to combat the avian flu — lawmakers reduced funding for the Federal Emergency Management's main disaster fund for additional grants for Mississippi, Texas and Alabama and a new Armed Forces Retirement Home in Gulfport, Miss.
The FEMA disaster relief fund would still receive $6 billion, which includes $400 million for temporary housing sturdier than FEMA trailers. The funds also go toward debris removal, reimbursing state and local governments for infrastructure repairs and direct aid to individuals.
There is lingering concern that if the hurricane season is a destructive one another infusion of disaster aid will be needed before Election Day. But a senior White House official said last week that the funding would be sufficient to last until next year.
The compromise bill includes Bush's plan to provide 1,000 more Border Patrol agents along the Mexican border, deploy about 6,000 National Guard troops and build detention space for 4,000 illegal immigrants.
The bill also contains $4 billion in military and foreign aid for Iraq and other allies, and to combat famine in Africa and Afghanistan and support U.N. peacekeeping missions in Sudan.
The bill also contains funding for controversial, accident-prone V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft for deployment to Iraq, as well as more popular C-130 cargo planes.
During Monday's brief debate, Democrats said the huge cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan missions being done on the installment plan, hiding their cost from the public.
"In 18 separate actions, we will now have spent $450 billion on this adventure," said Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. "This is a huge expenditure for a misguided war."
"Enough blood is enough blood!" said Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio. "You can stop it! Bring our troops home!"
GOP Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma countered that the bill "provides critical funds that will be used to conduct ongoing operations in the war on terror."
Meanwhile, in a symbolic statement, the Senate on Tuesday voted 97-0 to commend U.S. troops and intelligence agents for actions that resulted in the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who led al-Qaida in Iraq until he was killed last Wednesday in an American airstrike.
6/13/2006, 12:19 p.m. CT
By ANDREW TAYLOR
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House passed a $94.5 billion bill Tuesday to pay for continuing U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, hurricane relief, bird flu preparations and border security at home.
The House-Senate compromise bill contains $66 billion for the two wars, bringing the cost of the three-year-old war in Iraq to about $320 billion. Operations in Afghanistan have now tallied about $89 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The bill, which passed by a 351-67 vote, had only minimal debate Monday night.
It contains almost $20 billion in funds to further deal with the remaining hurricane devastation along the Gulf Coast. Much of the money would go to Louisiana for housing aid, flood control projects and a new veterans hospital in New Orleans.
It also provides funding for small-business disaster loans, rebuilding federal facilities and replenishing Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster-relief coffers.
The Senate is to clear the measure for President Bush's signature later this week. The big margin in the House reflected lawmakers' support for U.S. troops overseas despite whatever reservations they may have about the war.
Separately, the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday approved a $427 billion defense spending bill that includes another $50 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. The panel attached a provision to a measure to block the U.S. from operating permanent military bases in Iraq.
Both House and Senate gave overwhelming votes to such language in the Iraq war funding bill, but Republicans stripped it out in House-Senate talks on the bill that passed the chamber Tuesday.
The Iraq and hurricane relief measure's long legislative odyssey began in February as a $92.2 billion request by President Bush. He subsequently added another $2.2 billion in Louisiana levee projects and $1.9 billion for a border security initiative featuring the deployment of 6,000 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
The House largely stuck to Bush's demands when passing its version back in March. But the Senate, led by Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., responded with a $109 billion measure that drew a veto threat from Bush for add-ons such as $4 billion in farm disaster aid, $648 million for port security and $1.1 billion in aid to the Gulf Coast seafood industry.
But House negotiators killed a controversial Senate project to pay CSX Transportation $700 million for a recently rebuilt freight rail line along the Mississippi coast so the state could use its path for a new East-West highway. The project had earned scornful media coverage and protests from the White House and conservative activists.
Although the measure sticks with Bush's demand of $94.5 billion — including $2.3 billion to combat the avian flu — lawmakers reduced funding for the Federal Emergency Management's main disaster fund for additional grants for Mississippi, Texas and Alabama and a new Armed Forces Retirement Home in Gulfport, Miss.
The FEMA disaster relief fund would still receive $6 billion, which includes $400 million for temporary housing sturdier than FEMA trailers. The funds also go toward debris removal, reimbursing state and local governments for infrastructure repairs and direct aid to individuals.
There is lingering concern that if the hurricane season is a destructive one another infusion of disaster aid will be needed before Election Day. But a senior White House official said last week that the funding would be sufficient to last until next year.
The compromise bill includes Bush's plan to provide 1,000 more Border Patrol agents along the Mexican border, deploy about 6,000 National Guard troops and build detention space for 4,000 illegal immigrants.
The bill also contains $4 billion in military and foreign aid for Iraq and other allies, and to combat famine in Africa and Afghanistan and support U.N. peacekeeping missions in Sudan.
The bill also contains funding for controversial, accident-prone V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft for deployment to Iraq, as well as more popular C-130 cargo planes.
During Monday's brief debate, Democrats said the huge cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan missions being done on the installment plan, hiding their cost from the public.
"In 18 separate actions, we will now have spent $450 billion on this adventure," said Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. "This is a huge expenditure for a misguided war."
"Enough blood is enough blood!" said Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio. "You can stop it! Bring our troops home!"
GOP Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma countered that the bill "provides critical funds that will be used to conduct ongoing operations in the war on terror."
Meanwhile, in a symbolic statement, the Senate on Tuesday voted 97-0 to commend U.S. troops and intelligence agents for actions that resulted in the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who led al-Qaida in Iraq until he was killed last Wednesday in an American airstrike.
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Audrey2Katrina
- Category 5
- Posts: 4252
- Age: 75
- Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:39 pm
- Location: Metaire, La.
Home demolitions under way in Jeff
Owners shed tears, share memories as homes crumble
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
By Mark Waller
East Jefferson bureau - Times Picayune
Lawrence Billips, 68, watched from a patio chair under a shade tree near the Mississippi River levee as his family's history collapsed in splinters.
Across the street, the giant metal jaws of heavy machinery chewed apart the century-old house where he and his five siblings grew up, after his parents bought it from relatives in the 1950s.
"You're looking at the past," Billips said to the sounds of earth movers beeping in reverse and wreckage thudding into a truck bed. "You're looking at something you had years ago. You have nothing left but memories now, nothing left but memories."
On Thursday, Billips' childhood home in Kenner joined dozens of other hurricane-ruined residences in Jefferson Parish razed in recent weeks under a government program designed to help clear the landscape of post-Katrina blight. So far, public contractors have pulled down about 135 houses across the parish, with about 490 more still to be demolished.
The work began in Grand Isle and Jean Lafitte, and moved May 21 into more populated parts of the parish, a FEMA spokeswoman said. The Federal Emergency Management Agency finances the demolition program, Jefferson Parish government processes the applications from homeowners, and the Army Corps of Engineers contracts the tear-down work.
The program focuses on houses that inspectors declared total losses but whose owners lack insurance for demolition. Demolitions can cost from $3,000 to $15,000. Officials took applications for demolition until April 30 but said more came in after that deadline.
'Too much memories'
Roy Dukes' house in Old Jefferson also came down last week.
Dukes, 55, and his wife, Betty, had lived in it for 33 years and raised two children there.
His wife evacuated for Katrina, but Dukes stayed in the Canton Street house to guard against looters. As he hunkered in a central bathroom during the storm, he felt a tremendous jolt. Later he discovered a towering pecan tree in a neighbor's yard had fallen onto his house, blowing out windows and doors, smashing the roof and shifting the entire structure.
Dukes and his wife now live in a trailer on the property. They want to rebuild but continue to struggle with insurance, contractors and government aid.
"Every time you see a room, there's memories," Dukes said Friday as the heavy equipment worked its way from front to back, ripping through a room at a time.
His wife was on vacation in Florida while Dukes watched the demolition. She didn't want to see the house fall, he said.
"She would cry," he said. "It was too much memories in there, too much memories."
He took pictures and talked about all the guests who had visited over the years and all the family and holiday gatherings that took place there.
"You want to cry sometimes," he said, "or go far, far away."
Saving a few mementos
A backhoe likewise finished off what Katrina had started at the Billips house on Third Street in Kenner.
The hurricane peeled away a big section of the tin roof, letting rain soak much of the contents. Billips said the city condemned the house, and he and his family decided it had to be demolished.
No one had lived there full time since at least 1995, the year his mother died. But her children held onto the house and kept it filled with furniture and mementos of their youths.
They were able to save photographs, Bibles and kitchen items before the demolition crew arrived. Billips retrieved a mahogany bookshelf that a man made for his father in exchange for wood from a shed. The siblings removed the pedal sewing machine their mother used to make and patch clothing -- but somebody stole it from the yard when the family left for a few hours.
The day before demolition, Billips, who now lives in Metairie, visited the house a final time. He looked underneath, where he used to hide among the support piers in a 3-foot crawl space that sank over the years to less than a foot.
"When we were small, we used to play under there," he said. "It had a lot of room. Anytime you wanted to get away from Mama, you went under the house."
Remembering good times
He went inside to see the kitchen, where his mother made him and two brothers finish a paint job before letting him leave for a state semifinals basketball game. He played for John Martyn High School in Shrewsbury, which was then a segregated school for black students.
"We painted that kitchen in an hour," he said, laughing. "And then we went to the game."
Neither of his parents finished high school, but in the house on Third Street, he said, they raised their children to value education.
Billips became a captain in the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office, supervising community relations programs. His brother, John Billips, is a retired Jefferson Parish public school principal. His sister, Rose Loving, is a former Orleans Parish School Board member. Another sister, the late Dorothy B. Watson, was an activist who has a community center named for her in Bunche Village.
"We were blessed people, you know," Billips said. "We were very blessed that the Lord allowed us to move from nothing, from poverty, to middle-class status."
His childhood home now reduced to a tangled pile, Billips watched workers spray water on top to keep down the dust, and a musty whiff floated across the street.
"It's just reminiscing, I guess," Billips said. "You remember the good times."
A truck stacked with fresh two-by-fours passed on Third Street, perhaps heading to a rebuilding job.
Owners shed tears, share memories as homes crumble
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
By Mark Waller
East Jefferson bureau - Times Picayune
Lawrence Billips, 68, watched from a patio chair under a shade tree near the Mississippi River levee as his family's history collapsed in splinters.
Across the street, the giant metal jaws of heavy machinery chewed apart the century-old house where he and his five siblings grew up, after his parents bought it from relatives in the 1950s.
"You're looking at the past," Billips said to the sounds of earth movers beeping in reverse and wreckage thudding into a truck bed. "You're looking at something you had years ago. You have nothing left but memories now, nothing left but memories."
On Thursday, Billips' childhood home in Kenner joined dozens of other hurricane-ruined residences in Jefferson Parish razed in recent weeks under a government program designed to help clear the landscape of post-Katrina blight. So far, public contractors have pulled down about 135 houses across the parish, with about 490 more still to be demolished.
The work began in Grand Isle and Jean Lafitte, and moved May 21 into more populated parts of the parish, a FEMA spokeswoman said. The Federal Emergency Management Agency finances the demolition program, Jefferson Parish government processes the applications from homeowners, and the Army Corps of Engineers contracts the tear-down work.
The program focuses on houses that inspectors declared total losses but whose owners lack insurance for demolition. Demolitions can cost from $3,000 to $15,000. Officials took applications for demolition until April 30 but said more came in after that deadline.
'Too much memories'
Roy Dukes' house in Old Jefferson also came down last week.
Dukes, 55, and his wife, Betty, had lived in it for 33 years and raised two children there.
His wife evacuated for Katrina, but Dukes stayed in the Canton Street house to guard against looters. As he hunkered in a central bathroom during the storm, he felt a tremendous jolt. Later he discovered a towering pecan tree in a neighbor's yard had fallen onto his house, blowing out windows and doors, smashing the roof and shifting the entire structure.
Dukes and his wife now live in a trailer on the property. They want to rebuild but continue to struggle with insurance, contractors and government aid.
"Every time you see a room, there's memories," Dukes said Friday as the heavy equipment worked its way from front to back, ripping through a room at a time.
His wife was on vacation in Florida while Dukes watched the demolition. She didn't want to see the house fall, he said.
"She would cry," he said. "It was too much memories in there, too much memories."
He took pictures and talked about all the guests who had visited over the years and all the family and holiday gatherings that took place there.
"You want to cry sometimes," he said, "or go far, far away."
Saving a few mementos
A backhoe likewise finished off what Katrina had started at the Billips house on Third Street in Kenner.
The hurricane peeled away a big section of the tin roof, letting rain soak much of the contents. Billips said the city condemned the house, and he and his family decided it had to be demolished.
No one had lived there full time since at least 1995, the year his mother died. But her children held onto the house and kept it filled with furniture and mementos of their youths.
They were able to save photographs, Bibles and kitchen items before the demolition crew arrived. Billips retrieved a mahogany bookshelf that a man made for his father in exchange for wood from a shed. The siblings removed the pedal sewing machine their mother used to make and patch clothing -- but somebody stole it from the yard when the family left for a few hours.
The day before demolition, Billips, who now lives in Metairie, visited the house a final time. He looked underneath, where he used to hide among the support piers in a 3-foot crawl space that sank over the years to less than a foot.
"When we were small, we used to play under there," he said. "It had a lot of room. Anytime you wanted to get away from Mama, you went under the house."
Remembering good times
He went inside to see the kitchen, where his mother made him and two brothers finish a paint job before letting him leave for a state semifinals basketball game. He played for John Martyn High School in Shrewsbury, which was then a segregated school for black students.
"We painted that kitchen in an hour," he said, laughing. "And then we went to the game."
Neither of his parents finished high school, but in the house on Third Street, he said, they raised their children to value education.
Billips became a captain in the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office, supervising community relations programs. His brother, John Billips, is a retired Jefferson Parish public school principal. His sister, Rose Loving, is a former Orleans Parish School Board member. Another sister, the late Dorothy B. Watson, was an activist who has a community center named for her in Bunche Village.
"We were blessed people, you know," Billips said. "We were very blessed that the Lord allowed us to move from nothing, from poverty, to middle-class status."
His childhood home now reduced to a tangled pile, Billips watched workers spray water on top to keep down the dust, and a musty whiff floated across the street.
"It's just reminiscing, I guess," Billips said. "You remember the good times."
A truck stacked with fresh two-by-fours passed on Third Street, perhaps heading to a rebuilding job.
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Audrey2Katrina
- Category 5
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BESE approves operating plan for N.O. schools
Takeover draws audience barbs and some official olive branches
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
By Steve Ritea
Staff writer Times Picayune/Nola.com
In a largely symbolic gesture, members of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education met in New Orleans for the first time in nearly a decade Monday to approve a plan for operating more than 40 public schools this fall.
The single-item agenda took more than three hours, however, as much of the meeting was consumed with audience comments, many skeptical of the state's November decision to usurp local control of most of the school system.
That lingering tension infused Monday's meeting with a liveliness not usually seen at the typically staid BESE meetings.
Many BESE members, for example, seemed unprepared for the vitriolic rant by local activist Dyan French Cole, who accused the board of making "sick, demented decisions about our children" before she loudly berated a moderator for telling her she had exceeded her speaking time.
Others were critical of the board for waiting more than nine months after Katrina to meet in the city. "No offense, but you're a little late in getting here," said local teachers union president Brenda Mitchell.
In an interesting move, BESE chose to meet at McDonogh No. 35 High School -- the typical site for Orleans Parish School Board meetings before Katrina, even though the local School Board has been meeting in the City Council's chambers since the storm.
Despite catcalls and audience applause after critics' speeches, the event met with much fanfare from local leaders: Five City Council members and four local School Board members attended to pledge cooperation and unity in improving public education.
Orleans Parish School Board President Phyllis Landrieu acknowledged the rare opportunity afforded everyone to change schools for the better. "I think this is the first day of the rest of our lives and our school system," she said.
Tour of schools
BESE members started the day with a tour of city schools, including in the Lower 9th Ward. Some members on their first trip to New Orleans since Katrina were visibly shaken by what they saw.
"I couldn't believe the devastation," said BESE member Walter Lee of DeSoto Parish. "I just couldn't believe it."
The board approved without objection a plan for operating the schools under BESE's charge for the first six months. Work on a long-range plan is scheduled to start after school begins later this summer.
Some parents expressed frustration with what they see as the slow pace of getting out information about the upcoming school year, but state Superintendent of Education Cecil Picard urged patience, telling the audience that "we're working with the same setbacks as everyone else."
BESE is scheduled to vote on a calendar for the upcoming school year and a salary schedule for teachers and other staff at its meeting this week. Registration isn't expected to begin for several more weeks, however, and officials at several schools expected to open this fall are still waiting for word from the state about whether they'll have a school building or possibly temporary classroom trailers.
Making changes
In November, the Legislature voted to take over 107 of 128 public schools in the city that were performing below the state average. Although only 12,500 students -- compared to last year's roughly 60,000 -- had returned to public school classrooms on 25 campuses this spring, state officials are planning for up to 34,000 students in the upcoming school year at about 60 campuses run by the state, the local district and various charters.
State officials will review the status of the local system and all of the schools under its control in about four years to decide which should be returned to local control and which should not.
The 61-page plan approved Monday makes it clear the state, which will operate most of the schools, has no intention of repeating the mistakes of the past. Noting how some of the "inefficiencies that were evident" in the old system were "a result of a largely bureaucratic central office," the state plan calls for "a small, district-level leadership team" and "a streamlined central organization to provide the district with instructional and operational support."
Robin Jarvis, who this spring was named superintendent of the "recovery school district," said a priority will be to "hire a strong staff in each school and hold them accountable" in ways previously impossible under the teachers union's now largely irrelevant collective bargaining agreement with schools.
Although collective bargaining remains at four schools the local district still operates, it has been voided at charter and recovery-district schools.
Improvement vowed
Jarvis also pledged to improve each school's performance score by 20 points within the next four years. She also noted a plan to move trailers onto several campuses and establish school-based health clinics in them in an effort to "re-engage (schools) with the community as we rebuild them."
The state also will be working to provide a 20-1 student-teacher ratio in elementary schools and a 25-1 ratio in high schools, Jarvis said.
BESE member Edgar Chase said the state shouldn't hesitate to provide additional money to help the city's public schools reach new heights.
"It would not surprise me if we spend more money that the Orleans Parish system did," he said.
During public comments, former School Board member Gail Glapion questioned how the state will establish continuity in curriculum and oversight in a public school system overseen by three different entities: the district, the state and various charter groups. "There should be one system," she said.
Earlier in the meeting, Picard attempted to assuage such concerns, noting pledges of cooperation by the local School Board.
"We're not going to have two or three systems, as may be perceived," he said. "We are working together as one."
Torin Sanders, a current member of the local School Board who has been critical of the takeover, said the local community must "remain vigilant in this experiment as we move forward."
"We have a good plan, but I'm not impressed by a good plan," he said. "I'm impressed by great implementation."
Takeover draws audience barbs and some official olive branches
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
By Steve Ritea
Staff writer Times Picayune/Nola.com
In a largely symbolic gesture, members of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education met in New Orleans for the first time in nearly a decade Monday to approve a plan for operating more than 40 public schools this fall.
The single-item agenda took more than three hours, however, as much of the meeting was consumed with audience comments, many skeptical of the state's November decision to usurp local control of most of the school system.
That lingering tension infused Monday's meeting with a liveliness not usually seen at the typically staid BESE meetings.
Many BESE members, for example, seemed unprepared for the vitriolic rant by local activist Dyan French Cole, who accused the board of making "sick, demented decisions about our children" before she loudly berated a moderator for telling her she had exceeded her speaking time.
Others were critical of the board for waiting more than nine months after Katrina to meet in the city. "No offense, but you're a little late in getting here," said local teachers union president Brenda Mitchell.
In an interesting move, BESE chose to meet at McDonogh No. 35 High School -- the typical site for Orleans Parish School Board meetings before Katrina, even though the local School Board has been meeting in the City Council's chambers since the storm.
Despite catcalls and audience applause after critics' speeches, the event met with much fanfare from local leaders: Five City Council members and four local School Board members attended to pledge cooperation and unity in improving public education.
Orleans Parish School Board President Phyllis Landrieu acknowledged the rare opportunity afforded everyone to change schools for the better. "I think this is the first day of the rest of our lives and our school system," she said.
Tour of schools
BESE members started the day with a tour of city schools, including in the Lower 9th Ward. Some members on their first trip to New Orleans since Katrina were visibly shaken by what they saw.
"I couldn't believe the devastation," said BESE member Walter Lee of DeSoto Parish. "I just couldn't believe it."
The board approved without objection a plan for operating the schools under BESE's charge for the first six months. Work on a long-range plan is scheduled to start after school begins later this summer.
Some parents expressed frustration with what they see as the slow pace of getting out information about the upcoming school year, but state Superintendent of Education Cecil Picard urged patience, telling the audience that "we're working with the same setbacks as everyone else."
BESE is scheduled to vote on a calendar for the upcoming school year and a salary schedule for teachers and other staff at its meeting this week. Registration isn't expected to begin for several more weeks, however, and officials at several schools expected to open this fall are still waiting for word from the state about whether they'll have a school building or possibly temporary classroom trailers.
Making changes
In November, the Legislature voted to take over 107 of 128 public schools in the city that were performing below the state average. Although only 12,500 students -- compared to last year's roughly 60,000 -- had returned to public school classrooms on 25 campuses this spring, state officials are planning for up to 34,000 students in the upcoming school year at about 60 campuses run by the state, the local district and various charters.
State officials will review the status of the local system and all of the schools under its control in about four years to decide which should be returned to local control and which should not.
The 61-page plan approved Monday makes it clear the state, which will operate most of the schools, has no intention of repeating the mistakes of the past. Noting how some of the "inefficiencies that were evident" in the old system were "a result of a largely bureaucratic central office," the state plan calls for "a small, district-level leadership team" and "a streamlined central organization to provide the district with instructional and operational support."
Robin Jarvis, who this spring was named superintendent of the "recovery school district," said a priority will be to "hire a strong staff in each school and hold them accountable" in ways previously impossible under the teachers union's now largely irrelevant collective bargaining agreement with schools.
Although collective bargaining remains at four schools the local district still operates, it has been voided at charter and recovery-district schools.
Improvement vowed
Jarvis also pledged to improve each school's performance score by 20 points within the next four years. She also noted a plan to move trailers onto several campuses and establish school-based health clinics in them in an effort to "re-engage (schools) with the community as we rebuild them."
The state also will be working to provide a 20-1 student-teacher ratio in elementary schools and a 25-1 ratio in high schools, Jarvis said.
BESE member Edgar Chase said the state shouldn't hesitate to provide additional money to help the city's public schools reach new heights.
"It would not surprise me if we spend more money that the Orleans Parish system did," he said.
During public comments, former School Board member Gail Glapion questioned how the state will establish continuity in curriculum and oversight in a public school system overseen by three different entities: the district, the state and various charter groups. "There should be one system," she said.
Earlier in the meeting, Picard attempted to assuage such concerns, noting pledges of cooperation by the local School Board.
"We're not going to have two or three systems, as may be perceived," he said. "We are working together as one."
Torin Sanders, a current member of the local School Board who has been critical of the takeover, said the local community must "remain vigilant in this experiment as we move forward."
"We have a good plan, but I'm not impressed by a good plan," he said. "I'm impressed by great implementation."
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Audrey2Katrina
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Ethanol mandate signed into law
But it can't raise gas prices, Blanco says
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
By Laura Maggi
Capital bureau Times Picayune/NOLA.com
BATON ROUGE -- Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed into law Monday a mandate that ethanol-blended fuels be sold in Louisiana, bucking a lobbying effort by business groups that claimed it would raise the cost of gas.
"By promoting the use of homegrown, environmentally friendly energy, we have a real opportunity to help the nation through its energy crisis and greatly assist Louisiana farmers," Blanco said in a prepared statement.
The governor added that she has a pledge from Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom to hold off on enforcing the mandate if it seems that gasoline prices would increase. In a separate news release, Odom reiterated that commitment.
Blanco joined Odom in lobbying for House Bill 645 by Rep. Francis Thompson, D-Delhi, as it wound its way through the legislative process. But after the bill was sent to her desk, the governor took a second look, prompted in large part by the specter of spikes in the price at the pump.
"We're disappointed, but we knew it was an uphill fight considering the fact that she (Blanco) lobbied for it," said Jeff Copeskey, a lobbyist with Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, which spearheaded the effort to defeat the legislation. Other groups that opposed the bill included the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry and the Louisiana Chemical Association.
The governor's Republican legislative opponents pounced on the issue. "I can't believe the governor signed a bill to raise gas prices," said Rep. Jim Tucker, R-Algiers.
Ethanol is currently more expensive than regular unleaded gasoline. During the first week of June, reformulated gasoline that typically contains 5.7 percent ethanol was an average of 11 cents more expensive than unleaded gasoline in the Midwest and 14 cents pricier on the Gulf Coast, according to the Energy Information Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Energy.
But in her statement, Blanco indicated that she saw the mandate as an opportunity to foster biofuel production in the state, providing an alternative market for farmers who are looking for new places to sell their crops. And she argued that ethanol-blended gasoline would improve the environment.
These arguments were echoed by farmers organizations in the state, including the American Sugar Cane League in Thibodaux and the Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation, which saw the legislation as a necessary assist in branching into the renewable fuels arena.
Enforcement issues
The new law requires that once the production of ethanol and biodiesel in Louisiana reaches a certain level, 2 percent of the total gas and diesel sold in the state must be these alternative fuels.
But during the process, an amendment was added that says retailers will not be forced to sell the new blends, a change that has been criticized by opponents of the bill as creating questions about where the mandate will be enforced.
How the mandate will be implemented is left in the hands of Odom, who is charged with the power to develop rules and regulations.
There are currently no ethanol plants in Louisiana, although a few companies are openly exploring the idea. One biodiesel manufacturer began operations this spring in Grant Parish, using soybean oil to create the alternative fuel.
In her statement, Blanco noted that it would likely take up to two years, if plants are opened, before production reached levels sufficient to force the mandate to kick in. The mandate would go into effect once there are 50 million gallons of ethanol in annual production or 10 million gallons of biodiesel, unless the Commission on Weights and Measures determines there isn't sufficient supply or distribution capabilities in the state. That commission is appointed by Odom.
National movement
There has been a national growth in the building of ethanol plants in the past couple of years, prompted by a new demand for the product, which is typically distilled from corn.
Many states have banned MTBE, or methyl tertiary butyl ether, because of concerns about groundwater pollution. That means ethanol must be used where a fuel additive is needed to make gas burn cleaner to meet federal pollution guidelines.
Proponents of the mandate said it will ensure that Louisiana joins the nationwide ethanol resurgence, guaranteeing a market for the locally brewed product. They pointed to Minnesota, where a consumer mandate has been in effect for several years.
But critics have said that states like Minnesota have also created incentives or subsidies to foster the development of plants. And they noted that several companies are already leaning toward building facilities in Louisiana, which leads to questions about whether a mandate is necessary.
Copeskey said that opponents of the bill have not given up completely. They hope that lawmakers will amend legislation still being considered to ensure that the mandate couldn't be implemented if it would raise gasoline prices, he said.
"This is the price protection that Louisiana motorists need," he said.
But it can't raise gas prices, Blanco says
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
By Laura Maggi
Capital bureau Times Picayune/NOLA.com
BATON ROUGE -- Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed into law Monday a mandate that ethanol-blended fuels be sold in Louisiana, bucking a lobbying effort by business groups that claimed it would raise the cost of gas.
"By promoting the use of homegrown, environmentally friendly energy, we have a real opportunity to help the nation through its energy crisis and greatly assist Louisiana farmers," Blanco said in a prepared statement.
The governor added that she has a pledge from Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom to hold off on enforcing the mandate if it seems that gasoline prices would increase. In a separate news release, Odom reiterated that commitment.
Blanco joined Odom in lobbying for House Bill 645 by Rep. Francis Thompson, D-Delhi, as it wound its way through the legislative process. But after the bill was sent to her desk, the governor took a second look, prompted in large part by the specter of spikes in the price at the pump.
"We're disappointed, but we knew it was an uphill fight considering the fact that she (Blanco) lobbied for it," said Jeff Copeskey, a lobbyist with Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, which spearheaded the effort to defeat the legislation. Other groups that opposed the bill included the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry and the Louisiana Chemical Association.
The governor's Republican legislative opponents pounced on the issue. "I can't believe the governor signed a bill to raise gas prices," said Rep. Jim Tucker, R-Algiers.
Ethanol is currently more expensive than regular unleaded gasoline. During the first week of June, reformulated gasoline that typically contains 5.7 percent ethanol was an average of 11 cents more expensive than unleaded gasoline in the Midwest and 14 cents pricier on the Gulf Coast, according to the Energy Information Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Energy.
But in her statement, Blanco indicated that she saw the mandate as an opportunity to foster biofuel production in the state, providing an alternative market for farmers who are looking for new places to sell their crops. And she argued that ethanol-blended gasoline would improve the environment.
These arguments were echoed by farmers organizations in the state, including the American Sugar Cane League in Thibodaux and the Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation, which saw the legislation as a necessary assist in branching into the renewable fuels arena.
Enforcement issues
The new law requires that once the production of ethanol and biodiesel in Louisiana reaches a certain level, 2 percent of the total gas and diesel sold in the state must be these alternative fuels.
But during the process, an amendment was added that says retailers will not be forced to sell the new blends, a change that has been criticized by opponents of the bill as creating questions about where the mandate will be enforced.
How the mandate will be implemented is left in the hands of Odom, who is charged with the power to develop rules and regulations.
There are currently no ethanol plants in Louisiana, although a few companies are openly exploring the idea. One biodiesel manufacturer began operations this spring in Grant Parish, using soybean oil to create the alternative fuel.
In her statement, Blanco noted that it would likely take up to two years, if plants are opened, before production reached levels sufficient to force the mandate to kick in. The mandate would go into effect once there are 50 million gallons of ethanol in annual production or 10 million gallons of biodiesel, unless the Commission on Weights and Measures determines there isn't sufficient supply or distribution capabilities in the state. That commission is appointed by Odom.
National movement
There has been a national growth in the building of ethanol plants in the past couple of years, prompted by a new demand for the product, which is typically distilled from corn.
Many states have banned MTBE, or methyl tertiary butyl ether, because of concerns about groundwater pollution. That means ethanol must be used where a fuel additive is needed to make gas burn cleaner to meet federal pollution guidelines.
Proponents of the mandate said it will ensure that Louisiana joins the nationwide ethanol resurgence, guaranteeing a market for the locally brewed product. They pointed to Minnesota, where a consumer mandate has been in effect for several years.
But critics have said that states like Minnesota have also created incentives or subsidies to foster the development of plants. And they noted that several companies are already leaning toward building facilities in Louisiana, which leads to questions about whether a mandate is necessary.
Copeskey said that opponents of the bill have not given up completely. They hope that lawmakers will amend legislation still being considered to ensure that the mandate couldn't be implemented if it would raise gasoline prices, he said.
"This is the price protection that Louisiana motorists need," he said.
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Audrey2Katrina
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- Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:39 pm
- Location: Metaire, La.
GCN Recovery News Report
Gulf-Coast Update:
Updated 6/13/06 9:17 AM
Biloxi’s Golden Fisherman, a 16-foot statue that once stood on Point Cadet in tribute to the seafood industry, has apparently been stolen from the former site of the Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum. The city-owned statue, which weighed more than a ton, was last seen mid-afternoon Saturday near the museum site, where city workers had moved it a week ago. The statue, which was insured, was damaged and knocked off its waterfront pedestal by Hurricane Katrina.
Trump Entertainment Resorts, Inc. and Diamondhead Casino Corporation announced Monday that they have signed a letter of intent to develop a destination casino resort in Diamondhead in Hancock County. The joint venture would cover a minimum of forty acres within a 404-acre tract of land owned by Mississippi Gaming Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Diamondhead. The Diamondhead tract fronts Interstate 10 for approximately two miles and the Bay of St. Louis.
Mississippi Development Authority is wrapping up final applications for the Katrina Homeowner Grant program that was authorized by the federal government and approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. As this program concludes, Governor Haley Barbour is working with HUD to expand it to provide assistance to homeowners whose homes flooded but were not eligible for the original program. In an effort to design more effective housing assistance programs for Hurricane Katrina victims, Governor Barbour is asking low- and moderate-income homeowners whose homes flooded as a result of Hurricane Katrina, but were previously not eligible for the program to register. To register, call 1-866-369-6302 to make an appointment at one of the service centers located in Bay St. Louis, Gulfport, Gautier and Jackson. The service centers will be open for this registration process beginning June 22 and will remain open for about four weeks.
GCN has been reporting for some time that the loss of property tax revenue from destroyed homes would cause a severe impact on several local governments.
The financial situation in Hancock County is particularly dire according to a report by the Sea Coast Echo. In a recent meeting, Hancock County officials met with county officials from Harrison and Jackson Counties, which despite tightly straining budgets, are offering some assistance to Hancock County, which was "Ground Zero" for Hurricane Katrina. Hancock County officials say the county is about $4.5 million dollars short this budget year, which will end in October. Next year is even worse as officials expect a shortfall between $10 million to $16 million, of a budget that normally runs around $34 million. "We feel like about October 16, we are going to be belly-up," said Hancock County Board of Supervisors President Rocky Pullman. Of the 19,000 homes in the county, 10,000 were destroyed by Katrina. Officials from Jackson and Harrison counties agreed to help with some of the road work, street signs, and manpower issues.
Harrison County Board President Connie Rockco, who as at the Hancock County meeting, said the Coast counties are in great need of help from the state. One way she suggested was for the state to allow the Coast counties access to sales tax money, counties do not receive sales taxes, which go to the cities and state. Officials are wary of borrowing money to get through the post-Katrina period as they are uncertain whether they will be able to pay the notes back.
The loss of homes and businesses on the Coast from Hurricane Katrina has still yet to be measured. Taxes on homes and businesses have yet to reflect the loss. Coast counties have not even begun reassessing property values and taxes, but it is certain that people will balk on paying property taxes on slabs at the same rate as last year when they had homes. This unknown loss of tax income frightens public officials and it should. What is certain is that it will take several years to sort out. Then watch as property becomes valued at the new, much higher, post-Katrina rate, which could force those that survived the hurricane to move.
A study by the Rand Gulf States Policy Institute of post-Katrina housing on the Coast found Katrina damaged or destroyed about 81,000 Coast housing units, which is about half the total housing stock.. Around a third of those units were occupied by households living below the U.S. median income, which was $43,318, according to 2003 U.S. Census figures. The report defines affordable housing as a quality home or apartment that costs less than 30 percent of a family's annual income. The Coast will need to build at least 27,000 affordable housing units, according to the report.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is telling Hancock leaders June 30 will be the last day they will remove Hurricane Katrina-related debris in this pummeled county, though officials say the job is far from over. The Corps has informed the county and local cities that the 100 percent payments for debris removal ends that day, after that, local communities will have to pay 10 percent of costs with 90 percent reimbursement from FEMA. But local officials say they do not have the funds to pay for the estimated 20 percent of the debris that remains.
Hancock County law enforcement officials say crime is skyrocketing in that hard hit Katrina county that includes the cities of Bay St. Louis and Waveland. Waveland had it particularly hard. All of its officers lost their homes in the hurricane. For Waveland's police force, the last nine months haven't been easy. Almost a dozen officers turned in their badges and all of the patrol cars were destroyed. The officers who remain are working out of two trailers. The police department did receive a few used patrol cars since the hurricane, but those cars have already been worn out and are parked.
The U.S. Census reports that they estimate nearly 50,000 people have left the Coast's three counties since Hurricane Katrina. That figure may be too high report some local officials who believe the census figures do not represent people that will be returning to their homes later. The report showed that Harrison County lost over 30,000 people.
The U.S. Census Bureau this week released post-Katrina population loss estimates for South Mississippi. They are:
County 2005 2006 Change
Hancock 46,240 35,129 Down 11,111
Jackson 134,249 126,311 Down 7,938
Harrison 186,530 155,817 Down 30,713
While it is certain that many people have left the Coast perhaps forever, it is also true that many will return to build again. GCN received the following from a resident:
Received 6/8/06
I have lived in Hancock County for the past 19yrs. As a child growing up in New Orleans my summers were spent in Bay St.Louis. Because of that I moved here in 1987. I worked for the New Orleans Police department from 1974 until 1996 when I retired under a disability pension. I sat through many hurricanes as a child and later working some of them as a police officer. Even though we did not actually have one hit New Orleans we were always prepared (supposely). My family and I are going to live back in Hancock county but about 30 miles from the beach( our house was 2 miles north of the beach). I have seen a lot in my 50yrs but can tell you that I have never seen more togetherness between people here is Mississippi that was shown from Hurricane Katrina. All eyes are on New Orleans but I can tell you that city will never come together as the coast of Mississippi has. Maybe all the elected officials in Washington needs to spend some time on the coast and see how true Americans can work together. I am proud to be a Mississippian( transplanted) and all I can say is that we will move forward and show the rest of the World we can survive.
Randy Leitz
Perkinston,Ms.39573
________________
Officials with the University of Southern Mississippi says they will not be rebuilding the Marine Education Center at Point Cadet in east Biloxi, but will likely build a new facility at another location. USM also says it will repair the campus at Long Beach, but is still looking for land to expand somewhere else on the Coast.
Gulfport's City Council has decided to waive building permit fees for residents after homeowners said they the fees were too high. The council voted unanimously to waive residential permit fees for 18 months from the date of the storm. This policy goes into effect in two weeks. Homeowners will have to pay $100 for the city to review their plans.
A Kansas City Missouri contractor, GC Constructors, is the low bidder to build the new Biloxi/Ocean Springs Bridge. The company bid $338.6 million on the project. MDOT chose to wait to remove the destroyed bridge, leaving the work the contractor. The new bridge is scheduled to be completed late in February 2008. This bridge is a critical element for the Coast's recovery and the lack of work on it by MDOT has angered many. The new bridge will tower 95 feet above the water.
MDOT officials say that a plan to use ferries to move motorists across Biloxi Bay while the new bridge is built will probably not be feasible.
Extremely dry conditions are again sparking wildfires along the Coast. Monday afternoon, Harrison County firemen were called to a large woods fire just north of Biloxi near Lamey Bridge Road and Highway 67. The fire sent a huge plume of smoke into air and the prevailing winds blew the the cloud over the Biloxi peninsula. The cloud filtered the sunlight making the light an eerie gold color on the ground. Signs along Lamey Bridge and White Plains roads advise motorists to be cautious because of the smoke.
Fire officials say Coast residents living in FEMA travel trailers need to exercise caution regard fires. Officials tell GCN that any fire in a small trailer is much more dangerous than with a typical home. The materials in trailers and their small size accelerate the speed in which a fire can spread.
If the trailer's smoke alarm goes off, trailer residents should leave the trailer immediately and call the fire department from a neighbor home. You should not stay inside to make a phone call.
Bay St. Louis firemen were called to a fire at a small FEMA travel trailer this past Sunday evening. The fire destroyed the trailer, a home to a resident at the corner of Seventh Street and Turner Street. Fire Chief Bob Gavagnie said they received the call at 7:29 p.m. and were on the scene in a fast three minutes, but not in time to save the trailer. The trailer's occupants were not at home at the time of the fire. Neighbors say they heard the sound of a small boom and within seconds, a choking black smoke billowed from the trailer. The fire burned more than 50 percent of trailer.
Many east Biloxians are finding it hard to rebuild as economic realities sink in. East Biloxi was torn to shreds by Katrina's storm surge, which destroyed homes in the densely populated section of town. Most of the homes were older, wood-frame structures that were reduced to their foundations by the hurricane's storm surge. Many owners did not have flood insurance and were low income families. Nine months after Katrina, only a few homes are being rebuilt. Many of the residents have moved. The area was a mix population of white, black and Vietnamese families.
One of the largest federal grants ever issued to an airport was announced in a formal ceremony this past Friday at the Gulfport/Biloxi International Airport. In an event attended by top federal and local officials, Senator Trent Lott and Representative Gene Taylor were joined by Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, and Federal Aviation Adminstrator Marion Blakey in announcing a $44 million federal grant to repair the Gulfport/Biloxi International Airport (GBIA), heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
"This grant won't just repair, rebuild and revitalize this airport, it will also bring new passengers, new business, and new energy to this storied region," said Mineta. "This grant will lay the foundation for the Gulfport/Biloxi International Airport of tomorrow, and what an airport it will be." (Click Here for the full story)
Nine months after Hurricane Katrina struck -- and with another hurricane season in place -- less than half of the Gulf Coast small businesses that were granted federal disaster loans have converted them into cash, according to the Small Business Administration, reports Inc.com. The SBA has processed nearly all of the 57,133 business loan applications it has received since Hurricane Katrina on Aug. 29 -- approving 21,132 loans worth over $2.1 billion for small businesses in Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Texas, and Alabama. Monday marked the deadline to apply for economic injury loans related to the storm. So far, only 9,936 of those loans have been either fully or partially disbursed.
Gulf-Coast Update:
Updated 6/13/06 9:17 AM
Biloxi’s Golden Fisherman, a 16-foot statue that once stood on Point Cadet in tribute to the seafood industry, has apparently been stolen from the former site of the Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum. The city-owned statue, which weighed more than a ton, was last seen mid-afternoon Saturday near the museum site, where city workers had moved it a week ago. The statue, which was insured, was damaged and knocked off its waterfront pedestal by Hurricane Katrina.
Trump Entertainment Resorts, Inc. and Diamondhead Casino Corporation announced Monday that they have signed a letter of intent to develop a destination casino resort in Diamondhead in Hancock County. The joint venture would cover a minimum of forty acres within a 404-acre tract of land owned by Mississippi Gaming Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Diamondhead. The Diamondhead tract fronts Interstate 10 for approximately two miles and the Bay of St. Louis.
Mississippi Development Authority is wrapping up final applications for the Katrina Homeowner Grant program that was authorized by the federal government and approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. As this program concludes, Governor Haley Barbour is working with HUD to expand it to provide assistance to homeowners whose homes flooded but were not eligible for the original program. In an effort to design more effective housing assistance programs for Hurricane Katrina victims, Governor Barbour is asking low- and moderate-income homeowners whose homes flooded as a result of Hurricane Katrina, but were previously not eligible for the program to register. To register, call 1-866-369-6302 to make an appointment at one of the service centers located in Bay St. Louis, Gulfport, Gautier and Jackson. The service centers will be open for this registration process beginning June 22 and will remain open for about four weeks.
GCN has been reporting for some time that the loss of property tax revenue from destroyed homes would cause a severe impact on several local governments.
The financial situation in Hancock County is particularly dire according to a report by the Sea Coast Echo. In a recent meeting, Hancock County officials met with county officials from Harrison and Jackson Counties, which despite tightly straining budgets, are offering some assistance to Hancock County, which was "Ground Zero" for Hurricane Katrina. Hancock County officials say the county is about $4.5 million dollars short this budget year, which will end in October. Next year is even worse as officials expect a shortfall between $10 million to $16 million, of a budget that normally runs around $34 million. "We feel like about October 16, we are going to be belly-up," said Hancock County Board of Supervisors President Rocky Pullman. Of the 19,000 homes in the county, 10,000 were destroyed by Katrina. Officials from Jackson and Harrison counties agreed to help with some of the road work, street signs, and manpower issues.
Harrison County Board President Connie Rockco, who as at the Hancock County meeting, said the Coast counties are in great need of help from the state. One way she suggested was for the state to allow the Coast counties access to sales tax money, counties do not receive sales taxes, which go to the cities and state. Officials are wary of borrowing money to get through the post-Katrina period as they are uncertain whether they will be able to pay the notes back.
The loss of homes and businesses on the Coast from Hurricane Katrina has still yet to be measured. Taxes on homes and businesses have yet to reflect the loss. Coast counties have not even begun reassessing property values and taxes, but it is certain that people will balk on paying property taxes on slabs at the same rate as last year when they had homes. This unknown loss of tax income frightens public officials and it should. What is certain is that it will take several years to sort out. Then watch as property becomes valued at the new, much higher, post-Katrina rate, which could force those that survived the hurricane to move.
A study by the Rand Gulf States Policy Institute of post-Katrina housing on the Coast found Katrina damaged or destroyed about 81,000 Coast housing units, which is about half the total housing stock.. Around a third of those units were occupied by households living below the U.S. median income, which was $43,318, according to 2003 U.S. Census figures. The report defines affordable housing as a quality home or apartment that costs less than 30 percent of a family's annual income. The Coast will need to build at least 27,000 affordable housing units, according to the report.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is telling Hancock leaders June 30 will be the last day they will remove Hurricane Katrina-related debris in this pummeled county, though officials say the job is far from over. The Corps has informed the county and local cities that the 100 percent payments for debris removal ends that day, after that, local communities will have to pay 10 percent of costs with 90 percent reimbursement from FEMA. But local officials say they do not have the funds to pay for the estimated 20 percent of the debris that remains.
Hancock County law enforcement officials say crime is skyrocketing in that hard hit Katrina county that includes the cities of Bay St. Louis and Waveland. Waveland had it particularly hard. All of its officers lost their homes in the hurricane. For Waveland's police force, the last nine months haven't been easy. Almost a dozen officers turned in their badges and all of the patrol cars were destroyed. The officers who remain are working out of two trailers. The police department did receive a few used patrol cars since the hurricane, but those cars have already been worn out and are parked.
The U.S. Census reports that they estimate nearly 50,000 people have left the Coast's three counties since Hurricane Katrina. That figure may be too high report some local officials who believe the census figures do not represent people that will be returning to their homes later. The report showed that Harrison County lost over 30,000 people.
The U.S. Census Bureau this week released post-Katrina population loss estimates for South Mississippi. They are:
County 2005 2006 Change
Hancock 46,240 35,129 Down 11,111
Jackson 134,249 126,311 Down 7,938
Harrison 186,530 155,817 Down 30,713
While it is certain that many people have left the Coast perhaps forever, it is also true that many will return to build again. GCN received the following from a resident:
Received 6/8/06
I have lived in Hancock County for the past 19yrs. As a child growing up in New Orleans my summers were spent in Bay St.Louis. Because of that I moved here in 1987. I worked for the New Orleans Police department from 1974 until 1996 when I retired under a disability pension. I sat through many hurricanes as a child and later working some of them as a police officer. Even though we did not actually have one hit New Orleans we were always prepared (supposely). My family and I are going to live back in Hancock county but about 30 miles from the beach( our house was 2 miles north of the beach). I have seen a lot in my 50yrs but can tell you that I have never seen more togetherness between people here is Mississippi that was shown from Hurricane Katrina. All eyes are on New Orleans but I can tell you that city will never come together as the coast of Mississippi has. Maybe all the elected officials in Washington needs to spend some time on the coast and see how true Americans can work together. I am proud to be a Mississippian( transplanted) and all I can say is that we will move forward and show the rest of the World we can survive.
Randy Leitz
Perkinston,Ms.39573
________________
Officials with the University of Southern Mississippi says they will not be rebuilding the Marine Education Center at Point Cadet in east Biloxi, but will likely build a new facility at another location. USM also says it will repair the campus at Long Beach, but is still looking for land to expand somewhere else on the Coast.
Gulfport's City Council has decided to waive building permit fees for residents after homeowners said they the fees were too high. The council voted unanimously to waive residential permit fees for 18 months from the date of the storm. This policy goes into effect in two weeks. Homeowners will have to pay $100 for the city to review their plans.
A Kansas City Missouri contractor, GC Constructors, is the low bidder to build the new Biloxi/Ocean Springs Bridge. The company bid $338.6 million on the project. MDOT chose to wait to remove the destroyed bridge, leaving the work the contractor. The new bridge is scheduled to be completed late in February 2008. This bridge is a critical element for the Coast's recovery and the lack of work on it by MDOT has angered many. The new bridge will tower 95 feet above the water.
MDOT officials say that a plan to use ferries to move motorists across Biloxi Bay while the new bridge is built will probably not be feasible.
Extremely dry conditions are again sparking wildfires along the Coast. Monday afternoon, Harrison County firemen were called to a large woods fire just north of Biloxi near Lamey Bridge Road and Highway 67. The fire sent a huge plume of smoke into air and the prevailing winds blew the the cloud over the Biloxi peninsula. The cloud filtered the sunlight making the light an eerie gold color on the ground. Signs along Lamey Bridge and White Plains roads advise motorists to be cautious because of the smoke.
Fire officials say Coast residents living in FEMA travel trailers need to exercise caution regard fires. Officials tell GCN that any fire in a small trailer is much more dangerous than with a typical home. The materials in trailers and their small size accelerate the speed in which a fire can spread.
If the trailer's smoke alarm goes off, trailer residents should leave the trailer immediately and call the fire department from a neighbor home. You should not stay inside to make a phone call.
Bay St. Louis firemen were called to a fire at a small FEMA travel trailer this past Sunday evening. The fire destroyed the trailer, a home to a resident at the corner of Seventh Street and Turner Street. Fire Chief Bob Gavagnie said they received the call at 7:29 p.m. and were on the scene in a fast three minutes, but not in time to save the trailer. The trailer's occupants were not at home at the time of the fire. Neighbors say they heard the sound of a small boom and within seconds, a choking black smoke billowed from the trailer. The fire burned more than 50 percent of trailer.
Many east Biloxians are finding it hard to rebuild as economic realities sink in. East Biloxi was torn to shreds by Katrina's storm surge, which destroyed homes in the densely populated section of town. Most of the homes were older, wood-frame structures that were reduced to their foundations by the hurricane's storm surge. Many owners did not have flood insurance and were low income families. Nine months after Katrina, only a few homes are being rebuilt. Many of the residents have moved. The area was a mix population of white, black and Vietnamese families.
One of the largest federal grants ever issued to an airport was announced in a formal ceremony this past Friday at the Gulfport/Biloxi International Airport. In an event attended by top federal and local officials, Senator Trent Lott and Representative Gene Taylor were joined by Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, and Federal Aviation Adminstrator Marion Blakey in announcing a $44 million federal grant to repair the Gulfport/Biloxi International Airport (GBIA), heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
"This grant won't just repair, rebuild and revitalize this airport, it will also bring new passengers, new business, and new energy to this storied region," said Mineta. "This grant will lay the foundation for the Gulfport/Biloxi International Airport of tomorrow, and what an airport it will be." (Click Here for the full story)
Nine months after Hurricane Katrina struck -- and with another hurricane season in place -- less than half of the Gulf Coast small businesses that were granted federal disaster loans have converted them into cash, according to the Small Business Administration, reports Inc.com. The SBA has processed nearly all of the 57,133 business loan applications it has received since Hurricane Katrina on Aug. 29 -- approving 21,132 loans worth over $2.1 billion for small businesses in Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Texas, and Alabama. Monday marked the deadline to apply for economic injury loans related to the storm. So far, only 9,936 of those loans have been either fully or partially disbursed.
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Audrey2Katrina
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‘Katrina & Biloxi’ passes quarter-million-dollar mark
From City of Biloxi Website News 6/13/06 article dated 6/7/06
The city-commissioned “Katrina & Biloxi” photo album and DVD is now being sold in 12 south Mississippi Wal-marts, and the retail giant says it may increase its $210,000 order and expand sales, depending on consumer interest.
The photo album/DVD package – which Wal-mart is now selling for $39.88, plus tax – is available in stores in Biloxi, D’Iberville, Gulfport, Lucedale, Ocean Springs, Pascagoula, Petal, Picayune, Waveland, Wiggins and two stores in Hattiesburg.
The city had invested about $85,000 to produce 30,000 copies of the photo album and DVD to document the city’s devastation and recovery from Hurricane Katrina. As of last week, the city had taken in nearly $80,000 through online sales, which continue on the city’s web site at biloxi.ms.us.
In the Wal-mart deal, Anderson Merchandisers, a Wal-mart buyer, is purchasing 6,000 photo album and DVD packages at $35 each, netting the city $210,000.
Proceeds from sales of the photo album and DVD will be used in the city's rebuilding effort.
Cable One, the Gulf Coast cable provider, will soon begin airing on cable channels locally a minute-long trailer to promote Wal-mart sales. To see the trailer, click here.
“We’re quite proud of this project,” Mayor A.J. Holloway said, “and in addition to telling the story of the people of BiIoxi, it has become a revenue stream for the city. We appreciate the support from Wal-mart and from everyone who has made a purchase. Our goal now is to maximize sales and expand the sales area between now and the first anniversary of the storm on Aug. 29.”
The 52-page photo album was created and designed by Biloxi Public Affairs Manager Vincent Creel and Robin Stephens of The Ad Group in Biloxi. It was printed and packaged with its companion DVD by Knight Abbey Commercial Printing and Direct Mail, another Biloxi firm.
The DVD itself, which was co-produced by Tom Nebel Productions of Navarre, Fla., covers 80 minutes, highlighted by a 50-minute documentary of vignettes, original scoring and the song “Heavens Cry” by songwriter Brad Jerkins of Dothan Ala.,. who scored the project. The DVD also includes storm footage, aerial photography, before photographs and an interview with Mayor Holloway that was conducted on the afternoon of Aug. 29, as winds began to subside outside City Hall in downtown Biloxi. The city partnered with Tom Nebel Productions to produce the DVD after the firm accompanied the Atlanta Fire Department to Biloxi in the wake of the storm.
From City of Biloxi Website News 6/13/06 article dated 6/7/06
The city-commissioned “Katrina & Biloxi” photo album and DVD is now being sold in 12 south Mississippi Wal-marts, and the retail giant says it may increase its $210,000 order and expand sales, depending on consumer interest.
The photo album/DVD package – which Wal-mart is now selling for $39.88, plus tax – is available in stores in Biloxi, D’Iberville, Gulfport, Lucedale, Ocean Springs, Pascagoula, Petal, Picayune, Waveland, Wiggins and two stores in Hattiesburg.
The city had invested about $85,000 to produce 30,000 copies of the photo album and DVD to document the city’s devastation and recovery from Hurricane Katrina. As of last week, the city had taken in nearly $80,000 through online sales, which continue on the city’s web site at biloxi.ms.us.
In the Wal-mart deal, Anderson Merchandisers, a Wal-mart buyer, is purchasing 6,000 photo album and DVD packages at $35 each, netting the city $210,000.
Proceeds from sales of the photo album and DVD will be used in the city's rebuilding effort.
Cable One, the Gulf Coast cable provider, will soon begin airing on cable channels locally a minute-long trailer to promote Wal-mart sales. To see the trailer, click here.
“We’re quite proud of this project,” Mayor A.J. Holloway said, “and in addition to telling the story of the people of BiIoxi, it has become a revenue stream for the city. We appreciate the support from Wal-mart and from everyone who has made a purchase. Our goal now is to maximize sales and expand the sales area between now and the first anniversary of the storm on Aug. 29.”
The 52-page photo album was created and designed by Biloxi Public Affairs Manager Vincent Creel and Robin Stephens of The Ad Group in Biloxi. It was printed and packaged with its companion DVD by Knight Abbey Commercial Printing and Direct Mail, another Biloxi firm.
The DVD itself, which was co-produced by Tom Nebel Productions of Navarre, Fla., covers 80 minutes, highlighted by a 50-minute documentary of vignettes, original scoring and the song “Heavens Cry” by songwriter Brad Jerkins of Dothan Ala.,. who scored the project. The DVD also includes storm footage, aerial photography, before photographs and an interview with Mayor Holloway that was conducted on the afternoon of Aug. 29, as winds began to subside outside City Hall in downtown Biloxi. The city partnered with Tom Nebel Productions to produce the DVD after the firm accompanied the Atlanta Fire Department to Biloxi in the wake of the storm.
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Audrey2Katrina
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Tropical Storm Alberto Being Felt Close To Home
Last Update: 6/13/2006 8:11:11 AM
NBC15-Mobile, Alabama
(Dauphin Island) June 12 - Tropical Storm Alberto is being felt on Dauphin Island, but pretty minor on Monday. Which is good news because vulnerable Dauphin Island is still recovering from the last two years, namely Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina. As a matter of fact, Edwina Robertson and her family are celebrating tonight because they just wrapped up Katrina repairs. "I was up very early this morning and the water was already coming in around the house and i thought, oh, here we go again."
Alberto's affects created high surf and dangerous rip currents today. During high tide, Gulf water covered the road on the west end of the island and made it's way under many homes.
The storm, only a tropical storm, and hundreds of miles away proves to us all how severe hurricane season can be here along the Gulf Coast. Buddy Holland is a long time Dauphin Island Resident: "I'm just hoping that we don't have a storm again, a bad storm, because if we do, it's going to wipe this end out. (Kim) again. (Buddy) again."
Beach-goers should use extreme caution. The high surf advisory will continue until Tuesday.
Last Update: 6/13/2006 8:11:11 AM
NBC15-Mobile, Alabama
(Dauphin Island) June 12 - Tropical Storm Alberto is being felt on Dauphin Island, but pretty minor on Monday. Which is good news because vulnerable Dauphin Island is still recovering from the last two years, namely Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina. As a matter of fact, Edwina Robertson and her family are celebrating tonight because they just wrapped up Katrina repairs. "I was up very early this morning and the water was already coming in around the house and i thought, oh, here we go again."
Alberto's affects created high surf and dangerous rip currents today. During high tide, Gulf water covered the road on the west end of the island and made it's way under many homes.
The storm, only a tropical storm, and hundreds of miles away proves to us all how severe hurricane season can be here along the Gulf Coast. Buddy Holland is a long time Dauphin Island Resident: "I'm just hoping that we don't have a storm again, a bad storm, because if we do, it's going to wipe this end out. (Kim) again. (Buddy) again."
Beach-goers should use extreme caution. The high surf advisory will continue until Tuesday.
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Audrey2Katrina
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HUD plans to reopen 1,000 public housing units
By Michelle Roberts
Associated Press Writer
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced Wednesday that it will reopen 1,000 additional New Orleans public housing units this summer and increase the amount it pays for rental assistance to help bring the city's poor people back.
The plan - the first announced since Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of the available public housing 10 months ago - calls for demolition of the city's largest public housing development, St. Bernard, and three others.
Those developments will be rebuilt into a combination of public housing, rental housing and single-family homes, HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson said in a statement.
Units in the least-damaged and newest developments will be repaired.
Residents of St. Bernard and other housing projects have been increasingly vocal in their effort to return to public housing, saying they are homesick and are being left out of the economic opportunities available in a city where wages for construction and other jobs have increased dramatically.
About 1,000 families of the 5,100 living in public housing pre-Katrina have been able to return, but units where utility service is still unavailable or water and mold damage was too severe have remained shuttered.
Jackson said 1,000 more units should be open by August.
HUD also has agreed to raise by 35 percent the amount it pays in vouchers to landlords, helping to offset the dramatic increase in rents since the city was flooded. Because of rising rents, most private apartments are beyond the reach of many poor people.
Jackson said that voucher recipients and public housing residents will be welcomed home to New Orleans, but that rebuilding public housing will take time.
''We want to ensure the public housing of the future is a source of pride for all residents of the city,'' he said.
Public housing in New Orleans is run by the federal government, which took over the job in 2002 after years of mismanagement and waste by local officials.
Mayor Ray Nagin has urged the federal government to move cautiously in restoring public housing, saying he does not want the projects - many of them crime-ridden and in poor condition - restored merely to pre-Katrina conditions.
By Michelle Roberts
Associated Press Writer
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced Wednesday that it will reopen 1,000 additional New Orleans public housing units this summer and increase the amount it pays for rental assistance to help bring the city's poor people back.
The plan - the first announced since Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of the available public housing 10 months ago - calls for demolition of the city's largest public housing development, St. Bernard, and three others.
Those developments will be rebuilt into a combination of public housing, rental housing and single-family homes, HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson said in a statement.
Units in the least-damaged and newest developments will be repaired.
Residents of St. Bernard and other housing projects have been increasingly vocal in their effort to return to public housing, saying they are homesick and are being left out of the economic opportunities available in a city where wages for construction and other jobs have increased dramatically.
About 1,000 families of the 5,100 living in public housing pre-Katrina have been able to return, but units where utility service is still unavailable or water and mold damage was too severe have remained shuttered.
Jackson said 1,000 more units should be open by August.
HUD also has agreed to raise by 35 percent the amount it pays in vouchers to landlords, helping to offset the dramatic increase in rents since the city was flooded. Because of rising rents, most private apartments are beyond the reach of many poor people.
Jackson said that voucher recipients and public housing residents will be welcomed home to New Orleans, but that rebuilding public housing will take time.
''We want to ensure the public housing of the future is a source of pride for all residents of the city,'' he said.
Public housing in New Orleans is run by the federal government, which took over the job in 2002 after years of mismanagement and waste by local officials.
Mayor Ray Nagin has urged the federal government to move cautiously in restoring public housing, saying he does not want the projects - many of them crime-ridden and in poor condition - restored merely to pre-Katrina conditions.
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Audrey2Katrina
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Amtrak train collides with truck in Paradis
Breaking News, Nola.com 06/14/06
An Amtrak passenger train has collided with a flatbed truck near Paradis in St. Charles Parish.
St. Charles Parish emergency officials are on the scene now and are attempting to remove several train passengers who were injured in the accident. It is unclear at this time what caused the accident or how severe the passengers were injured.
Breaking News, Nola.com 06/14/06
An Amtrak passenger train has collided with a flatbed truck near Paradis in St. Charles Parish.
St. Charles Parish emergency officials are on the scene now and are attempting to remove several train passengers who were injured in the accident. It is unclear at this time what caused the accident or how severe the passengers were injured.
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Audrey2Katrina
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St. Tammany bans burning -- again
St. Tammany bureau
Because of the extremely dry conditions, St. Tammany Parish President Kevin Davis on Wednesday imposed another parishwide ban on outdoor burning.
Davis said he imposed the ban at the request of local fire chiefs who have been battling another rash of brush and woods fires. Many of the fires were sparked by debris burning that got out of control, fire officials said.
“Windy and dry conditions have provided fuel to fires in St. Tammany Parish,” Davis said. “The ban will be lifted as soon as these conditions change for the better.”
“Our goal with this ban is not to cause inconvenience or issue citations, but to protect the public safety,” parish fire services director John O’Neil said. “Please do not endanger yourselves or others, or risk further damage to your property, by violating this ban.”
The ban is the fourth one imposed by the parish president since Hurricane Katrina.
Davis imposed the first ban in the days after the storm because of dry weather and the mountains of storm-related debris throughout the parish. That ban was lifted Nov. 28, but reimposed on Jan. 9 after a rash of brush and woods fires.
The second ban was lifted 16 days later. But after another dry spell and more brush fires, the third ban was imposed March 8. That ban was lifted May 1 after the last widespread heavy rains across St. Tammany.
The penalty for violating the ban is a fine up to $500 and 30 days in jail. Local law enforcement officials have pledged to vigorously enforce the ban, parish officials said.
The ban applies to the unincorporated areas of the parish plus Folsom, Pearl River, Abita Springs, Sun and Madisonville, which follow parish directives on outdoor burning. Slidell, Mandeville and Covington prohibit outdoor burning at all times.
St. Tammany bureau
Because of the extremely dry conditions, St. Tammany Parish President Kevin Davis on Wednesday imposed another parishwide ban on outdoor burning.
Davis said he imposed the ban at the request of local fire chiefs who have been battling another rash of brush and woods fires. Many of the fires were sparked by debris burning that got out of control, fire officials said.
“Windy and dry conditions have provided fuel to fires in St. Tammany Parish,” Davis said. “The ban will be lifted as soon as these conditions change for the better.”
“Our goal with this ban is not to cause inconvenience or issue citations, but to protect the public safety,” parish fire services director John O’Neil said. “Please do not endanger yourselves or others, or risk further damage to your property, by violating this ban.”
The ban is the fourth one imposed by the parish president since Hurricane Katrina.
Davis imposed the first ban in the days after the storm because of dry weather and the mountains of storm-related debris throughout the parish. That ban was lifted Nov. 28, but reimposed on Jan. 9 after a rash of brush and woods fires.
The second ban was lifted 16 days later. But after another dry spell and more brush fires, the third ban was imposed March 8. That ban was lifted May 1 after the last widespread heavy rains across St. Tammany.
The penalty for violating the ban is a fine up to $500 and 30 days in jail. Local law enforcement officials have pledged to vigorously enforce the ban, parish officials said.
The ban applies to the unincorporated areas of the parish plus Folsom, Pearl River, Abita Springs, Sun and Madisonville, which follow parish directives on outdoor burning. Slidell, Mandeville and Covington prohibit outdoor burning at all times.
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Audrey2Katrina
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Legislation gives Entergy option to seek city takeover
Bankrupt utility wants federal aid
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
By Laura Maggi
Capital bureau
BATON ROUGE -- With minimal discussion, the Senate gave final approval Tuesday to legislation that would help Entergy New Orleans seek a city takeover if the utility decides that is the best way to deal with its financial problems after Hurricane Katrina.
House Bill 1389 by Rep. Cheryl Gray, D-New Orleans, would revamp an existing public power authority for Orleans Parish that would allow for municipal ownership of the utility, which is burdened by the high cost of repairs and a smaller customer base.
Dan Packer, the company's chief executive officer, told a Senate committee earlier this session that this is an option to explore if the company can't get a bailout through federal recovery money. The utility, which is still operating in the city, declared bankruptcy in the weeks following the storm.
Sen. Edwin Murray, D-New Orleans, who handled the bill on the Senate floor, said the legislation is necessary in case the utility can't get the needed assistance.
"I think it is important that we have something in place," he said. The legislation now heads to Gov. Kathleen Blanco's desk for her consideration.
State officials have been skeptical that they can cover all of Entergy New Orleans' needs with available Community Development Block Grants, saying that assistance for utilities has to be spread across the hurricane-ravaged parishes in south Louisiana.
The legislation would set up a seven-member board of the New Orleans authority, mandating that the membership would include an accountant, lawyer, financial expert, licensed electrical engineer, consumer representative and business representative. The mayor would appoint the members from recommendations by community and business groups, as well as New Orleans universities.
The bill also states that the authority would be allowed to set rates that customers pay for electric power and gas, as well as take on bond debt. But Murray said the New Orleans City Council, which currently oversees Entergy New Orleans, would retain that power.
Any changes to the way Entergy is set up in the city would have to be approved by the City Council.
Bankrupt utility wants federal aid
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
By Laura Maggi
Capital bureau
BATON ROUGE -- With minimal discussion, the Senate gave final approval Tuesday to legislation that would help Entergy New Orleans seek a city takeover if the utility decides that is the best way to deal with its financial problems after Hurricane Katrina.
House Bill 1389 by Rep. Cheryl Gray, D-New Orleans, would revamp an existing public power authority for Orleans Parish that would allow for municipal ownership of the utility, which is burdened by the high cost of repairs and a smaller customer base.
Dan Packer, the company's chief executive officer, told a Senate committee earlier this session that this is an option to explore if the company can't get a bailout through federal recovery money. The utility, which is still operating in the city, declared bankruptcy in the weeks following the storm.
Sen. Edwin Murray, D-New Orleans, who handled the bill on the Senate floor, said the legislation is necessary in case the utility can't get the needed assistance.
"I think it is important that we have something in place," he said. The legislation now heads to Gov. Kathleen Blanco's desk for her consideration.
State officials have been skeptical that they can cover all of Entergy New Orleans' needs with available Community Development Block Grants, saying that assistance for utilities has to be spread across the hurricane-ravaged parishes in south Louisiana.
The legislation would set up a seven-member board of the New Orleans authority, mandating that the membership would include an accountant, lawyer, financial expert, licensed electrical engineer, consumer representative and business representative. The mayor would appoint the members from recommendations by community and business groups, as well as New Orleans universities.
The bill also states that the authority would be allowed to set rates that customers pay for electric power and gas, as well as take on bond debt. But Murray said the New Orleans City Council, which currently oversees Entergy New Orleans, would retain that power.
Any changes to the way Entergy is set up in the city would have to be approved by the City Council.
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Audrey2Katrina
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Gulf Coast Network
GCN Quick Update
6/14/06
Governor Haley Barbour and Insurance Commissioner George Dale announced that the state will contribute $50 million to help offset the high increase in wind pool insurance...The state plans to expand the Katrina Homeowner's Grant Program to include low and moderate income homeowners, including homeowners within the flood zones...
6/14/06
Governor Haley Barbour and Insurance Commissioner George Dale announced that the state will contribute $50 million to help offset the high increase in wind pool insurance...The state plans to expand the Katrina Homeowner's Grant Program to include low and moderate income homeowners, including homeowners within the flood zones...
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