Aircraft carrier sunk in Gulf of Mexico in attempt to create artificial reef
Last Update: 5/17/2006 6:10:13 PM
IN THE GULF OF MEXICO (AP) - Navy divers detonated explosives Wednesday aboard the USS Oriskany, sending the retired aircraft carrier on a 212-foot plunge to bottom of the Gulf of Mexico to create world's largest intentional reef.
Hundreds of Korean and Vietnam War veterans on charter boats watched as the carrier slowly sank about 24 miles off Pensacola Beach.
The 888-foot-long ship, known as the "Mighty O," was commissioned in 1950 and was home to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., when he served in Vietnam. It was also among the ships used by President John F. Kennedy as a show of force during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
The Oriskany was decommissioned in 1976 and now becomes the first ship sunk for reefing under a new Navy program to dispose of old warships.
Clouds of brown and gray smoke rose in the sky after more than 500 pounds of plastic explosives went off about 11:30 a.m. EDT. The ship took about 45 minutes to go down.
The Environmental Protection Agency in February approved the sinking of the ship with chemical toxins in electrical cables, insulation and paint still aboard. EPA officials said the toxins will slowly leach out over the estimated 100 years it will take the carrier to rust away and should pose no danger to marine life.
Local leaders hope the carrier reef will bring a long-awaited economic infusion from sport divers and fishermen. A 2004 Florida State University study estimated Escambia County would see $92 million a year in economic benefits from an artificial reef.
News from Central Gulf Focus: La./Miss (Ala contributors)
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Audrey2Katrina
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Katrina death toll rises as those who evacuated to other states counted
By Michelle Hunter
East Jefferson bureau Times Picayune
May 18, 2006
The first stories of death came quickly and immediately: New Orleans area residents drowning in fetid floodwaters, succumbing in sweltering attics or being swept out to sea.
But state officials say that for more than four weeks after it made landfall Aug. 29, Hurricane Katrina kept claiming Louisiana victims, often in more subtle fashion and often in other states: elderly and ill evacuees too fragile for grueling trips on gridlocked highways, infants stillborn to mothers who were shuttled to other cities when they should have been on bed rest and residents overcome with anxiety by 24-hour television broadcasts of the devastation back home.
Owing to a continuing rise in reports of out-of-state deaths, Louisiana’s official Katrina toll jumped 22 percent on Thursday, to 1,577 deaths, when the Department of Health and Hospitals added 281 more victims to the count. Texas alone accounted for 223 deaths of the increase.
And the work is far from finished. Only 32 states, representing 480 deaths, have filed their reports with Louisiana officials.
State Medical Examiner Louis Cataldie said he and his staff are preparing to examine every case to determine whether the death was indeed storm-related. The work will be tedious, but the ultimate goal is to define the mortal scope of Katrina’s tragedy.
“Folks need to know, what are the true consequences of a catastrophe,” Cataldie said.
Patricia O’Neil knows.
At 81, her aunt, Rita Parker, wasn’t the picture of perfect health. Parker had bronchitis and was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. But O’Neil and another of Parker’s nieces, Jo Ann Owen, said their aunt was nowhere near gravely ill.
Parker and her husband, Sam, 84, were a social pair who never missed a high school reunion, always had a vacation planned and kept the front yard of their Jefferson home neatly trimmed.
But after 20-plus hours in a car fleeing Katrina — with stops in Florida, Georgia and, finally, Oklahoma — Parker was beginning to wear, O’Neil said. Her aunt was glued to television coverage about the storm. Things seemed to worsen when they got the news that two family homes had been destroyed. Parker refused to eat and drink and became lethargic.
She was hospitalized in Oklahoma City on Sept. 4 and died six days later. Doctors said her breathing problems put a strain on her heart.
“I think the travel, the news coverage, the worry about the house ... ,” O’Neil said, pausing, “It was pretty bad.”
Parker is one of six Louisiana evacuees who reportedly died in Oklahoma between Aug. 27, the Saturday that Katrina began honing in on Louisiana, and Oct. 1. Louisiana health department spokesman Bob Johannessen said the time-frame is somewhat arbitrary. Officials established the dates in an effort to define, and find, for Katrina’s victims.
To round up the numbers, Louisiana turned to the National Association of Public Health Statistics and Information Systems, which in turn tapped all 50 state health departments for information on evacuee deaths, Johannessen said.
Most of the out-of-state dead reported so far were elderly people. But the ages range from an infant who survived only 45 minutes after birth in Pennsylvania, to 104-year-old woman who died in North Carolina. The vast majority, 82 percent, died of natural causes, and 27 percent of the deaths were deemed accidental. At least two suicides are included in the official count.
Almost half of the out-of-state deaths occurred in Texas.
That’s where the National Guard airlifted Shirley Richard, 87, after she rode out Katrina at Metairie Manor nursing home. Richard refused to evacuate before the storm, said her sister, Mary Marino.
Marino said she was shocked the second week in September to receive a telephone call from San Antonio informing her that Richard had been hospitalized there. She flew to Texas and spent three days with her sister until Richard died Sept. 14.
Richard had been ill before the storm with colitis and congestive heart failure. But she was determined to stay alive to comfort Marino, who was still suffering from the death of a son a few years ago, Marino said.
“I guess you could say the storm triggered it,” Marino said.
Dr. Alvin Rouchell, chairman of psychiatry at Ochsner Medical Center, said elderly people typically are less adaptable than younger people to physical and emotional shock. They have less strength to handle the demands of a recovery process after something such as Katrina.
Elderly patients in nursing homes become used to a routine, said Dr. Michael Knight, an Ochsner psychiatrist. Upset the routine, and they react.
“If you take them out of their milieu, they begin to decompensate,” he said. “They might refuse to eat and take medication.”
In addition, Cataldie said, it’s quite possible that some evacuees had no access to essential prescription medication while away from home, and their wait turned fatal. Cataldie said he fielded a call from relatives of one man who committed suicide after he spent days without medication.
Cataldie’s staff will eventually sift through hundreds of death certificates from other states and interview relatives to determine whether to label deaths “Katrina-related.” At stake is the official accounting of the disaster’s aftermath.
But a designation as a Katrina death also could mean burial benefits from the state and federal governments, Cataldie said.
“We want them to be able to take advantage of that,” he said.
There are no clear rules. But Cataldie said the guideline is this question: Had the conditions created by Katrina not existed, would the person have died when he or she did?
JoAnn Owen welcomes the inquiry into her aunt Rita Parker’s death.
“I want it labeled Katrina-related,” she said. “I feel that is what led to my aunt’s death.”
By Michelle Hunter
East Jefferson bureau Times Picayune
May 18, 2006
The first stories of death came quickly and immediately: New Orleans area residents drowning in fetid floodwaters, succumbing in sweltering attics or being swept out to sea.
But state officials say that for more than four weeks after it made landfall Aug. 29, Hurricane Katrina kept claiming Louisiana victims, often in more subtle fashion and often in other states: elderly and ill evacuees too fragile for grueling trips on gridlocked highways, infants stillborn to mothers who were shuttled to other cities when they should have been on bed rest and residents overcome with anxiety by 24-hour television broadcasts of the devastation back home.
Owing to a continuing rise in reports of out-of-state deaths, Louisiana’s official Katrina toll jumped 22 percent on Thursday, to 1,577 deaths, when the Department of Health and Hospitals added 281 more victims to the count. Texas alone accounted for 223 deaths of the increase.
And the work is far from finished. Only 32 states, representing 480 deaths, have filed their reports with Louisiana officials.
State Medical Examiner Louis Cataldie said he and his staff are preparing to examine every case to determine whether the death was indeed storm-related. The work will be tedious, but the ultimate goal is to define the mortal scope of Katrina’s tragedy.
“Folks need to know, what are the true consequences of a catastrophe,” Cataldie said.
Patricia O’Neil knows.
At 81, her aunt, Rita Parker, wasn’t the picture of perfect health. Parker had bronchitis and was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. But O’Neil and another of Parker’s nieces, Jo Ann Owen, said their aunt was nowhere near gravely ill.
Parker and her husband, Sam, 84, were a social pair who never missed a high school reunion, always had a vacation planned and kept the front yard of their Jefferson home neatly trimmed.
But after 20-plus hours in a car fleeing Katrina — with stops in Florida, Georgia and, finally, Oklahoma — Parker was beginning to wear, O’Neil said. Her aunt was glued to television coverage about the storm. Things seemed to worsen when they got the news that two family homes had been destroyed. Parker refused to eat and drink and became lethargic.
She was hospitalized in Oklahoma City on Sept. 4 and died six days later. Doctors said her breathing problems put a strain on her heart.
“I think the travel, the news coverage, the worry about the house ... ,” O’Neil said, pausing, “It was pretty bad.”
Parker is one of six Louisiana evacuees who reportedly died in Oklahoma between Aug. 27, the Saturday that Katrina began honing in on Louisiana, and Oct. 1. Louisiana health department spokesman Bob Johannessen said the time-frame is somewhat arbitrary. Officials established the dates in an effort to define, and find, for Katrina’s victims.
To round up the numbers, Louisiana turned to the National Association of Public Health Statistics and Information Systems, which in turn tapped all 50 state health departments for information on evacuee deaths, Johannessen said.
Most of the out-of-state dead reported so far were elderly people. But the ages range from an infant who survived only 45 minutes after birth in Pennsylvania, to 104-year-old woman who died in North Carolina. The vast majority, 82 percent, died of natural causes, and 27 percent of the deaths were deemed accidental. At least two suicides are included in the official count.
Almost half of the out-of-state deaths occurred in Texas.
That’s where the National Guard airlifted Shirley Richard, 87, after she rode out Katrina at Metairie Manor nursing home. Richard refused to evacuate before the storm, said her sister, Mary Marino.
Marino said she was shocked the second week in September to receive a telephone call from San Antonio informing her that Richard had been hospitalized there. She flew to Texas and spent three days with her sister until Richard died Sept. 14.
Richard had been ill before the storm with colitis and congestive heart failure. But she was determined to stay alive to comfort Marino, who was still suffering from the death of a son a few years ago, Marino said.
“I guess you could say the storm triggered it,” Marino said.
Dr. Alvin Rouchell, chairman of psychiatry at Ochsner Medical Center, said elderly people typically are less adaptable than younger people to physical and emotional shock. They have less strength to handle the demands of a recovery process after something such as Katrina.
Elderly patients in nursing homes become used to a routine, said Dr. Michael Knight, an Ochsner psychiatrist. Upset the routine, and they react.
“If you take them out of their milieu, they begin to decompensate,” he said. “They might refuse to eat and take medication.”
In addition, Cataldie said, it’s quite possible that some evacuees had no access to essential prescription medication while away from home, and their wait turned fatal. Cataldie said he fielded a call from relatives of one man who committed suicide after he spent days without medication.
Cataldie’s staff will eventually sift through hundreds of death certificates from other states and interview relatives to determine whether to label deaths “Katrina-related.” At stake is the official accounting of the disaster’s aftermath.
But a designation as a Katrina death also could mean burial benefits from the state and federal governments, Cataldie said.
“We want them to be able to take advantage of that,” he said.
There are no clear rules. But Cataldie said the guideline is this question: Had the conditions created by Katrina not existed, would the person have died when he or she did?
JoAnn Owen welcomes the inquiry into her aunt Rita Parker’s death.
“I want it labeled Katrina-related,” she said. “I feel that is what led to my aunt’s death.”
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Jefferson Parish teacher arrested on federal child stuff charges
5/18/2006, 7:42 p.m. CT
The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A Jefferson Parish public school teacher was in custody Thursday, booked on charges of possession of child pornography, federal authorities said.
The FBI arrested Russell Counterman, 44, of New Orleans, after getting a tip that he allegedly downloaded files — while at work — containing sexually explicit images of children who ranged in age from 4 years old to teenagers, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said.
During Counterman's initial appearance before U.S. Magistrate Louis Moore Jr., prosecutors asked that Counterman be detained, Letten said. "He's currently in custody, but a detention hearing is scheduled for Monday to determine whether he'll stay there," he said.
Counterman, who taught at the Patrick F. Taylor Science and Technology school, was suspended following his arrest, according to Jefferson Parish public school officials.
Federal agents said Counterman was accused of using a school-issued laptop to download child pornography from the Internet at the school. After agreeing to a search, authorities said some of the alleged material was found in Counterman's classroom in a briefcase as well as in his home.
"It is important to note that the FBI has no information indicating that any child had access to child pornography or that this individual engaged in inappropriate behavior with the school children," said Special Agent in Charge Jim Bernazzani.
Letten also said there was no evidence of Counterman having manufactured any of the pictures seized.
The U.S. Attorney's Office said Counterman has taught school in the New Orleans area for 12 years. If indicted and convicted, Counterman faces up to 10 years in jail and a life term of supervised release.
5/18/2006, 7:42 p.m. CT
The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A Jefferson Parish public school teacher was in custody Thursday, booked on charges of possession of child pornography, federal authorities said.
The FBI arrested Russell Counterman, 44, of New Orleans, after getting a tip that he allegedly downloaded files — while at work — containing sexually explicit images of children who ranged in age from 4 years old to teenagers, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said.
During Counterman's initial appearance before U.S. Magistrate Louis Moore Jr., prosecutors asked that Counterman be detained, Letten said. "He's currently in custody, but a detention hearing is scheduled for Monday to determine whether he'll stay there," he said.
Counterman, who taught at the Patrick F. Taylor Science and Technology school, was suspended following his arrest, according to Jefferson Parish public school officials.
Federal agents said Counterman was accused of using a school-issued laptop to download child pornography from the Internet at the school. After agreeing to a search, authorities said some of the alleged material was found in Counterman's classroom in a briefcase as well as in his home.
"It is important to note that the FBI has no information indicating that any child had access to child pornography or that this individual engaged in inappropriate behavior with the school children," said Special Agent in Charge Jim Bernazzani.
Letten also said there was no evidence of Counterman having manufactured any of the pictures seized.
The U.S. Attorney's Office said Counterman has taught school in the New Orleans area for 12 years. If indicted and convicted, Counterman faces up to 10 years in jail and a life term of supervised release.
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Audrey2Katrina
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'I Quit' ticket survivors press on
Two of 7 in runoff, hope to oust assessors
Thursday, May 18, 2006
By Jeffrey Meitrodt
Staff Writer Times Picayune
Charlie Bosworth lost his race for assessor more than three weeks ago, but he was knocking on doors again this week in an attempt to win support for the two remaining candidates of the so-called "I Quit" ticket, which has campaigned on the theme of creating a single elected assessor in New
"It sounds kind of corny, but we really are all in this together," said Bosworth, who spent 90 minutes Monday night handing out leaflets for Maria Elliott, a church fund-raiser who faces 1st District Assessor Darren Mire in a runoff Saturday. "This was never really about Charlie Bosworth."
In fact, the lack of name recognition poses a huge hurdle for the I.Q. ticket as its candidates attempt to unseat incumbents Mire and 4th District Assessor Betty Jefferson, who is being challenged by sports marketer Chase Jones. Four other I.Q. candidates were defeated in April, while a fifth, lawyer Nancy Marshall, beat 6th District Assessor Albert Coman with 55 percent of the vote.
As Bosworth and other I.Q. backers walked the campaign trail this week, they were often greeted with blank stares while introducing themselves and asking whether the potential voter had ever heard of the I.Q. group, which is made up of seven political novices who had never run for office before.
Though the group was targeting precincts where the I.Q. ticket had either won or lost by a narrow margin, there wasn't much visible support for the challenger in the Mid-City neighborhood Bosworth and Elliott walked Monday night.
They walked past two dozen signs touting Mire's candidacy, but spotted just three I.Q. placards for Elliott, who was threatened if she didn't immediately depart the front porch of one irritated resident on Cleveland Avenue.
Still, they managed to round up at least one vote. After listening to Bosworth's spiel, John Brown said he was ready to support Elliott's candidacy because she was promising to eliminate inequities in property tax evaluations, which Bosworth said resulted in higher taxes for low-income homeowners such as Brown.
"I'm down with that," said Brown, who didn't vote in the April election. "We've got to clean this whole system out."
Incumbents satisfied
Not surprisingly, the incumbents take a much different view. Jefferson said there is nothing wrong with the status quo, and she challenged the accuracy of reports that have found widespread problems with the way property is assessed in New Orleans.
Though the Louisiana Tax Commission concluded that Jefferson has the highest error rate of any of the seven assessors in the city, Jefferson maintains she is doing a good job and deserves to be re-elected. In a 2005 report, the Tax Commission found that the uniformity of Jefferson's valuations was off by 55 percent, versus an acceptable error rate of 20 percent.
"I disagree with all of that," said Jefferson, sister of U.S. Rep. William Jefferson. "I do a good job. I know what I am doing. I know my district."
In one case, Jefferson valued a Garden District property at $243,200, while the commission's appraiser said the house was worth $850,000. The low assessment saved the homeowner about $10,934 per year.
"I am not aware of that," Jefferson said.
Jefferson, who was re-elected without opposition in 2002 and comes from one of the most powerful political families in Louisiana, said she has "no idea" why she was unable to win in the primary. She missed an outright victory by just 32 votes, capturing 49 percent of the 4,687 votes cast in the 4th District.
Mire, who also came close to winning in April with 48 percent of the vote, said he believes he was forced into a runoff because he is suffering a "backlash" from property owners who have seen much higher assessments on his watch.
Though he agrees that inequities have plagued the tax rolls, Mire said he's already increased the assessments of 9,000 of the 11,000 properties in his district from 20 percent to 75 percent.
"People say they want change, but a lot of times they vote with their pocketbook," Mire said.
Computer skills
In his campaign literature, Mire said Saturday's election "is all about the numbers and qualifications." He belittles Elliott's track record, dismissing her as a "practicing musician who admits she is not qualified and plans to hire outside consultants to do the job for her."
Before his election in 2002, Mire worked as a licensed real estate appraiser. He spent five years mediating property tax disputes for commercial property owners as a consultant with McNamara Associates.
Elliott, an oboe player who works as director of giving for Trinity Episcopal Church, agrees that Mire has better qualifications for the job. But she said the I.Q. candidates will hire qualified people to run the office if they win, taking politics out of the process. And while she has no real estate experience, Elliott believes she would bring valuable experience to the position, especially her work in managing large computer databases.
That happens to be one of the biggest challenges facing the current assessors, who recently acquired a new computer system but are still trying to figure out how to obtain the $10 million or so they say they need to make it work the way it was designed to. The money would be used largely to pay for collecting data on every single piece of property in the city.
While the state government is prepared to steer $2.5 billion in federal grants to local agencies for government infrastructure work related to Hurricane Katrina, Mire said he and his fellow assessors have not applied for any of that money.
"That is an option we should explore, because we need to get this process started," Mire said. "I'm going to bring it up at the next board meeting."
Elliott doesn't think the city's assessors need to spend $10 million to obtain the data they want for the system. She said there is plenty of free data available from the city, including real estate sales and permitting information, that would greatly enhance the system, even if it wouldn't provide all the data the assessors want.
"We don't need seven assessors, we need one really good database manager to figure that situation out, and I have done data conversions on several occasions," said Elliott, who recently overhauled a database with 30,000 records at Trinity Church.
Qualifications challenged
Jefferson has also challenged her opponent's qualifications, saying in one debate that Jones "does not understand the assessment process." She noted that Jones, who sells corporate sponsorships for Tulane University's athletic department, has no background in real estate.
But Jones, who sold corporate sponsorships for the New Orleans Hornets until the NBA team relocated to Oklahoma after Katrina, said he has plenty of management experience.
"The Hornets had over 100 sponsors and well over $100 million in sponsorship revenue," Jones said. "If I can keep track of the Hornets' sponsors, I know I can do a much better job of fairly assessing 4,000 to 5,000 parcels of property."
Mire and Jefferson have both been endorsed by the other candidates who challenged them during the April primary:
-- Restaurant owner David Baird, a Republican, said he is backing Mire, a Democrat, because Mire seems "more open-minded" about Republicans than Elliott, another Democrat, and also because Mire is open to the idea of giving tax breaks to commercial-property owners who sustained hurricane-related losses.
-- Lawyer Gerard Archer said he is endorsing Jefferson because he doesn't like the I.Q. platform of using their salaries to hire professional appraisers to run the offices. "I have a serious problem with that," Archer said.
Two of 7 in runoff, hope to oust assessors
Thursday, May 18, 2006
By Jeffrey Meitrodt
Staff Writer Times Picayune
Charlie Bosworth lost his race for assessor more than three weeks ago, but he was knocking on doors again this week in an attempt to win support for the two remaining candidates of the so-called "I Quit" ticket, which has campaigned on the theme of creating a single elected assessor in New
"It sounds kind of corny, but we really are all in this together," said Bosworth, who spent 90 minutes Monday night handing out leaflets for Maria Elliott, a church fund-raiser who faces 1st District Assessor Darren Mire in a runoff Saturday. "This was never really about Charlie Bosworth."
In fact, the lack of name recognition poses a huge hurdle for the I.Q. ticket as its candidates attempt to unseat incumbents Mire and 4th District Assessor Betty Jefferson, who is being challenged by sports marketer Chase Jones. Four other I.Q. candidates were defeated in April, while a fifth, lawyer Nancy Marshall, beat 6th District Assessor Albert Coman with 55 percent of the vote.
As Bosworth and other I.Q. backers walked the campaign trail this week, they were often greeted with blank stares while introducing themselves and asking whether the potential voter had ever heard of the I.Q. group, which is made up of seven political novices who had never run for office before.
Though the group was targeting precincts where the I.Q. ticket had either won or lost by a narrow margin, there wasn't much visible support for the challenger in the Mid-City neighborhood Bosworth and Elliott walked Monday night.
They walked past two dozen signs touting Mire's candidacy, but spotted just three I.Q. placards for Elliott, who was threatened if she didn't immediately depart the front porch of one irritated resident on Cleveland Avenue.
Still, they managed to round up at least one vote. After listening to Bosworth's spiel, John Brown said he was ready to support Elliott's candidacy because she was promising to eliminate inequities in property tax evaluations, which Bosworth said resulted in higher taxes for low-income homeowners such as Brown.
"I'm down with that," said Brown, who didn't vote in the April election. "We've got to clean this whole system out."
Incumbents satisfied
Not surprisingly, the incumbents take a much different view. Jefferson said there is nothing wrong with the status quo, and she challenged the accuracy of reports that have found widespread problems with the way property is assessed in New Orleans.
Though the Louisiana Tax Commission concluded that Jefferson has the highest error rate of any of the seven assessors in the city, Jefferson maintains she is doing a good job and deserves to be re-elected. In a 2005 report, the Tax Commission found that the uniformity of Jefferson's valuations was off by 55 percent, versus an acceptable error rate of 20 percent.
"I disagree with all of that," said Jefferson, sister of U.S. Rep. William Jefferson. "I do a good job. I know what I am doing. I know my district."
In one case, Jefferson valued a Garden District property at $243,200, while the commission's appraiser said the house was worth $850,000. The low assessment saved the homeowner about $10,934 per year.
"I am not aware of that," Jefferson said.
Jefferson, who was re-elected without opposition in 2002 and comes from one of the most powerful political families in Louisiana, said she has "no idea" why she was unable to win in the primary. She missed an outright victory by just 32 votes, capturing 49 percent of the 4,687 votes cast in the 4th District.
Mire, who also came close to winning in April with 48 percent of the vote, said he believes he was forced into a runoff because he is suffering a "backlash" from property owners who have seen much higher assessments on his watch.
Though he agrees that inequities have plagued the tax rolls, Mire said he's already increased the assessments of 9,000 of the 11,000 properties in his district from 20 percent to 75 percent.
"People say they want change, but a lot of times they vote with their pocketbook," Mire said.
Computer skills
In his campaign literature, Mire said Saturday's election "is all about the numbers and qualifications." He belittles Elliott's track record, dismissing her as a "practicing musician who admits she is not qualified and plans to hire outside consultants to do the job for her."
Before his election in 2002, Mire worked as a licensed real estate appraiser. He spent five years mediating property tax disputes for commercial property owners as a consultant with McNamara Associates.
Elliott, an oboe player who works as director of giving for Trinity Episcopal Church, agrees that Mire has better qualifications for the job. But she said the I.Q. candidates will hire qualified people to run the office if they win, taking politics out of the process. And while she has no real estate experience, Elliott believes she would bring valuable experience to the position, especially her work in managing large computer databases.
That happens to be one of the biggest challenges facing the current assessors, who recently acquired a new computer system but are still trying to figure out how to obtain the $10 million or so they say they need to make it work the way it was designed to. The money would be used largely to pay for collecting data on every single piece of property in the city.
While the state government is prepared to steer $2.5 billion in federal grants to local agencies for government infrastructure work related to Hurricane Katrina, Mire said he and his fellow assessors have not applied for any of that money.
"That is an option we should explore, because we need to get this process started," Mire said. "I'm going to bring it up at the next board meeting."
Elliott doesn't think the city's assessors need to spend $10 million to obtain the data they want for the system. She said there is plenty of free data available from the city, including real estate sales and permitting information, that would greatly enhance the system, even if it wouldn't provide all the data the assessors want.
"We don't need seven assessors, we need one really good database manager to figure that situation out, and I have done data conversions on several occasions," said Elliott, who recently overhauled a database with 30,000 records at Trinity Church.
Qualifications challenged
Jefferson has also challenged her opponent's qualifications, saying in one debate that Jones "does not understand the assessment process." She noted that Jones, who sells corporate sponsorships for Tulane University's athletic department, has no background in real estate.
But Jones, who sold corporate sponsorships for the New Orleans Hornets until the NBA team relocated to Oklahoma after Katrina, said he has plenty of management experience.
"The Hornets had over 100 sponsors and well over $100 million in sponsorship revenue," Jones said. "If I can keep track of the Hornets' sponsors, I know I can do a much better job of fairly assessing 4,000 to 5,000 parcels of property."
Mire and Jefferson have both been endorsed by the other candidates who challenged them during the April primary:
-- Restaurant owner David Baird, a Republican, said he is backing Mire, a Democrat, because Mire seems "more open-minded" about Republicans than Elliott, another Democrat, and also because Mire is open to the idea of giving tax breaks to commercial-property owners who sustained hurricane-related losses.
-- Lawyer Gerard Archer said he is endorsing Jefferson because he doesn't like the I.Q. platform of using their salaries to hire professional appraisers to run the offices. "I have a serious problem with that," Archer said.
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Audrey2Katrina
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Mayors weigh in for their fellow mayor
ALSO: Squabble over endorsement; Waiting, waiting, still waiting; Polls give lead to Fielkow, Carter
Thursday, May 18, 2006 Times Picayune
By Michelle Krupa
Frank Donze%%par%%and Jeff Duncan%%par%%Staff writers
Months before the mayoral campaign cranked into high gear, incumbent Ray Nagin was dazzling his contemporaries. At the winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, top executives of City Halls across the country fell over each other to laud his post-Katrina efforts and openly forgive his many headline-grabbing faux pas.
And it seems that heading into Saturday's runoff Nagin has again captured the esteem of his fellow hizzoners, announcing Wednesday in Baton Rouge endorsements from 39 mayors, or their spouses, from towns across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Texas, North and South Carolina, California, Michigan, New Jersey and Florida. All are members of the National Conference of Black Mayors, which cannot issue endorsements as a group because of its nonprofit status, a Nagin spokeswoman said.
Despite the list's length, however, it is not unreasonable to question what value Nagin's far-flung colleagues bring or to consider that the aggregate populations of those cities may not even top the pre-Katrina head-count of New Orleans. To be fair, there are some heavy hitters in the list, such as Durham, N.C., with 187,000 residents and East Orange, N.J., home to about 70,000 people, according to the 2000 U.S. Census.
But you might need an atlas and a magnifying glass to find some of the humbler burgs on the list. Among them Manning, S.C.: population 4,025; Tutwiler, Miss.: population 1,364; Kendleton, Texas: population 466; and Boligee, Ala.: population 369.
. . . . . . .
PANTS ON FIRE: As election day draws near, the bitter war of words between Jay Batt, the incumbent District A representative on the City Council, and challenger Shelley Midura, continues to rage.
The latest dust-up involves a flier Batt has distributed touting an endorsement from Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, who faces Nagin in Saturday's mayoral runoff.
Midura, a Democrat who has slammed her Republican opponent for what she calls his litany of lies about her positions on issues, charged Wednesday that Batt's claim of Landrieu's support is just the latest example of his truth bending. "Everyone knows Jay Batt's a liar," Midura said in a written statement, "but now he's lying about Mitch Landrieu."
In a statement of his own, Landrieu, a Democrat, only muddied the picture.
Landrieu said that while he had signed an affidavit endorsing Batt prior to entering the mayor's race, he has since "taken the position of not being involved in any of the council races."
Landrieu added that he "did not authorize the use of my name in a press release or direct mail piece in support of Jay Batt in this campaign," adding that District A voters have "two good candidates to choose from" and that he could work well with either.
A spokesman for Batt, whose campaign has called Midura the "queen of mean" in campaign ads, said his candidate stands by the decision to circulate the flier.
"The Batt campaign thinks that the lieutenant governor's affidavit and signature in support of Jay Batt's re-election speaks for itself," Batt strategist Bill Kearney said. "It is shameful that Mrs. Midura, who has had trouble garnering any public endorsements, would try to make political hay out of this."
. . . . . . .
BETTER LATE THAN NEVER: The tasks of the Sewerage & Water Board's directors were many Wednesday: green-light repairs at drainage pump stations, hire a firm to pinpoint leaks in the water system and approve a pair of resolutions crucial to making sure the agency is on time with a $137 million debt payment due in July.
But 90 minutes into the 13-member panel's 10 a.m. meeting, the six members who had shown up for the start still were twiddling their thumbs, waiting on a quorum of seven to start voting.
"We're still waiting and certainly ask the indulgence of all that are here," president pro-tempore Tommie Vassel said around 11:30 a.m. "We're waiting for at least one more board member."
Sitting with Vassel around the makeshift dais in a meeting room at the W Hotel were Penelope Randolph, Alex Lewis and Flo Schornstein, who sat through presentations by the Army Corps of Engineers and the board's bond counsel. Also in the building and prepared to vote were board members Barbara Lamont and Gary Solomon.
While members checked the clock, Executive Director Marcia St. Martin tried to stress the need to stay put to get a vote on the debt resolutions. "Our real challenge today is that we need (those) . . . resolutions approved," she said. "We really put together this financing plan on a really, really tight schedule."
Absent at that moment were Nagin, who serves as board president and who missed the meeting to pick up the mayoral endorsements; Batt and at-large Councilmen Oliver Thomas and Eddie Sapir; as well as board members Ben Edwards Sr., Sidney Evans and Norma Grace.
Killing time, St. Martin mentioned that the agenda called for the board to bestow its thanks, along with a plaque, upon the term-limited Sapir, who will be replaced on the board by one of two candidates competing Saturday for his seat. Meanwhile, Schornstein asked the board's attorney to research whether its bylaws could allow an official vote with only six members in emergency cases.
"Many meetings that we come to, we're calling (our colleagues), begging them to come to a meeting to get a quorum," she said.
Indeed, at 11:35 a.m., a digital ring alerted the room that Edwards was in his car at Poydras Street and Loyola Avenue, blocks from the W. Within 10 minutes, Edwards, who has spent more than $100,000 of his own cash to independently support Nagin's re-election effort, was in his seat. Pleased at his arrival, Vassel declared that the board had established a quorum.
Requested Schornstein: "Can we note that we established it at 11:45?"
COUNCIL POLLS: Arnie Fielkow and James Carter hold slight leads in two of the most competitive races for council seats, according to a recent poll conducted by Verne Kennedy for Market Research Insight.
In a survey of 1,200 voters May 11-14, the company found Fielkow leading Councilwoman Jacquelyn Brechtel Clarkson, 47 percent to 40 percent, for the at-large seat now held by Sapir. Fourteen percent of voters in the race were undecided. Of those surveyed, 53 percent were African-American, and 63 percent were women. The poll had a plus or minus 3 percent margin of error.
In a separate survey of 300 registered voters conducted on the same dates, Carter led Kristin Palmer, 40 percent to 32 percent, in a trial heat of the District C race. Twenty-seven percent of voters were undecided. Fifty-three percent of the people surveyed were white, and 59 percent were female. The district poll's margin of error was plus or minus 5.7 percent.
Both polls were independently funded.
ALSO: Squabble over endorsement; Waiting, waiting, still waiting; Polls give lead to Fielkow, Carter
Thursday, May 18, 2006 Times Picayune
By Michelle Krupa
Frank Donze%%par%%and Jeff Duncan%%par%%Staff writers
Months before the mayoral campaign cranked into high gear, incumbent Ray Nagin was dazzling his contemporaries. At the winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, top executives of City Halls across the country fell over each other to laud his post-Katrina efforts and openly forgive his many headline-grabbing faux pas.
And it seems that heading into Saturday's runoff Nagin has again captured the esteem of his fellow hizzoners, announcing Wednesday in Baton Rouge endorsements from 39 mayors, or their spouses, from towns across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Texas, North and South Carolina, California, Michigan, New Jersey and Florida. All are members of the National Conference of Black Mayors, which cannot issue endorsements as a group because of its nonprofit status, a Nagin spokeswoman said.
Despite the list's length, however, it is not unreasonable to question what value Nagin's far-flung colleagues bring or to consider that the aggregate populations of those cities may not even top the pre-Katrina head-count of New Orleans. To be fair, there are some heavy hitters in the list, such as Durham, N.C., with 187,000 residents and East Orange, N.J., home to about 70,000 people, according to the 2000 U.S. Census.
But you might need an atlas and a magnifying glass to find some of the humbler burgs on the list. Among them Manning, S.C.: population 4,025; Tutwiler, Miss.: population 1,364; Kendleton, Texas: population 466; and Boligee, Ala.: population 369.
. . . . . . .
PANTS ON FIRE: As election day draws near, the bitter war of words between Jay Batt, the incumbent District A representative on the City Council, and challenger Shelley Midura, continues to rage.
The latest dust-up involves a flier Batt has distributed touting an endorsement from Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, who faces Nagin in Saturday's mayoral runoff.
Midura, a Democrat who has slammed her Republican opponent for what she calls his litany of lies about her positions on issues, charged Wednesday that Batt's claim of Landrieu's support is just the latest example of his truth bending. "Everyone knows Jay Batt's a liar," Midura said in a written statement, "but now he's lying about Mitch Landrieu."
In a statement of his own, Landrieu, a Democrat, only muddied the picture.
Landrieu said that while he had signed an affidavit endorsing Batt prior to entering the mayor's race, he has since "taken the position of not being involved in any of the council races."
Landrieu added that he "did not authorize the use of my name in a press release or direct mail piece in support of Jay Batt in this campaign," adding that District A voters have "two good candidates to choose from" and that he could work well with either.
A spokesman for Batt, whose campaign has called Midura the "queen of mean" in campaign ads, said his candidate stands by the decision to circulate the flier.
"The Batt campaign thinks that the lieutenant governor's affidavit and signature in support of Jay Batt's re-election speaks for itself," Batt strategist Bill Kearney said. "It is shameful that Mrs. Midura, who has had trouble garnering any public endorsements, would try to make political hay out of this."
. . . . . . .
BETTER LATE THAN NEVER: The tasks of the Sewerage & Water Board's directors were many Wednesday: green-light repairs at drainage pump stations, hire a firm to pinpoint leaks in the water system and approve a pair of resolutions crucial to making sure the agency is on time with a $137 million debt payment due in July.
But 90 minutes into the 13-member panel's 10 a.m. meeting, the six members who had shown up for the start still were twiddling their thumbs, waiting on a quorum of seven to start voting.
"We're still waiting and certainly ask the indulgence of all that are here," president pro-tempore Tommie Vassel said around 11:30 a.m. "We're waiting for at least one more board member."
Sitting with Vassel around the makeshift dais in a meeting room at the W Hotel were Penelope Randolph, Alex Lewis and Flo Schornstein, who sat through presentations by the Army Corps of Engineers and the board's bond counsel. Also in the building and prepared to vote were board members Barbara Lamont and Gary Solomon.
While members checked the clock, Executive Director Marcia St. Martin tried to stress the need to stay put to get a vote on the debt resolutions. "Our real challenge today is that we need (those) . . . resolutions approved," she said. "We really put together this financing plan on a really, really tight schedule."
Absent at that moment were Nagin, who serves as board president and who missed the meeting to pick up the mayoral endorsements; Batt and at-large Councilmen Oliver Thomas and Eddie Sapir; as well as board members Ben Edwards Sr., Sidney Evans and Norma Grace.
Killing time, St. Martin mentioned that the agenda called for the board to bestow its thanks, along with a plaque, upon the term-limited Sapir, who will be replaced on the board by one of two candidates competing Saturday for his seat. Meanwhile, Schornstein asked the board's attorney to research whether its bylaws could allow an official vote with only six members in emergency cases.
"Many meetings that we come to, we're calling (our colleagues), begging them to come to a meeting to get a quorum," she said.
Indeed, at 11:35 a.m., a digital ring alerted the room that Edwards was in his car at Poydras Street and Loyola Avenue, blocks from the W. Within 10 minutes, Edwards, who has spent more than $100,000 of his own cash to independently support Nagin's re-election effort, was in his seat. Pleased at his arrival, Vassel declared that the board had established a quorum.
Requested Schornstein: "Can we note that we established it at 11:45?"
COUNCIL POLLS: Arnie Fielkow and James Carter hold slight leads in two of the most competitive races for council seats, according to a recent poll conducted by Verne Kennedy for Market Research Insight.
In a survey of 1,200 voters May 11-14, the company found Fielkow leading Councilwoman Jacquelyn Brechtel Clarkson, 47 percent to 40 percent, for the at-large seat now held by Sapir. Fourteen percent of voters in the race were undecided. Of those surveyed, 53 percent were African-American, and 63 percent were women. The poll had a plus or minus 3 percent margin of error.
In a separate survey of 300 registered voters conducted on the same dates, Carter led Kristin Palmer, 40 percent to 32 percent, in a trial heat of the District C race. Twenty-seven percent of voters were undecided. Fifty-three percent of the people surveyed were white, and 59 percent were female. The district poll's margin of error was plus or minus 5.7 percent.
Both polls were independently funded.
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Audrey2Katrina
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Katrina: Catastrophic insurance in the works?
The U.S. government is taking a step that could lead to no more "wind vs. water" insurance debates after hurricanes.
U.S. Rep. Michael G. Oxley, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has requested the General Accounting Office study what insurance is currently offered for hurricanes and how rates (risks) are minimized, according to The Associated Press.
Included in that request is availability of "catastrophic insurance," that would include hurricanes, flood, earthquakes and other natural disasters, and what role the federal government should play.
Last month, meeting with The Clarion-Ledger Editorial Board, members of the The Mississippi Windstorm Damage Underwriting Association lamented having to request a 400 percent rate hike to cover Katrina's damages.
Association members, citing the high Katrina pricetag and risks involved from potential storms, said the ultimate solution is for the federal government to step in, offering catastrophic insurance like the Federal Flood Insurance Program.
One more Katrina-like storm, they noted, and federal insurance would be the only option for rebuilding in high-risk coastal areas, or the premiums would be prohibitive, if available at all.
As it is, coverage is being limited not only on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, with decreased availability and higher premiums, as a result of Katrina, but along the Eastern Seaboard.
Unless federal and/or state action is taken to provide tax credits or other help, rebuilding along the Mississippi Gulf Coast could be hindered.
Annual premium bills that were $800 could go to $3,200 or more for wind coverage, not including flood insurance and other policies - well beyond the average homeowner's ability to pay.
Congressional action on federal insurance may not help now, but it could be the only solution for future development.
The U.S. government is taking a step that could lead to no more "wind vs. water" insurance debates after hurricanes.
U.S. Rep. Michael G. Oxley, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has requested the General Accounting Office study what insurance is currently offered for hurricanes and how rates (risks) are minimized, according to The Associated Press.
Included in that request is availability of "catastrophic insurance," that would include hurricanes, flood, earthquakes and other natural disasters, and what role the federal government should play.
Last month, meeting with The Clarion-Ledger Editorial Board, members of the The Mississippi Windstorm Damage Underwriting Association lamented having to request a 400 percent rate hike to cover Katrina's damages.
Association members, citing the high Katrina pricetag and risks involved from potential storms, said the ultimate solution is for the federal government to step in, offering catastrophic insurance like the Federal Flood Insurance Program.
One more Katrina-like storm, they noted, and federal insurance would be the only option for rebuilding in high-risk coastal areas, or the premiums would be prohibitive, if available at all.
As it is, coverage is being limited not only on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, with decreased availability and higher premiums, as a result of Katrina, but along the Eastern Seaboard.
Unless federal and/or state action is taken to provide tax credits or other help, rebuilding along the Mississippi Gulf Coast could be hindered.
Annual premium bills that were $800 could go to $3,200 or more for wind coverage, not including flood insurance and other policies - well beyond the average homeowner's ability to pay.
Congressional action on federal insurance may not help now, but it could be the only solution for future development.
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Audrey2Katrina
- Category 5
- Posts: 4252
- Age: 75
- Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:39 pm
- Location: Metaire, La.
Back on Beach Blvd.
Pascagoula family first to open a new home in neighborhood
By GARY HOLLAND Sun Herald South Mississippi Home Page
PASCAGOULA - Dr. Richard Whitlock and his wife, Maura, have become the first family to rebuild and move back into a new home on Beach Boulevard.
"We decided early on that we wanted to come back and be the beacon on the hill," Richard said Wednesday. "From the moment of the storm, God put people in our path to help us get back. A nurse called just after the storm and said, 'Doctor, I've got an apartment for you in Mobile.' She even paid the deposit."
Maura has a saying that tells their determination: "We've had six great years on the beach and really only one bad day."
Richard insisted Maura and their three children evacuate to Jackson just before Hurricane Katrina. He packed baby picture books, wedding albums and portraits. Everyone had a suitcase with clothes. But that's all they would have. Katrina swept through the house and took everything, as the storm did to all the beachfront homes.
Richard, whose family practice is next to Singing River Hospital, was working the afternoon after the storm, and would work into the night for two weeks.
"The hospital was overwhelmed. They provided us electricity from their generator and began busing patients to our clinic," he said. "It was like working on a mission field."
The Whitlocks had a goal for their contractor, Shoalwater Construction, to get their 3,500-square-foot home at 2911 Beach Boulevard ready for Mother's Day. They did. The parents and children - Whit, 18, Spencer, 16, and Bethany, 14 - were overjoyed.
"I don't know when I have slept so soundly," Maura said. "We're just thankful to be home."
The neighboring Hull House, which usually hosts performers and sponsors for the musical concert series known as Sounds by the Sea, was washed away by Katrina. The Whitlocks, with the only complete home standing, will host the 2006 event on May 28.
Pascagoula Building Inspector Steve Mitchell praised the Whitlocks' example.
"We've got more than 25 others in different stages in the Beach-Washington Avenue area," he said. "I have no doubt that area will come back as good or better than ever."
Pascagoula family first to open a new home in neighborhood
By GARY HOLLAND Sun Herald South Mississippi Home Page
PASCAGOULA - Dr. Richard Whitlock and his wife, Maura, have become the first family to rebuild and move back into a new home on Beach Boulevard.
"We decided early on that we wanted to come back and be the beacon on the hill," Richard said Wednesday. "From the moment of the storm, God put people in our path to help us get back. A nurse called just after the storm and said, 'Doctor, I've got an apartment for you in Mobile.' She even paid the deposit."
Maura has a saying that tells their determination: "We've had six great years on the beach and really only one bad day."
Richard insisted Maura and their three children evacuate to Jackson just before Hurricane Katrina. He packed baby picture books, wedding albums and portraits. Everyone had a suitcase with clothes. But that's all they would have. Katrina swept through the house and took everything, as the storm did to all the beachfront homes.
Richard, whose family practice is next to Singing River Hospital, was working the afternoon after the storm, and would work into the night for two weeks.
"The hospital was overwhelmed. They provided us electricity from their generator and began busing patients to our clinic," he said. "It was like working on a mission field."
The Whitlocks had a goal for their contractor, Shoalwater Construction, to get their 3,500-square-foot home at 2911 Beach Boulevard ready for Mother's Day. They did. The parents and children - Whit, 18, Spencer, 16, and Bethany, 14 - were overjoyed.
"I don't know when I have slept so soundly," Maura said. "We're just thankful to be home."
The neighboring Hull House, which usually hosts performers and sponsors for the musical concert series known as Sounds by the Sea, was washed away by Katrina. The Whitlocks, with the only complete home standing, will host the 2006 event on May 28.
Pascagoula Building Inspector Steve Mitchell praised the Whitlocks' example.
"We've got more than 25 others in different stages in the Beach-Washington Avenue area," he said. "I have no doubt that area will come back as good or better than ever."
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Audrey2Katrina
- Category 5
- Posts: 4252
- Age: 75
- Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:39 pm
- Location: Metaire, La.
Still Reeling, Gulf Readies for New Storms
By ALLEN G. BREED (AP National Writer)
From Associated Press
May 19, 2006 1:15 PM EDT
WAVELAND, Miss. - Missionaries and students on spring break have worked in shifts to put a roof over Brenda Anderson's head before hurricane season begins June 1.
They're rebuilding the two-story, 2,500-square-foot home on a concrete slab 900 feet from the Gulf of Mexico. The slab was all that remained of her old house after Hurricane Katrina swept through, making Waveland's name a sour irony.
Staring at the empty house lots and debris piles all around her, the 61-year-old former police administrator confesses no qualms about rebuilding here.
Katrina, she says, was a "once-in-a-lifetime thing." And yet she knows better. She has lost four homes in as many decades - three to hurricanes, one to tornadoes. Katrina was the latest and worst storm - but it won't be the last.
The 2005 hurricane season, the busiest and most destructive on record with 27 named storms, 14 of them hurricanes, has made many people along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts more wary as they prepare for a 2006 season. This year, researchers predict 17 named storms, including nine hurricanes.
That forecast, though less dire, is cold comfort - with levees still under repair, protective sand barriers obliterated and tens of thousands of people (including Anderson) still living in vulnerable government travel-trailers on the sites of their ruined homes.
Folks say they have learned the lessons of Katrina. They are stockpiling food and water, installing more backup generators and rounding up buses for evacuations, even in places that haven't seen a hurricane in a century.
But they haven't learned the most important lesson of Katrina, says Tulane University law professor Oliver Houck. If they had, he says, the dialogue would be less about rebuilding and more about "planned retreat" - from beaches, from fragile barrier islands, from sinking marshlands.
"The idea that you can build up on stilts ... and remain hit-proof from a Category 5 is illusory," says Houck, who specializes in environmental and property law. Katrina's lesson: "That beachfront property is not just flood prone. It is atomic bomb-like wipeout prone."
For miles along the Gulf Coast, pillars that once held up houses stand like gravestones in an unkempt cemetery. Stately live oaks once draped with Spanish moss are still hung with bed sheets, flags and bits of window screen.
Antebellum or postmodern, on a slab or on stilts, little construction could withstand Katrina's howling winds and 30-foot storm surges.
Much of that construction - along with today's rebuilding - was made possible by the National Flood Insurance Program, the subject of much post-Katrina debate.
It is madness for the government to continue subsidizing coastal development by providing infrastructure and flood insurance, says ocean advocate David Helvarg. Repeat claims account for 40 percent of all payments from the NFIP, although they represent just 2 percent of covered properties, says Helvarg, president of the Blue Frontier Campaign.
As of last year, he says, $763 billion worth of real estate was insured by the federal flood program, 40 percent of it in Florida alone.
"This is the biggest exposure we have after Social Security," says Helvarg. "It's nuts to think we can keep building in harm's way."
The federal government has tried to discourage building in sensitive coastal areas. The Reagan-era Coastal Barrier Resources Act, known as COBRA, excluded 3 million acres of sand spits and barrier islands from federal flood insurance programs and other infrastructure assistance, but lawmakers have been steadily chipping away at it. When Katrina came ashore, there were bills pending to cover 50,000 previously excluded acres in Florida, Georgia and Texas.
That's unfair to taxpayers, Houck says, adding, "You can go over Niagara in a barrel if you want - but we don't have to buy the barrel."
Researchers say we are in a 20-year cycle of more frequent, more powerful storms.
William Gray, who leads a team of storm experts at Colorado State University, predicts an 81 percent probability that at least one major hurricane will make landfall along the U.S. coastline this year - and a 47 percent probability that one will strike the Gulf Coast. Some are saying the Northeast might suffer its first direct hit in nearly seven decades.
Yet along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, development and rebuilding continue apace.
In Biloxi, crews have reduced the pirate-themed Treasure Bay casino barge to a ghostly steel and concrete skeleton. Its successor will be built across U.S. 90, thanks to post-Katrina legislation allowing on-land gaming halls.
The pace of residential rebirth is somewhat slower.
In Louisiana and Mississippi, nearly 100,000 residents remain in trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Evelyn and Peter Hutchins are two such camper dwellers.
Stringing a clothesline between the 8-by-8 timbers that once supported her 1,250-square-foot retirement home in Pass Christian, Evelyn Hutchins can't get over the depth of the dark at night - or the silence of the woods around her.
"The birds have not come back," the 68-year-old retired elementary school teacher says. "How did they know not to come through here for spring?"
The couple bought here in the 1980s because of the low population density, and they'll rebuild. Peter Hutchins, 69, says the only things that could make him leave are high-rise beach condominiums - or another direct hit.
Next door to Pass Christian, in devastated Long Beach, voters will decide in June whether to reverse a long-standing prohibition against casinos.
The town needs something.
South of the railroad tracks, Long Beach is a patchwork quilt of blue tarps, white trailers and barren brown lots, stitched together with baby-blue plastic sewer pipes that run above ground.
Barbara Gillespie's brick home, about a half mile from the Gulf, is nearly pristine. As she maneuvers her riding lawn mower around perfectly preserved palmettos, she thanks God that she couldn't find a house closer to the beach.
"Every other house I looked at when we were buying a house is gone," says Gillespie, 60, who moved here from the Memphis, Tenn., area last year.
New government maps place her property outside the flood zone. But she, like many, has purchased the insurance anyway.
Billy Allen worries they'll need it.
On a recent blustery day, Allen sipped a Bud Light longneck, then pulled a ratty tennis ball from his dog Brisko's mouth and tossed it into the rolling surf beside the battered veterans memorial in Waveland.
"Even on bad storm days the water NEVER came up this far," Allen says. Pointing to the spot where sand barriers once cushioned the waves' blows, he says, "Something out there got destroyed, and it's only going to get worse."
Allen frames houses for a living. Looking into the breakers, he declares: "Me, I wouldn't buy any land within five miles of the beach."
But for many, the draw of the water is simply too strong.
On North Beach Boulevard in Waveland, all that remains of Darlene Martinez's 4,000-square-foot, 22-foot-high beach home is a slab studded with 23 crumbling, salmon-tinted concrete columns. Martinez is picking up bits and pieces - a spoon, the blue, mud-caked spines of two of her 132 yacht club cookbooks - when a man with a tiny notebook walks up.
"You starting over or are you going to buy?" says Bill Knoll, a debris removal specialist from DeWitt, Ark., who's moonlighting for a client in search of beachfront property.
"Starting over," she says emphatically.
Knoll moves on. Next door, a cardboard sign reads: "For Sale By Owner. Asking Price $700,000."
But for every person cashing out, there seems to be someone looking to buy, says Carolyn Jones, a deputy tax collector for Hancock County. Her own home just west of Bay St. Louis was swept away, but she's not selling.
"That's the Mississippi way," she says. "You just kind of suck it up and go on."
If government isn't making people move, it must prepare to protect them.
While the Army Corps of Engineers races to get New Orleans' levees back up to pre-Katrina strength, Mayor Ray Nagin has already decided there will be no repeat of last year's desperate scenes at the Superdome and convention center. Buses and even trains will empty the city ahead of anything stronger than a Category 2, he vows; and there will be no "vertical evacuations" of tourists to area hotels.
Still stinging from criticism of its Katrina response, the Red Cross announced an $80 million plan to stockpile food, cots, cell phones, debit cards and toiletry items in 21 cities in nine Atlantic and Gulf Coast states. But if Katrina taught residents and coastal governments anything, it is that they must be prepared to fend for themselves.
In Miami, officials have adopted ordinances requiring gas stations and supermarkets to have backup generators. Local governments that once cautioned residents to stockpile three days' worth of food, water and medicine are now recommending they prepare for five days without help.
Places that normally wait until the threat of a Category 3 storm to order tourist evacuations will now clear barrier islands and other sensitive areas at the approach of a Category 1.
"We'd ask them to leave if we had a tropical storm come through," says Benny Rousselle, president of Plaquemines Parish southeast of New Orleans.
In Savannah, Ga., which hasn't had a direct hit since 1893, authorities are more than doubling to 200 the number of evacuation buses available. Even in places that pride themselves on their hurricane preparedness, there is a sense that something has changed.
Using National Hurricane Center computer models, officials in Onslow County, N.C., ran a Category 5 simulation. The results: 15,000 residential structures destroyed, roads and utilities devastated, 30 days to restore just 64 percent of pre-storm hospital capacity.
"We do not intend to open shelters in Onslow County if we have a Category 4 or 5," says Emergency Services Director Mark Goodman, whose county is home to the Marines' Camp Lejeune. "People haven't seen biblical destruction of this magnitude."
As the preparations continue, so does recovery - measured in milestones large and small.
At the industrial tan trailer housing the displaced Long Beach Public Library, it is the return of a book that was checked out before the storm and, thus, saved. One recently returned title: Martha Grimes' novel "The Winds of Change."
When the Sonic drive-in with its roller-skating waitresses reopened in late April, you'd have thought a five-star restaurant had come to town.
Brenda Anderson has faith it will all come back.
Standing in her front yard, the white-haired woman caresses the bark of a battered magnolia, Mississippi's state tree. Its flowers, she says, "were as big as dinner plates," but now its sawed-off limbs fight just to put out a paucity of green.
This spring, the tree had just two blooms, each about the size of a coffee cup. But to Anderson, who calls herself "a steel magnolia," those blooms were a promise of better days to come.
"She's struggling to survive," she says. "Just like we are."
By ALLEN G. BREED (AP National Writer)
From Associated Press
May 19, 2006 1:15 PM EDT
WAVELAND, Miss. - Missionaries and students on spring break have worked in shifts to put a roof over Brenda Anderson's head before hurricane season begins June 1.
They're rebuilding the two-story, 2,500-square-foot home on a concrete slab 900 feet from the Gulf of Mexico. The slab was all that remained of her old house after Hurricane Katrina swept through, making Waveland's name a sour irony.
Staring at the empty house lots and debris piles all around her, the 61-year-old former police administrator confesses no qualms about rebuilding here.
Katrina, she says, was a "once-in-a-lifetime thing." And yet she knows better. She has lost four homes in as many decades - three to hurricanes, one to tornadoes. Katrina was the latest and worst storm - but it won't be the last.
The 2005 hurricane season, the busiest and most destructive on record with 27 named storms, 14 of them hurricanes, has made many people along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts more wary as they prepare for a 2006 season. This year, researchers predict 17 named storms, including nine hurricanes.
That forecast, though less dire, is cold comfort - with levees still under repair, protective sand barriers obliterated and tens of thousands of people (including Anderson) still living in vulnerable government travel-trailers on the sites of their ruined homes.
Folks say they have learned the lessons of Katrina. They are stockpiling food and water, installing more backup generators and rounding up buses for evacuations, even in places that haven't seen a hurricane in a century.
But they haven't learned the most important lesson of Katrina, says Tulane University law professor Oliver Houck. If they had, he says, the dialogue would be less about rebuilding and more about "planned retreat" - from beaches, from fragile barrier islands, from sinking marshlands.
"The idea that you can build up on stilts ... and remain hit-proof from a Category 5 is illusory," says Houck, who specializes in environmental and property law. Katrina's lesson: "That beachfront property is not just flood prone. It is atomic bomb-like wipeout prone."
For miles along the Gulf Coast, pillars that once held up houses stand like gravestones in an unkempt cemetery. Stately live oaks once draped with Spanish moss are still hung with bed sheets, flags and bits of window screen.
Antebellum or postmodern, on a slab or on stilts, little construction could withstand Katrina's howling winds and 30-foot storm surges.
Much of that construction - along with today's rebuilding - was made possible by the National Flood Insurance Program, the subject of much post-Katrina debate.
It is madness for the government to continue subsidizing coastal development by providing infrastructure and flood insurance, says ocean advocate David Helvarg. Repeat claims account for 40 percent of all payments from the NFIP, although they represent just 2 percent of covered properties, says Helvarg, president of the Blue Frontier Campaign.
As of last year, he says, $763 billion worth of real estate was insured by the federal flood program, 40 percent of it in Florida alone.
"This is the biggest exposure we have after Social Security," says Helvarg. "It's nuts to think we can keep building in harm's way."
The federal government has tried to discourage building in sensitive coastal areas. The Reagan-era Coastal Barrier Resources Act, known as COBRA, excluded 3 million acres of sand spits and barrier islands from federal flood insurance programs and other infrastructure assistance, but lawmakers have been steadily chipping away at it. When Katrina came ashore, there were bills pending to cover 50,000 previously excluded acres in Florida, Georgia and Texas.
That's unfair to taxpayers, Houck says, adding, "You can go over Niagara in a barrel if you want - but we don't have to buy the barrel."
Researchers say we are in a 20-year cycle of more frequent, more powerful storms.
William Gray, who leads a team of storm experts at Colorado State University, predicts an 81 percent probability that at least one major hurricane will make landfall along the U.S. coastline this year - and a 47 percent probability that one will strike the Gulf Coast. Some are saying the Northeast might suffer its first direct hit in nearly seven decades.
Yet along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, development and rebuilding continue apace.
In Biloxi, crews have reduced the pirate-themed Treasure Bay casino barge to a ghostly steel and concrete skeleton. Its successor will be built across U.S. 90, thanks to post-Katrina legislation allowing on-land gaming halls.
The pace of residential rebirth is somewhat slower.
In Louisiana and Mississippi, nearly 100,000 residents remain in trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Evelyn and Peter Hutchins are two such camper dwellers.
Stringing a clothesline between the 8-by-8 timbers that once supported her 1,250-square-foot retirement home in Pass Christian, Evelyn Hutchins can't get over the depth of the dark at night - or the silence of the woods around her.
"The birds have not come back," the 68-year-old retired elementary school teacher says. "How did they know not to come through here for spring?"
The couple bought here in the 1980s because of the low population density, and they'll rebuild. Peter Hutchins, 69, says the only things that could make him leave are high-rise beach condominiums - or another direct hit.
Next door to Pass Christian, in devastated Long Beach, voters will decide in June whether to reverse a long-standing prohibition against casinos.
The town needs something.
South of the railroad tracks, Long Beach is a patchwork quilt of blue tarps, white trailers and barren brown lots, stitched together with baby-blue plastic sewer pipes that run above ground.
Barbara Gillespie's brick home, about a half mile from the Gulf, is nearly pristine. As she maneuvers her riding lawn mower around perfectly preserved palmettos, she thanks God that she couldn't find a house closer to the beach.
"Every other house I looked at when we were buying a house is gone," says Gillespie, 60, who moved here from the Memphis, Tenn., area last year.
New government maps place her property outside the flood zone. But she, like many, has purchased the insurance anyway.
Billy Allen worries they'll need it.
On a recent blustery day, Allen sipped a Bud Light longneck, then pulled a ratty tennis ball from his dog Brisko's mouth and tossed it into the rolling surf beside the battered veterans memorial in Waveland.
"Even on bad storm days the water NEVER came up this far," Allen says. Pointing to the spot where sand barriers once cushioned the waves' blows, he says, "Something out there got destroyed, and it's only going to get worse."
Allen frames houses for a living. Looking into the breakers, he declares: "Me, I wouldn't buy any land within five miles of the beach."
But for many, the draw of the water is simply too strong.
On North Beach Boulevard in Waveland, all that remains of Darlene Martinez's 4,000-square-foot, 22-foot-high beach home is a slab studded with 23 crumbling, salmon-tinted concrete columns. Martinez is picking up bits and pieces - a spoon, the blue, mud-caked spines of two of her 132 yacht club cookbooks - when a man with a tiny notebook walks up.
"You starting over or are you going to buy?" says Bill Knoll, a debris removal specialist from DeWitt, Ark., who's moonlighting for a client in search of beachfront property.
"Starting over," she says emphatically.
Knoll moves on. Next door, a cardboard sign reads: "For Sale By Owner. Asking Price $700,000."
But for every person cashing out, there seems to be someone looking to buy, says Carolyn Jones, a deputy tax collector for Hancock County. Her own home just west of Bay St. Louis was swept away, but she's not selling.
"That's the Mississippi way," she says. "You just kind of suck it up and go on."
If government isn't making people move, it must prepare to protect them.
While the Army Corps of Engineers races to get New Orleans' levees back up to pre-Katrina strength, Mayor Ray Nagin has already decided there will be no repeat of last year's desperate scenes at the Superdome and convention center. Buses and even trains will empty the city ahead of anything stronger than a Category 2, he vows; and there will be no "vertical evacuations" of tourists to area hotels.
Still stinging from criticism of its Katrina response, the Red Cross announced an $80 million plan to stockpile food, cots, cell phones, debit cards and toiletry items in 21 cities in nine Atlantic and Gulf Coast states. But if Katrina taught residents and coastal governments anything, it is that they must be prepared to fend for themselves.
In Miami, officials have adopted ordinances requiring gas stations and supermarkets to have backup generators. Local governments that once cautioned residents to stockpile three days' worth of food, water and medicine are now recommending they prepare for five days without help.
Places that normally wait until the threat of a Category 3 storm to order tourist evacuations will now clear barrier islands and other sensitive areas at the approach of a Category 1.
"We'd ask them to leave if we had a tropical storm come through," says Benny Rousselle, president of Plaquemines Parish southeast of New Orleans.
In Savannah, Ga., which hasn't had a direct hit since 1893, authorities are more than doubling to 200 the number of evacuation buses available. Even in places that pride themselves on their hurricane preparedness, there is a sense that something has changed.
Using National Hurricane Center computer models, officials in Onslow County, N.C., ran a Category 5 simulation. The results: 15,000 residential structures destroyed, roads and utilities devastated, 30 days to restore just 64 percent of pre-storm hospital capacity.
"We do not intend to open shelters in Onslow County if we have a Category 4 or 5," says Emergency Services Director Mark Goodman, whose county is home to the Marines' Camp Lejeune. "People haven't seen biblical destruction of this magnitude."
As the preparations continue, so does recovery - measured in milestones large and small.
At the industrial tan trailer housing the displaced Long Beach Public Library, it is the return of a book that was checked out before the storm and, thus, saved. One recently returned title: Martha Grimes' novel "The Winds of Change."
When the Sonic drive-in with its roller-skating waitresses reopened in late April, you'd have thought a five-star restaurant had come to town.
Brenda Anderson has faith it will all come back.
Standing in her front yard, the white-haired woman caresses the bark of a battered magnolia, Mississippi's state tree. Its flowers, she says, "were as big as dinner plates," but now its sawed-off limbs fight just to put out a paucity of green.
This spring, the tree had just two blooms, each about the size of a coffee cup. But to Anderson, who calls herself "a steel magnolia," those blooms were a promise of better days to come.
"She's struggling to survive," she says. "Just like we are."
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Audrey2Katrina
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STORMS WITHIN AND WITHOUT
Women fight corruption and Katrina with 'Pink Collar Crime'
Friday, May 19, 2006: New Orleans Times Picayune
By David Cuthbert
Theater writer
Something is "out of whack" in New Orleans in Yvette Sirker's absorbing, ambitious new play "Pink Collar Crime" and the audience murmurs in recognition at these omens, laughs at the colorfully profane dialogue and listens attentively to a sassy teenage Cassandra symbolically named Tamara. The future this young oracle sees is so dire that she is assembling a time capsule so that future generations will know her city as something other than an Atlantis-like legend.
Among the portents of disaster-to-come:
-- There are cracks in the walls of sinking houses, emblematic of fissures in the façade of the city itself.
-- Nature has run riot in a manner both magical and troubling: gardenias blooming out of season; snow on Christmas Day.
Sirker's theme is the cycle of life, from the swirl of DNA to the circles of corruption we've lived with for years: the natural and man-made forces that knocked us off our merry-go-round.
Sirker seduces us with laughter (getting everyone from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to "that crazy little weatherman screaming into the camera") and then brings us up short with sobering -- if repetitious -- truths, purposefully echoed in two acts that are distorting mirrors of each other. The play is "crowded with incident" as the writer articulates the glories of New Orleans, idealizes the camaraderie that can exist between races, celebrates friendship among women, gives us a sweet interracial romance and evil incarnate in a man who exults in the grandeur of greed.
Five women are at the heart of the play, its two acts set a year apart, on Tamara's 16th and 17th birthdays. In the first act, New Orleans has just dodged "Ivan the Terrible" and people are complaining that "the evacuation was worse than the hurricane."
In the second act, Katrina and multiple plots come to a boil as everyone realizes we've taken one too many spins in a stormy game of Russian roulette.
Enjean, Tamara's beleaguered mother, is fighting for custody of her daughter with her ex-husband, the kind of man "who grabs your ass so he can steal your wallet." Both are lawyers, but Enjean seems to have just discovered that the law and justice are often two different things. Tamara, who has some mouth on her, is in constant trouble with a nun at school for her papers on big business raping the environment, the influence of her Aunt Purl, an outspoken environmental biologist. They live in Broadmoor and their best friend is Uptown rich girl Penny Moon, whose father Bane is CEO of an oil company that was the first to start destroying the wetlands.
It's also Penny's mother Mae Constance's birthday and Penny takes them to her childhood friend Saint Charles' new "white tablecloth" multi-ethnic restaurant, where the trio carries on as people seldom do in public. Usually, they at least stay seated as they eviscerate one another.
Bane has gambled away his family's fortunes, to the point where Mae Constance wonders, "How can we be Republicans? We're broke!" A year later, Bane is flush again, having ripped off his employees and shareholders. His white collar crime is countered by what his daughter calls "pink collar crime," extorting money from him for the greater good. Her father responds with a Brechtian man-eat-man monologue, delivered in galvanizing fashion by J. Patrick McNamara, who also shows us the perfunctory charm that masks a feral ruthlessness. His wife, Mae Constance, a bibulous, high-maintenance matron who's brighter than she lets on, is acted with élan, wit and tragic anger by Peggy Walton-Walker, the two actors fleshing out sketchy roles.
Sherri Marina as Enjean and La Mya Holley, as Tamara, are a bold, believable mother and daughter, almost constantly at odds. They get some of the play's best dialogue and deliver it expertly. Morla Gorrondona's Penny Moon is teasingly sensual in her scenes with Roscoe C. Reddix, the strikingly handsome Saint Charles, caustic with her parents and, with Sirker's Purl, embodies the play's conscience. Sirker has given herself lots of facts to reel off, while projecting a brisk, nurturing warmth.
Jeff Riddick's first-rate set design offers three locations on a turntable that revolves counter-clockwise, like a hurricane.
Director Ray Vrazel skillfully orchestrates the shifting tectonics of Sirker's multilayered melodrama, but there is still too much here: revelations of incest and suicide on top of everything else, juxtaposed with choruses of "Happy Birthday." Pontification needs to be toned down in the complex mix of elements. Sirker and Vrazel should use this staging to hone the text further.
But it's fascinating just the same, with a rich use of language and quixotic characters, especially the women bitching about life and men, pausing to enjoy a drink in the pre-disaster breeze to observe, "Why is it that hurricane weather is so beautiful?"
Women fight corruption and Katrina with 'Pink Collar Crime'
Friday, May 19, 2006: New Orleans Times Picayune
By David Cuthbert
Theater writer
Something is "out of whack" in New Orleans in Yvette Sirker's absorbing, ambitious new play "Pink Collar Crime" and the audience murmurs in recognition at these omens, laughs at the colorfully profane dialogue and listens attentively to a sassy teenage Cassandra symbolically named Tamara. The future this young oracle sees is so dire that she is assembling a time capsule so that future generations will know her city as something other than an Atlantis-like legend.
Among the portents of disaster-to-come:
-- There are cracks in the walls of sinking houses, emblematic of fissures in the façade of the city itself.
-- Nature has run riot in a manner both magical and troubling: gardenias blooming out of season; snow on Christmas Day.
Sirker's theme is the cycle of life, from the swirl of DNA to the circles of corruption we've lived with for years: the natural and man-made forces that knocked us off our merry-go-round.
Sirker seduces us with laughter (getting everyone from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to "that crazy little weatherman screaming into the camera") and then brings us up short with sobering -- if repetitious -- truths, purposefully echoed in two acts that are distorting mirrors of each other. The play is "crowded with incident" as the writer articulates the glories of New Orleans, idealizes the camaraderie that can exist between races, celebrates friendship among women, gives us a sweet interracial romance and evil incarnate in a man who exults in the grandeur of greed.
Five women are at the heart of the play, its two acts set a year apart, on Tamara's 16th and 17th birthdays. In the first act, New Orleans has just dodged "Ivan the Terrible" and people are complaining that "the evacuation was worse than the hurricane."
In the second act, Katrina and multiple plots come to a boil as everyone realizes we've taken one too many spins in a stormy game of Russian roulette.
Enjean, Tamara's beleaguered mother, is fighting for custody of her daughter with her ex-husband, the kind of man "who grabs your ass so he can steal your wallet." Both are lawyers, but Enjean seems to have just discovered that the law and justice are often two different things. Tamara, who has some mouth on her, is in constant trouble with a nun at school for her papers on big business raping the environment, the influence of her Aunt Purl, an outspoken environmental biologist. They live in Broadmoor and their best friend is Uptown rich girl Penny Moon, whose father Bane is CEO of an oil company that was the first to start destroying the wetlands.
It's also Penny's mother Mae Constance's birthday and Penny takes them to her childhood friend Saint Charles' new "white tablecloth" multi-ethnic restaurant, where the trio carries on as people seldom do in public. Usually, they at least stay seated as they eviscerate one another.
Bane has gambled away his family's fortunes, to the point where Mae Constance wonders, "How can we be Republicans? We're broke!" A year later, Bane is flush again, having ripped off his employees and shareholders. His white collar crime is countered by what his daughter calls "pink collar crime," extorting money from him for the greater good. Her father responds with a Brechtian man-eat-man monologue, delivered in galvanizing fashion by J. Patrick McNamara, who also shows us the perfunctory charm that masks a feral ruthlessness. His wife, Mae Constance, a bibulous, high-maintenance matron who's brighter than she lets on, is acted with élan, wit and tragic anger by Peggy Walton-Walker, the two actors fleshing out sketchy roles.
Sherri Marina as Enjean and La Mya Holley, as Tamara, are a bold, believable mother and daughter, almost constantly at odds. They get some of the play's best dialogue and deliver it expertly. Morla Gorrondona's Penny Moon is teasingly sensual in her scenes with Roscoe C. Reddix, the strikingly handsome Saint Charles, caustic with her parents and, with Sirker's Purl, embodies the play's conscience. Sirker has given herself lots of facts to reel off, while projecting a brisk, nurturing warmth.
Jeff Riddick's first-rate set design offers three locations on a turntable that revolves counter-clockwise, like a hurricane.
Director Ray Vrazel skillfully orchestrates the shifting tectonics of Sirker's multilayered melodrama, but there is still too much here: revelations of incest and suicide on top of everything else, juxtaposed with choruses of "Happy Birthday." Pontification needs to be toned down in the complex mix of elements. Sirker and Vrazel should use this staging to hone the text further.
But it's fascinating just the same, with a rich use of language and quixotic characters, especially the women bitching about life and men, pausing to enjoy a drink in the pre-disaster breeze to observe, "Why is it that hurricane weather is so beautiful?"
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Audrey2Katrina
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Competence, character frame debate
Candidates square off in last televised forum
Friday, May 19, 2006 Times Picayune
By Michelle Krupa
and Frank Donze%%par%%Staff writers
Like the countless forums that preceded Thursday's final televised debate between incumbent Mayor Ray Nagin and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu before Saturday's runoff, the candidates admitted that at the root, their plans to resuscitate the ravaged city are basically the same.
But bubbling to the top of the otherwise agreeable discourse were a pair of issues that embodied the questions of competence and character that have framed the political fight throughout: the uncertain state of City Hall's finances, and whether New Orleans' recovery should led by a businessman known to shoot from the hip or a career politician from a family of elected leaders.
Sparks flew during the hourlong debate on WWL-TV over whether Nagin has sugarcoated the city's financial health and about the veracity of his announcement Monday that his administration has secured a $150 million line of credit that would help maintain day-to-day operations through 2007.
Citing the mayor's lack of details about the deal, news anchor Lucy Bustamante asked how Nagin would respond to critics who painted the news as an "election-eve stunt."
"I say to them, go talk to JPMorgan Chase," the lead lender in the agreement, Nagin said. "This is not about politics. This is about making sure our city has the resources necessary to get the job done."
Nagin said he did not name the other three banks involved because "they're a little hesitant about putting their names out there until everything is signed, sealed and delivered."
Bustamante pressed the mayor on why he didn't then wait until the deal was done.
"Because they want to give people comfort," Nagin said. "There a lot of debate and discussion about this city running out of money."
After Nagin's interrogation by Bustamante, Landrieu trod lightly. He said the city has a few options to handle its fiscal nightmare, including borrowing money from the state through a process laid out by federal laws or, as a last resort, to declare bankruptcy, an option put forth by a pair of good-government groups.
Pressed by anchor Dennis Woltering about whether he had "investigated this yourself," Landrieu said he had read independent reports on the issue. But in the end, Landrieu said his ability to address the problem was hampered by a lack of information from the Nagin administration.
"You don't really know what the financial strength of the city is because it really is not open and transparent," Landrieu said. "The only people who have all the information about the city's finances is the city administration."
Public pedigree
Landrieu's turn on the hot seat came amid questions from Nagin about whether his political pedigree, which the mayor frequently has defined as the Landrieu "dynasty," represents an asset or a liability.
"Let me be clear about the dynasty piece: It has nothing to do with whether your family has integrity or not. It's an issue of, what is too much?" Nagin asked, referring to Landrieu's sister, U.S. Sen. May Landrieu; his father, Moon Landrieu, a former mayor and appeals court judge; his aunt, a member of the Orleans Parish School Board; and another sister who is state civil district court judge.
"I have people who come up to me, business people, that say, 'There's so much power consolidated in the Landrieu family. How are we going to make sure that that stays on an even keel?' "
Landrieu responded by saying that in his 18 years in public service, plus the decades under his relatives' belts, they never have been accused of ethical misconduct. "It's extraordinary, you would have to admit, that we have served for that number of years and never had our integrity questioned and never abused our power," he said.
On the same page
Outside the two hot-button topics, Nagin and Landrieu agreed on a slew of issues: having fewer residents in public housing developments; honoring a pact that both signed to give All Congregations Together input on mayoral appointments; and exploring the option of merging the city's crippled electrical utility, Entergy New Orleans, with its much healthier statewide parent, Entergy Louisiana, to prevent skyrocketing rates.
Indeed, with so much consensus on so many issues a frequent theme of the mayoral campaign, anchor Sally Ann Roberts kicked off Thursday's debate by asking, "On what specific issue do you disagree?"
Nagin paused for several seconds. "On what issue do we disagree," the mayor repeated, then paused again. "I don't know. I can't think of one right now."
Given that drawn-out moment to gather his thoughts, Landrieu upended Roberts' veiled criticism and took a shot at the news media.
"It's not a liability that we don't disagree on the issues," he said. "The whole purpose has been to try to get everybody from the federal to the state to the local government on the same page. I know it provides good fodder for you guys on TV for us to fight about issues. But the truth of the matter is that trying to get everyone on the same page is one of the most important things."
One regret, please
In closing, the candidates offered a poignant epilogue to a long but mostly genteel campaign that has unfolded, despite the occasional nod to life before Katrina, under the uncertain shadow of the Aug 29 storm. Each was asked to recount one regret from the past nine months.
"I regret taking longer than I should to decide to run for mayor," said Landrieu, whose name was floated early as a possible contender but who did not formally jump into the race until February.
"One of the things that I was really concerned about early on was whether or not the sacrifice that was going to be required was something that everybody in the state and the city was willing to make," he said. "It is important now that we really dig down deep because the next couple of years in this city . . . is going to require a tremendous amount of perseverance and sacrifice."
Nagin, whose post-Katrina tenure has been plagued by intermittent rhetorical missteps that have raised eyebrows across the country, offered his contrition to the tens of thousands of residents whom Katrina cast out of New Orleans.
"The only regret that I have is, I wish I had gotten out earlier to talk to residents who had been displaced," the mayor said. "There were so many people out there that were hurting, and they wanted to see some leader from New Orleans, from Louisiana, to at least hear what they were going through."
Candidates square off in last televised forum
Friday, May 19, 2006 Times Picayune
By Michelle Krupa
and Frank Donze%%par%%Staff writers
Like the countless forums that preceded Thursday's final televised debate between incumbent Mayor Ray Nagin and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu before Saturday's runoff, the candidates admitted that at the root, their plans to resuscitate the ravaged city are basically the same.
But bubbling to the top of the otherwise agreeable discourse were a pair of issues that embodied the questions of competence and character that have framed the political fight throughout: the uncertain state of City Hall's finances, and whether New Orleans' recovery should led by a businessman known to shoot from the hip or a career politician from a family of elected leaders.
Sparks flew during the hourlong debate on WWL-TV over whether Nagin has sugarcoated the city's financial health and about the veracity of his announcement Monday that his administration has secured a $150 million line of credit that would help maintain day-to-day operations through 2007.
Citing the mayor's lack of details about the deal, news anchor Lucy Bustamante asked how Nagin would respond to critics who painted the news as an "election-eve stunt."
"I say to them, go talk to JPMorgan Chase," the lead lender in the agreement, Nagin said. "This is not about politics. This is about making sure our city has the resources necessary to get the job done."
Nagin said he did not name the other three banks involved because "they're a little hesitant about putting their names out there until everything is signed, sealed and delivered."
Bustamante pressed the mayor on why he didn't then wait until the deal was done.
"Because they want to give people comfort," Nagin said. "There a lot of debate and discussion about this city running out of money."
After Nagin's interrogation by Bustamante, Landrieu trod lightly. He said the city has a few options to handle its fiscal nightmare, including borrowing money from the state through a process laid out by federal laws or, as a last resort, to declare bankruptcy, an option put forth by a pair of good-government groups.
Pressed by anchor Dennis Woltering about whether he had "investigated this yourself," Landrieu said he had read independent reports on the issue. But in the end, Landrieu said his ability to address the problem was hampered by a lack of information from the Nagin administration.
"You don't really know what the financial strength of the city is because it really is not open and transparent," Landrieu said. "The only people who have all the information about the city's finances is the city administration."
Public pedigree
Landrieu's turn on the hot seat came amid questions from Nagin about whether his political pedigree, which the mayor frequently has defined as the Landrieu "dynasty," represents an asset or a liability.
"Let me be clear about the dynasty piece: It has nothing to do with whether your family has integrity or not. It's an issue of, what is too much?" Nagin asked, referring to Landrieu's sister, U.S. Sen. May Landrieu; his father, Moon Landrieu, a former mayor and appeals court judge; his aunt, a member of the Orleans Parish School Board; and another sister who is state civil district court judge.
"I have people who come up to me, business people, that say, 'There's so much power consolidated in the Landrieu family. How are we going to make sure that that stays on an even keel?' "
Landrieu responded by saying that in his 18 years in public service, plus the decades under his relatives' belts, they never have been accused of ethical misconduct. "It's extraordinary, you would have to admit, that we have served for that number of years and never had our integrity questioned and never abused our power," he said.
On the same page
Outside the two hot-button topics, Nagin and Landrieu agreed on a slew of issues: having fewer residents in public housing developments; honoring a pact that both signed to give All Congregations Together input on mayoral appointments; and exploring the option of merging the city's crippled electrical utility, Entergy New Orleans, with its much healthier statewide parent, Entergy Louisiana, to prevent skyrocketing rates.
Indeed, with so much consensus on so many issues a frequent theme of the mayoral campaign, anchor Sally Ann Roberts kicked off Thursday's debate by asking, "On what specific issue do you disagree?"
Nagin paused for several seconds. "On what issue do we disagree," the mayor repeated, then paused again. "I don't know. I can't think of one right now."
Given that drawn-out moment to gather his thoughts, Landrieu upended Roberts' veiled criticism and took a shot at the news media.
"It's not a liability that we don't disagree on the issues," he said. "The whole purpose has been to try to get everybody from the federal to the state to the local government on the same page. I know it provides good fodder for you guys on TV for us to fight about issues. But the truth of the matter is that trying to get everyone on the same page is one of the most important things."
One regret, please
In closing, the candidates offered a poignant epilogue to a long but mostly genteel campaign that has unfolded, despite the occasional nod to life before Katrina, under the uncertain shadow of the Aug 29 storm. Each was asked to recount one regret from the past nine months.
"I regret taking longer than I should to decide to run for mayor," said Landrieu, whose name was floated early as a possible contender but who did not formally jump into the race until February.
"One of the things that I was really concerned about early on was whether or not the sacrifice that was going to be required was something that everybody in the state and the city was willing to make," he said. "It is important now that we really dig down deep because the next couple of years in this city . . . is going to require a tremendous amount of perseverance and sacrifice."
Nagin, whose post-Katrina tenure has been plagued by intermittent rhetorical missteps that have raised eyebrows across the country, offered his contrition to the tens of thousands of residents whom Katrina cast out of New Orleans.
"The only regret that I have is, I wish I had gotten out earlier to talk to residents who had been displaced," the mayor said. "There were so many people out there that were hurting, and they wanted to see some leader from New Orleans, from Louisiana, to at least hear what they were going through."
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Audrey2Katrina
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- Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:39 pm
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Alligators increasingly visible in South Mississippi
By JOSHUA NORMAN SunHerald
Alligator catchers and state animal control experts said this week they are finding alligators in new habitats and in increasing numbers in recent months on the Gulf Coast.
Most recently, a 6-foot female alligator appeared earlier this week on Freddie Frank Road just north of Pass Christian, said Brad Necaise, an animal control officer for Harrison County.
"We're starting to see a little bit more," Necaise said, adding that the alligator was safely captured and released in Bayou Portage. "In winter, they stay more in their own habitats. Summertime, they're going to be out, moving around, trying to feed."
Dwight Morrow, an agent for the the District 6 office of the Mississippi Wildlife and Fisheries Department, which handles almost all water-based alligator removals for South Mississippi, estimated that his fellow agents have been asked to remove an average of five or six alligators per week from areas deemed not fit for alligator habitation, like residential neighborhoods.
By JOSHUA NORMAN SunHerald
Alligator catchers and state animal control experts said this week they are finding alligators in new habitats and in increasing numbers in recent months on the Gulf Coast.
Most recently, a 6-foot female alligator appeared earlier this week on Freddie Frank Road just north of Pass Christian, said Brad Necaise, an animal control officer for Harrison County.
"We're starting to see a little bit more," Necaise said, adding that the alligator was safely captured and released in Bayou Portage. "In winter, they stay more in their own habitats. Summertime, they're going to be out, moving around, trying to feed."
Dwight Morrow, an agent for the the District 6 office of the Mississippi Wildlife and Fisheries Department, which handles almost all water-based alligator removals for South Mississippi, estimated that his fellow agents have been asked to remove an average of five or six alligators per week from areas deemed not fit for alligator habitation, like residential neighborhoods.
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Audrey2Katrina
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Formaldehyde levels high in FEMA trailers, group reports
By Sean Gardiner
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Posted May 18 2006
Using air-monitoring badges supplied by a Boca Raton company, a national environmental organization found high levels of formaldehyde in trailers supplied by FEMA for those stranded after hurricanes in Mississippi and Louisiana.
The Sierra Club announced Wednesday that only two of the 31 FEMA trailers tested in those states were below the formaldehyde air safety limit recommended by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the American Lung Association, said Chris Smith of the Sierra Club.
Smith said he expects further formaldehyde tests will be conducted on FEMA-issued trailers in Mississippi and New Orleans but wasn't sure if any testing will be done in Florida.
Currently there are more than 1,500 FEMA trailers and mobile homes housing Florida hurricane refugees, according to FEMA statistics.
In a news release issued on Wednesday about the testing, the Sierra Club stated that formaldehyde -- a colorless, strong smelling gas that is a carcinogen -- usually comes from pressed particleboard or glue.
By Sean Gardiner
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Posted May 18 2006
Using air-monitoring badges supplied by a Boca Raton company, a national environmental organization found high levels of formaldehyde in trailers supplied by FEMA for those stranded after hurricanes in Mississippi and Louisiana.
The Sierra Club announced Wednesday that only two of the 31 FEMA trailers tested in those states were below the formaldehyde air safety limit recommended by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the American Lung Association, said Chris Smith of the Sierra Club.
Smith said he expects further formaldehyde tests will be conducted on FEMA-issued trailers in Mississippi and New Orleans but wasn't sure if any testing will be done in Florida.
Currently there are more than 1,500 FEMA trailers and mobile homes housing Florida hurricane refugees, according to FEMA statistics.
In a news release issued on Wednesday about the testing, the Sierra Club stated that formaldehyde -- a colorless, strong smelling gas that is a carcinogen -- usually comes from pressed particleboard or glue.
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Audrey2Katrina
- Category 5
- Posts: 4252
- Age: 75
- Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:39 pm
- Location: Metaire, La.
Nagin re-elected
By Gordon Russell, Frank Donze
and Michelle Krupa
Staff writers Times Picayune
Nine months after Hurricane Katrina swamped his city and transformed him from virtual shoo-in to ripe target, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin eked his way into a second term Saturday, besting Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu to maintain leadership of a city still languishing in ruin.
Nagin, a former cable television executive who ran as a political outsider four years ago, overcame withering criticism of his performance in the months since the Aug. 29 storm. Acknowledging that the effort to restore basic municipal services has been painfully slow, Nagin has blamed the lack of progress on a failure of state and federal government to come to the aid of a city reeling from the worst urban natural disaster in American history.
With his victory, Nagin kept alive a 60-year win streak for incumbents and continued the era of African-American leadership in the mayor's office, which began when Landrieu's father, Moon Landrieu, left office in 1978.
His re-election means Nagin will remain at the helm of a daunting recovery effort through 2010, removing an air of uncertainty that even he admitted during the campaign has slowed the rebuilding process.
Though his win Saturday could be read as voters' affirmation of the status quo at City Hall, members of the mayor's inner circle have indicated privately that Nagin plans to shake things up by overhauling his executive staff in the second term for the arduous task at hand, though how far he will go remains to be seen.
When Nagin would schedule his second-term inauguration was unclear Saturday night.
Under the timeline laid out in the City Charter, the mayor's new, four-year term should have begun May 1. But the extraordinary havoc wreaked by Katrina forced Blanco to delay the city’‘s election cycle, postponing the primary from Feb. 4 to April 22 and pushing back the March 4 runoff to Saturday.
In the storm’‘s shadow
Arguably the most important election in New Orleans' history, Saturday's vote played out beneath the long shadow of Katrina, which unleashed floodwaters into aboutroughly 80 percent of the city and scattered evacuees to nearly every state in the union. By election day, more than half of the 462,000 pre-Katrina residents remained in exile, including as many as 200,000 registered voters.
The frustrating pace of recovery was the central theme of the campaign. As late as last summer, Nagin appeared a lock for re-election, but with signs of a recovery still hard to find five months after Katrina, the mayor wound up with nearly two dozen challengers in the April 22 primary.
Though Nagin finished first in that election, with 38 percent of the vote, many analysts noted that more than six in 10 voters opted for a challenger, a sign of vulnerability for an incumbent.
Landrieu, who ran second in the primary with 29 percent, seized on the apparent discontent. His agenda was not radically different from Nagin's, but he cast the contest as a referendum on the mayor's leadership — or lack thereof. The election, he said repeatedly, was "about who can get things done," and he underscored the point with a TV commercial that showed him standing amid a graveyard of storm-ruined vehicles.
Nagin countered by reminding voters that he had manned his post throughout the ordeal, and he warned that changing City Hall leadership at the start of a hurricane season, which officially begins June 1, roughly coinciding with the mayoral inauguration, would be a mistake.
Races and dates
Because African-Americans were disproportionately forced to relocate by Katrina, the election was imbued with a racial cast. Many prominent black leaders — and some candidates, including Nagin and Landrieu — pressured the Legislature before the primary to set up satellite polling places in cities such as Houston and Atlanta, where tens of thousands of evacuees are living.
Though lawmakers did authorize unprecedented accommodations — opening 10 satellite voting sites across the state and easing the rules for balloting by mail and fax — the Legislature refused to allow polling places outside Louisiana.
At the same time, civic activists, argued that, lest the city’‘s recovery effort be stymied by an inability to select new political leadership, the election should be held sooner than later. That push, along with the raft of well-financed funded white candidates lining up to challenge Nagin, fueled anxiety among black voters that the city's white power structure was aiming to reclaim City Hall, which since 1978 has been occupied by a black mayor.
Nagin at times tapped in to such fears, noting during a meeting with evacuees in Houston that "very few" of his opponents "look like us." He stated flatly that many of the challengers wouldn’‘t have run ifhad the city’‘s black electorate remained at its pre-Katrina levels.
Landrieu, who had publicly flirted with a run for governor next year, admitted that his mayoral aspirations were ignited by Katrina. But he said he was driven by Nagin’‘s failures and a desire to help his hometown, not by the shifting demographic.
In the end, the rescheduled election dates were approved by U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle, who ruled that measures taken to ensure fair balloting met standards laid out in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Lemelle is black.
With New Orleans evacuees scattered to every corner of the map, many primary candidates traversed the Gulf South to deliver their message to voters in the diaspora; a few even opened satellite campaign offices in Baton Rouge and Houston. The junkets drew the nation’‘s attention and even prompted two national cable networks — MSNBC and C-SPAN — to broadcast live candidate debates from coast to coast.
But the Landrieu and Nagin campaigns admitted soon after the April 22 primary that trying to corral the vote of so many displaced voters, even given the efforts of several nonprofit groups to bus them to New Orleans on election day, was too time-consuming and not worth the limited potential payoff. Neither candidate did much out-of-town electioneering before the runoff.
Crossover appeal
Also after the primary, some black leaders and activists threatened a legal challenge to the results, saying that voter turnout figures proved their case that black voting strength had been unfairly diluted. Turnout among black voters in the primary was 31 percent, compared with 51 percent for white voters.
While black voter turnout in New Orleans generally lags white turnout, the disparity was more than 10 percent points larger than usual. In the 2002 mayoral primary, for instance, 50 percent of eligible white voters cast votes, compared withto 45 percent of eligible black voters.
But the legal challenge never materialized, and the runoff campaign had a decidedly lower racial temperature than the primary, though it pitted a black candidate against a white one. An election that some feared could become starkly polarized along racial lines never did.
Largely, that’‘s because both candidates proved adept at attracting crossover voters of the opposite race. Throughout his campaign, Landrieu cited with pride a precinct analysis from the primary showing that he fared almost as well among African-Americans as among white voterss.
Nagin, on the other hand, did poorly among white voterss in the primary, particularly in light of his broad appeal among that groupwhite voters in the 2002 runoff election, in which he faced a black opponent. Analysts estimated Nagin won as little as 6 percent of the white vote in the April primary, which featured at least four well-financed funded white candidates, including Landrieu.
As the runoff campaign took shape, the city’‘s ingrained political and racial patterns began to break down. Landrieu was endorsed by the third-place finisher, Audubon Nature Institute chief executive Ron Forman, a Democrat who had attracted the support of many white conservatives. Nagin countered by landing the backing of Couhig, the leading Republican in the primary, and Boulet, a liberal Democrat, both of whom are white. He was also endorsed by firebrand minister the Rev. Tom Watson, who is black.
Landrieu, meanwhile, picked up endorsements from the Republican Party, a large contingent of elected officials of both races, and Bishop Paul Morton, pastor of the state's largest black church.
The results Saturday suggest that Nagin managed to build back a sizable portion of his once-enviable white base, an accomplishment that likely put him over the top.
Pollsters had said that, based on his strong showing among black voters in the primary, Nagin would need at least 20 percent and perhaps 25 percent of the white vote to win. Landrieu, conversely, would have had to build slightly upon the 24 percent of black votes he received in the primary.
Early analyses Saturday night indicate that Nagin met his goal of a 20 percent share of the white vote, while Landrieu failed to build upon his African-American support, and mightmay have even lost some.
By Gordon Russell, Frank Donze
and Michelle Krupa
Staff writers Times Picayune
Nine months after Hurricane Katrina swamped his city and transformed him from virtual shoo-in to ripe target, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin eked his way into a second term Saturday, besting Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu to maintain leadership of a city still languishing in ruin.
Nagin, a former cable television executive who ran as a political outsider four years ago, overcame withering criticism of his performance in the months since the Aug. 29 storm. Acknowledging that the effort to restore basic municipal services has been painfully slow, Nagin has blamed the lack of progress on a failure of state and federal government to come to the aid of a city reeling from the worst urban natural disaster in American history.
With his victory, Nagin kept alive a 60-year win streak for incumbents and continued the era of African-American leadership in the mayor's office, which began when Landrieu's father, Moon Landrieu, left office in 1978.
His re-election means Nagin will remain at the helm of a daunting recovery effort through 2010, removing an air of uncertainty that even he admitted during the campaign has slowed the rebuilding process.
Though his win Saturday could be read as voters' affirmation of the status quo at City Hall, members of the mayor's inner circle have indicated privately that Nagin plans to shake things up by overhauling his executive staff in the second term for the arduous task at hand, though how far he will go remains to be seen.
When Nagin would schedule his second-term inauguration was unclear Saturday night.
Under the timeline laid out in the City Charter, the mayor's new, four-year term should have begun May 1. But the extraordinary havoc wreaked by Katrina forced Blanco to delay the city’‘s election cycle, postponing the primary from Feb. 4 to April 22 and pushing back the March 4 runoff to Saturday.
In the storm’‘s shadow
Arguably the most important election in New Orleans' history, Saturday's vote played out beneath the long shadow of Katrina, which unleashed floodwaters into aboutroughly 80 percent of the city and scattered evacuees to nearly every state in the union. By election day, more than half of the 462,000 pre-Katrina residents remained in exile, including as many as 200,000 registered voters.
The frustrating pace of recovery was the central theme of the campaign. As late as last summer, Nagin appeared a lock for re-election, but with signs of a recovery still hard to find five months after Katrina, the mayor wound up with nearly two dozen challengers in the April 22 primary.
Though Nagin finished first in that election, with 38 percent of the vote, many analysts noted that more than six in 10 voters opted for a challenger, a sign of vulnerability for an incumbent.
Landrieu, who ran second in the primary with 29 percent, seized on the apparent discontent. His agenda was not radically different from Nagin's, but he cast the contest as a referendum on the mayor's leadership — or lack thereof. The election, he said repeatedly, was "about who can get things done," and he underscored the point with a TV commercial that showed him standing amid a graveyard of storm-ruined vehicles.
Nagin countered by reminding voters that he had manned his post throughout the ordeal, and he warned that changing City Hall leadership at the start of a hurricane season, which officially begins June 1, roughly coinciding with the mayoral inauguration, would be a mistake.
Races and dates
Because African-Americans were disproportionately forced to relocate by Katrina, the election was imbued with a racial cast. Many prominent black leaders — and some candidates, including Nagin and Landrieu — pressured the Legislature before the primary to set up satellite polling places in cities such as Houston and Atlanta, where tens of thousands of evacuees are living.
Though lawmakers did authorize unprecedented accommodations — opening 10 satellite voting sites across the state and easing the rules for balloting by mail and fax — the Legislature refused to allow polling places outside Louisiana.
At the same time, civic activists, argued that, lest the city’‘s recovery effort be stymied by an inability to select new political leadership, the election should be held sooner than later. That push, along with the raft of well-financed funded white candidates lining up to challenge Nagin, fueled anxiety among black voters that the city's white power structure was aiming to reclaim City Hall, which since 1978 has been occupied by a black mayor.
Nagin at times tapped in to such fears, noting during a meeting with evacuees in Houston that "very few" of his opponents "look like us." He stated flatly that many of the challengers wouldn’‘t have run ifhad the city’‘s black electorate remained at its pre-Katrina levels.
Landrieu, who had publicly flirted with a run for governor next year, admitted that his mayoral aspirations were ignited by Katrina. But he said he was driven by Nagin’‘s failures and a desire to help his hometown, not by the shifting demographic.
In the end, the rescheduled election dates were approved by U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle, who ruled that measures taken to ensure fair balloting met standards laid out in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Lemelle is black.
With New Orleans evacuees scattered to every corner of the map, many primary candidates traversed the Gulf South to deliver their message to voters in the diaspora; a few even opened satellite campaign offices in Baton Rouge and Houston. The junkets drew the nation’‘s attention and even prompted two national cable networks — MSNBC and C-SPAN — to broadcast live candidate debates from coast to coast.
But the Landrieu and Nagin campaigns admitted soon after the April 22 primary that trying to corral the vote of so many displaced voters, even given the efforts of several nonprofit groups to bus them to New Orleans on election day, was too time-consuming and not worth the limited potential payoff. Neither candidate did much out-of-town electioneering before the runoff.
Crossover appeal
Also after the primary, some black leaders and activists threatened a legal challenge to the results, saying that voter turnout figures proved their case that black voting strength had been unfairly diluted. Turnout among black voters in the primary was 31 percent, compared with 51 percent for white voters.
While black voter turnout in New Orleans generally lags white turnout, the disparity was more than 10 percent points larger than usual. In the 2002 mayoral primary, for instance, 50 percent of eligible white voters cast votes, compared withto 45 percent of eligible black voters.
But the legal challenge never materialized, and the runoff campaign had a decidedly lower racial temperature than the primary, though it pitted a black candidate against a white one. An election that some feared could become starkly polarized along racial lines never did.
Largely, that’‘s because both candidates proved adept at attracting crossover voters of the opposite race. Throughout his campaign, Landrieu cited with pride a precinct analysis from the primary showing that he fared almost as well among African-Americans as among white voterss.
Nagin, on the other hand, did poorly among white voterss in the primary, particularly in light of his broad appeal among that groupwhite voters in the 2002 runoff election, in which he faced a black opponent. Analysts estimated Nagin won as little as 6 percent of the white vote in the April primary, which featured at least four well-financed funded white candidates, including Landrieu.
As the runoff campaign took shape, the city’‘s ingrained political and racial patterns began to break down. Landrieu was endorsed by the third-place finisher, Audubon Nature Institute chief executive Ron Forman, a Democrat who had attracted the support of many white conservatives. Nagin countered by landing the backing of Couhig, the leading Republican in the primary, and Boulet, a liberal Democrat, both of whom are white. He was also endorsed by firebrand minister the Rev. Tom Watson, who is black.
Landrieu, meanwhile, picked up endorsements from the Republican Party, a large contingent of elected officials of both races, and Bishop Paul Morton, pastor of the state's largest black church.
The results Saturday suggest that Nagin managed to build back a sizable portion of his once-enviable white base, an accomplishment that likely put him over the top.
Pollsters had said that, based on his strong showing among black voters in the primary, Nagin would need at least 20 percent and perhaps 25 percent of the white vote to win. Landrieu, conversely, would have had to build slightly upon the 24 percent of black votes he received in the primary.
Early analyses Saturday night indicate that Nagin met his goal of a 20 percent share of the white vote, while Landrieu failed to build upon his African-American support, and mightmay have even lost some.
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Audrey2Katrina
- Category 5
- Posts: 4252
- Age: 75
- Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:39 pm
- Location: Metaire, La.
FBI searches Jefferson's Capitol Hill office
By Bruce Alpert
and Bill Walsh Times Picayune
Washington bureau
WASHINGTON – With prosecutors said to be nearing a decision on whether to indict the eight-term New Orleans Democrat, FBI agents searched the Capitol Hill office of Rep. William Jefferson Saturday night as part of an ongoing public corruption probe.
An FBI spokeswoman said the agents entered the Rayburn House Office building, around 6:15 p.m. Central Time. She would not say what the agents were looking for, but said they were acting under a sealed search warrant.
It is extremely rare for the FBI to raid the office of a sitting congressman, which indicates that the Justice Department must have given a judge a fairly specific reason why a piece of evidence, or a document, could only be obtained by going to his office, according to a lawyer familiar with the case.
An attorney for Jefferson deplored the raid.
“The government’s actions in obtaining a search warrant to search the offices of a United States Congressman were outrageous,“ Jefferson’s attorney Robert Trout said in a statement issued late Saturday. “There were no exigent circumstances necessitating this action. The government knew that the documents were being appropriately preserved while proper procedures were being followed. We are dismayed by this action. The documents weren’t going anywhere and the prosecutors knew it.”
In August, FBI agents left with boxes of material, including cash, from Jefferson’s New Orleans home. At the same time, agents raided his car, his Washington, D.C., home, the Maryland home of the vice president of Nigeria and the Louisville, Ky., offices of iGate Inc.
Earlier this month, Vernon L. Jackson, the CEO of iGate, became the second person to plead guilty in what the government said was a scheme to bribe Jefferson to help iGate get lucrative internet and cable television contracts in Africa.
Jefferson spokeswoman Melanie Roussell had no comment Saturday night. A message left at Jefferson’s New Orleans home was not returned.
Usually, House office buildings are open around the clock to Capitol staff and news reporters. But access to the building was blocked, and even entry to the building’s underground garage was not possible Saturday night.
Parked along the Rayburn Office Building’s horseshoe driveway were three black minivans and a black SUV.
Around 9 p.m. Central Time, an agent walked out of the Rayburn Office Building, took an empty box out of one of the FBI vans, and then re-entered the building with the box.
The question of whether to indict Jefferson will be up to a Virginia grand jury which has been hearing evidence in the case. The government had said it hoped to wrap up the case by late May or early June.
The case apparently started when an investor in the iGate project, Virginia multi-millionaire Lori Mody, went to federal agents to complain that Jefferson was demanding jobs and money in return for his help with the project. She secretly recorded phone conversations with Jefferson and wore a wire during some meetings with the congressman, according to information recently presented to a federal magistrate who was considering whether to make previous search warrants in the case public.
Jackson said that he had provided a company controlled by Jefferson’s wife and children over $400,000 in return for the congressman’s help with the African telecommunications deals.
If nothing else, the high profile raid of his office seems intended, at least in part, to put pressure on the congressman to plead guilty.
Jefferson, in a news conference last week, emphatically rejected any sort of guilty plea because he said he had not committed a crime.
“I want to say emphatically that in all of my actions that are here under scrutiny, that I have never intended to dishonor my office or you, the public and I certainly did not sell my office,” Jefferson said. He insisted that he has never sought anything for himself or his family in return for performing the duties of a congressman.
By Bruce Alpert
and Bill Walsh Times Picayune
Washington bureau
WASHINGTON – With prosecutors said to be nearing a decision on whether to indict the eight-term New Orleans Democrat, FBI agents searched the Capitol Hill office of Rep. William Jefferson Saturday night as part of an ongoing public corruption probe.
An FBI spokeswoman said the agents entered the Rayburn House Office building, around 6:15 p.m. Central Time. She would not say what the agents were looking for, but said they were acting under a sealed search warrant.
It is extremely rare for the FBI to raid the office of a sitting congressman, which indicates that the Justice Department must have given a judge a fairly specific reason why a piece of evidence, or a document, could only be obtained by going to his office, according to a lawyer familiar with the case.
An attorney for Jefferson deplored the raid.
“The government’s actions in obtaining a search warrant to search the offices of a United States Congressman were outrageous,“ Jefferson’s attorney Robert Trout said in a statement issued late Saturday. “There were no exigent circumstances necessitating this action. The government knew that the documents were being appropriately preserved while proper procedures were being followed. We are dismayed by this action. The documents weren’t going anywhere and the prosecutors knew it.”
In August, FBI agents left with boxes of material, including cash, from Jefferson’s New Orleans home. At the same time, agents raided his car, his Washington, D.C., home, the Maryland home of the vice president of Nigeria and the Louisville, Ky., offices of iGate Inc.
Earlier this month, Vernon L. Jackson, the CEO of iGate, became the second person to plead guilty in what the government said was a scheme to bribe Jefferson to help iGate get lucrative internet and cable television contracts in Africa.
Jefferson spokeswoman Melanie Roussell had no comment Saturday night. A message left at Jefferson’s New Orleans home was not returned.
Usually, House office buildings are open around the clock to Capitol staff and news reporters. But access to the building was blocked, and even entry to the building’s underground garage was not possible Saturday night.
Parked along the Rayburn Office Building’s horseshoe driveway were three black minivans and a black SUV.
Around 9 p.m. Central Time, an agent walked out of the Rayburn Office Building, took an empty box out of one of the FBI vans, and then re-entered the building with the box.
The question of whether to indict Jefferson will be up to a Virginia grand jury which has been hearing evidence in the case. The government had said it hoped to wrap up the case by late May or early June.
The case apparently started when an investor in the iGate project, Virginia multi-millionaire Lori Mody, went to federal agents to complain that Jefferson was demanding jobs and money in return for his help with the project. She secretly recorded phone conversations with Jefferson and wore a wire during some meetings with the congressman, according to information recently presented to a federal magistrate who was considering whether to make previous search warrants in the case public.
Jackson said that he had provided a company controlled by Jefferson’s wife and children over $400,000 in return for the congressman’s help with the African telecommunications deals.
If nothing else, the high profile raid of his office seems intended, at least in part, to put pressure on the congressman to plead guilty.
Jefferson, in a news conference last week, emphatically rejected any sort of guilty plea because he said he had not committed a crime.
“I want to say emphatically that in all of my actions that are here under scrutiny, that I have never intended to dishonor my office or you, the public and I certainly did not sell my office,” Jefferson said. He insisted that he has never sought anything for himself or his family in return for performing the duties of a congressman.
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Audrey2Katrina
- Category 5
- Posts: 4252
- Age: 75
- Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:39 pm
- Location: Metaire, La.
Residents' appeal reinstated
Dismissal was due to 'administrative error' by court
By RYAN LaFONTAINE
Sun Herald.com
HANCOCK COUNTY - An appeal to the state Supreme Court to stop condos in Clermont Harbor was dismissed earlier this week on a technicality, but reinstated Friday.
Five members of Coastal Community Watch, an Internet-based group of civic activists, sued to stop creation of a new commercial-resort district from Pointset Avenue to Bayou Caddy, which allows construction of beachfront condos and resorts without height restrictions near Clermont Harbor.
The case was dismissed Tuesday because of a "failure to pay the cost of appeal," according to the dismissal notice. On Friday, the Supreme Court issued a notice saying the appeal was again back in good standing.
Attorney Reilly Morse said the necessary documents were filed before the court's deadline and that the dismissal was an "administrative error."
"The documents had been filed with the Hancock County Circuit Court in a timely manner, and have since been forwarded to the Supreme Court," Morse said.
On May 9, Morse filed a designation of record and certificate of compliance with the lower court, in addition to a $600 fee, for the estimated appeal cost.
Neither the documents nor the money had reached the Supreme Court by Tuesday, at the time of the dismissal. The appellants filed a motion to reinstate, which the high court granted Friday, saying it had just recently received the documents.
In March, Circuit Judge Steve Simpson denied the group's first appeal, affirming the Hancock County Board of Supervisors' vote to add the new commercial-resort district.
Morse is asking the state's high court to overturn the lower court's decision and force the county to revert to its old zoning standards.
Three days after the supervisors approved the zoning change last year, several development firms won Planning Commission approval to move forward with preparations for nearly a dozen upscale condo towers.
The planned projects include four high-rises by Paradise Properties Group LLC in an area near Bayou Caddy Fisheries, with heights ranging from 11 to 20 stories.
Dismissal was due to 'administrative error' by court
By RYAN LaFONTAINE
Sun Herald.com
HANCOCK COUNTY - An appeal to the state Supreme Court to stop condos in Clermont Harbor was dismissed earlier this week on a technicality, but reinstated Friday.
Five members of Coastal Community Watch, an Internet-based group of civic activists, sued to stop creation of a new commercial-resort district from Pointset Avenue to Bayou Caddy, which allows construction of beachfront condos and resorts without height restrictions near Clermont Harbor.
The case was dismissed Tuesday because of a "failure to pay the cost of appeal," according to the dismissal notice. On Friday, the Supreme Court issued a notice saying the appeal was again back in good standing.
Attorney Reilly Morse said the necessary documents were filed before the court's deadline and that the dismissal was an "administrative error."
"The documents had been filed with the Hancock County Circuit Court in a timely manner, and have since been forwarded to the Supreme Court," Morse said.
On May 9, Morse filed a designation of record and certificate of compliance with the lower court, in addition to a $600 fee, for the estimated appeal cost.
Neither the documents nor the money had reached the Supreme Court by Tuesday, at the time of the dismissal. The appellants filed a motion to reinstate, which the high court granted Friday, saying it had just recently received the documents.
In March, Circuit Judge Steve Simpson denied the group's first appeal, affirming the Hancock County Board of Supervisors' vote to add the new commercial-resort district.
Morse is asking the state's high court to overturn the lower court's decision and force the county to revert to its old zoning standards.
Three days after the supervisors approved the zoning change last year, several development firms won Planning Commission approval to move forward with preparations for nearly a dozen upscale condo towers.
The planned projects include four high-rises by Paradise Properties Group LLC in an area near Bayou Caddy Fisheries, with heights ranging from 11 to 20 stories.
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Audrey2Katrina
- Category 5
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- Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:39 pm
- Location: Metaire, La.
NOTICE OF SPECIAL ELECTION
CITY OF LONG BEACH, MISSISSIPPI
From CityofLongBeach.com
Notice is hereby given to the qualified electors of the City of Long Beach, Mississippi, that a
special election will be held in the City of Long Beach, Mississippi, on Tuesday, the 27th day of
June, 2006, for the purpose of presenting a non-binding referendum to the electorate on the issue of
whether or not land based gaming should be allowed in the City at a location situated north of U.S.
Highway 90 and across said highway from the Long Beach Harbor.
The said election will be held at the following polling places within the City of Long Beach,
Mississippi, to-wit:
Voting Precinct Voting (Polling) Place
Ward 1 Long Beach Middle School – 204 North Cleveland Avenue,
Long Beach, MS
Ward 2 Long Beach Middle School – 204 North Cleveland Avenue,
Long Beach, MS
Ward 3 Long Beach Middle School – 204 North Cleveland Avenue,
Long Beach, MS
Ward 4 Thomas L. Reeves Elementary School – 214 St. Augustine
Drive, Green Acres Subdivision, Long Beach, MS
Ward 5 Grace Lutheran Church – 19221 Pineville Road, Long Beach,
MS
Ward 6 Quarles Elementary School – 111 Quarles Street at
Commission Road, Long Beach, MS
The polling places for said election shall be open at 7:00 o’clock a.m. and shall be kept open
until 7:00 o’clock p.m., on the aforesaid date and all qualified electors of the City of Long Beach,
Mississippi, registered to vote by the registration deadline, Saturday, May 27, 2006, at 12:00 o’clock
NOON, will be entitled to vote in the said election.
ORDERED, this the 2nd day of May, 2006, by the Mayor and Board of Aldermen of the City
of Long Beach, Mississippi.
BY: /s/signed
Rebecca E. Schruff, City Clerk
CITY OF LONG BEACH, MISSISSIPPI
From CityofLongBeach.com
Notice is hereby given to the qualified electors of the City of Long Beach, Mississippi, that a
special election will be held in the City of Long Beach, Mississippi, on Tuesday, the 27th day of
June, 2006, for the purpose of presenting a non-binding referendum to the electorate on the issue of
whether or not land based gaming should be allowed in the City at a location situated north of U.S.
Highway 90 and across said highway from the Long Beach Harbor.
The said election will be held at the following polling places within the City of Long Beach,
Mississippi, to-wit:
Voting Precinct Voting (Polling) Place
Ward 1 Long Beach Middle School – 204 North Cleveland Avenue,
Long Beach, MS
Ward 2 Long Beach Middle School – 204 North Cleveland Avenue,
Long Beach, MS
Ward 3 Long Beach Middle School – 204 North Cleveland Avenue,
Long Beach, MS
Ward 4 Thomas L. Reeves Elementary School – 214 St. Augustine
Drive, Green Acres Subdivision, Long Beach, MS
Ward 5 Grace Lutheran Church – 19221 Pineville Road, Long Beach,
MS
Ward 6 Quarles Elementary School – 111 Quarles Street at
Commission Road, Long Beach, MS
The polling places for said election shall be open at 7:00 o’clock a.m. and shall be kept open
until 7:00 o’clock p.m., on the aforesaid date and all qualified electors of the City of Long Beach,
Mississippi, registered to vote by the registration deadline, Saturday, May 27, 2006, at 12:00 o’clock
NOON, will be entitled to vote in the said election.
ORDERED, this the 2nd day of May, 2006, by the Mayor and Board of Aldermen of the City
of Long Beach, Mississippi.
BY: /s/signed
Rebecca E. Schruff, City Clerk
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Audrey2Katrina
- Category 5
- Posts: 4252
- Age: 75
- Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:39 pm
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Two proposed LNG terminals move a step closer to construction
Last Update: 5/20/2006 2:57:08 PM
PASCAGOULA, Miss. (AP) - The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has released an environmental impact report that moves two proposed liquefied natural gas terminals one step closer to construction in Pascagoula. Both terminals would be located in the industrial Port of Pascagoula.
One terminal is Chevron's Bayou Casotte project and the other is proposed by Gulf LNG Energy, LLC. Both companies want to see the terminals operating by 2009.
FERC, in a document called a draft environmental impact statement, concluded building and operating the terminals "would have limited adverse environmental impact" as long as the companies initiated appropriate precautions. The report, which was released on Friday, is a pivotal step in receiving federal approval for the terminals. FERC's staff listed nine major reasons they gave the projects the go-ahead.
Some of the safeguards they cited included sufficient planning that considered environmental concerns, assurances of ship and site security, the initiation of an environmental monitoring program and the decision to build in an industrial area. The terminals would pump up to 2.8 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day into the national market. They would be able to handle almost 300 LNG carrier ships a year.
The project still must clear more FERC staff reviews and the final environmental-impact statement before agency commissioners give approval.
Last Update: 5/20/2006 2:57:08 PM
PASCAGOULA, Miss. (AP) - The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has released an environmental impact report that moves two proposed liquefied natural gas terminals one step closer to construction in Pascagoula. Both terminals would be located in the industrial Port of Pascagoula.
One terminal is Chevron's Bayou Casotte project and the other is proposed by Gulf LNG Energy, LLC. Both companies want to see the terminals operating by 2009.
FERC, in a document called a draft environmental impact statement, concluded building and operating the terminals "would have limited adverse environmental impact" as long as the companies initiated appropriate precautions. The report, which was released on Friday, is a pivotal step in receiving federal approval for the terminals. FERC's staff listed nine major reasons they gave the projects the go-ahead.
Some of the safeguards they cited included sufficient planning that considered environmental concerns, assurances of ship and site security, the initiation of an environmental monitoring program and the decision to build in an industrial area. The terminals would pump up to 2.8 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day into the national market. They would be able to handle almost 300 LNG carrier ships a year.
The project still must clear more FERC staff reviews and the final environmental-impact statement before agency commissioners give approval.
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Audrey2Katrina
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Prepare Now for Hurricane Season
Last Update: 5/19/2006 10:49:27 PM--NBC15-Mobile ALA.
(Mobile County) May 19 - Hurricane season is less than 2 weeks away. Experts are predicting another active season, with 15 to 18 named storms. 9 to 10 of those becoming hurricanes. And 5 to 6 of those hurricanes, major ones.
This area is an active region as far has hurricane landfall goes. In fact it's the most active in the country. That's why Mobile county EMA is urging us to get ready, by stocking up now on supplies like water, food batteries and gasoline Gary Beeler with the National Weather Service: "Panama City to Lake Charles, is the most, has the most landfalls of any area in the us since 1900. we've had over 75 storms so we live in a very active hurricane region."
Art Maurin with Home Depot in MObile: "Normally, this time of year, our garden center is our number one department. But for the last 2 months, our hardware department is driving all sales because the generators and accessories come through that department."
Mobile county officials preparing early too. They say after countless meetings and drills they've identified shortfalls following hurricane katrina. One of those, getting people out. The county is now working with the state to bring buses and drivers in to help evacuate people who don't have the means to leave on their own
Last Update: 5/19/2006 10:49:27 PM--NBC15-Mobile ALA.
(Mobile County) May 19 - Hurricane season is less than 2 weeks away. Experts are predicting another active season, with 15 to 18 named storms. 9 to 10 of those becoming hurricanes. And 5 to 6 of those hurricanes, major ones.
This area is an active region as far has hurricane landfall goes. In fact it's the most active in the country. That's why Mobile county EMA is urging us to get ready, by stocking up now on supplies like water, food batteries and gasoline Gary Beeler with the National Weather Service: "Panama City to Lake Charles, is the most, has the most landfalls of any area in the us since 1900. we've had over 75 storms so we live in a very active hurricane region."
Art Maurin with Home Depot in MObile: "Normally, this time of year, our garden center is our number one department. But for the last 2 months, our hardware department is driving all sales because the generators and accessories come through that department."
Mobile county officials preparing early too. They say after countless meetings and drills they've identified shortfalls following hurricane katrina. One of those, getting people out. The county is now working with the state to bring buses and drivers in to help evacuate people who don't have the means to leave on their own
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MSRobi911
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- Location: Pascagoula, Misssissippi
Audrey2Katrina wrote:Two proposed LNG terminals move a step closer to construction
Last Update: 5/20/2006 2:57:08 PM
PASCAGOULA, Miss. (AP) - The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has released an environmental impact report that moves two proposed liquefied natural gas terminals one step closer to construction in Pascagoula. Both terminals would be located in the industrial Port of Pascagoula.
One terminal is Chevron's Bayou Casotte project and the other is proposed by Gulf LNG Energy, LLC. Both companies want to see the terminals operating by 2009.
FERC, in a document called a draft environmental impact statement, concluded building and operating the terminals "would have limited adverse environmental impact" as long as the companies initiated appropriate precautions. The report, which was released on Friday, is a pivotal step in receiving federal approval for the terminals. FERC's staff listed nine major reasons they gave the projects the go-ahead.
Some of the safeguards they cited included sufficient planning that considered environmental concerns, assurances of ship and site security, the initiation of an environmental monitoring program and the decision to build in an industrial area. The terminals would pump up to 2.8 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day into the national market. They would be able to handle almost 300 LNG carrier ships a year.
The project still must clear more FERC staff reviews and the final environmental-impact statement before agency commissioners give approval.
Man I hope this doesn't go through...that's just what we need out by Chevron.....a LNG business............when we blow, you'll never find anything left of Pascagoula or surrounding areas!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mary
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LaPlaceFF
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St. John preparing for 2006 storms
By CALEB FREY
Staff Reporter
LAPLACE - While St. John Parish was spared from the devastating effects of Katrina last summer, the St. John Office of Emergency Operations feels it's never too early to have a hurricane plan ready. This was the focus of their hurricane preparedness meeting in the St. John Library Thursday night.
Many people are under the assumption that only breaches in the levee system caused flooding in last year's storms, according to Kathryn Gilmore, Deputy Director for the St. John Parish Office of Emergency Operations.
She feels it's important to not become complacent because the storm came so close yet left the River Parishes virtually unscathed.
“The city of Kenner's storm surge sent the water over their levees; there was no breach,” Gilmore said.
“Had the storm passed seven or eight miles more to the west, we could have experienced the same storm surge.”
Knowing this, Gilmore uses these meetings to help parish residents understand the urgency of the upcoming hurricane season.
She discusses in detail the “Ten Step Survival Plan” which can be found in the TRAC Louisiana Storm Survival Guide.
The booklet contains checklists and ideas for nearly every scenario with reminders and tips on everything from planning an evacuation route to finding pet friendly lodging.
The 60 page booklet can be obtained through Emergency Preparedness or downloaded from the TRAC website at http://www.trac4la.com.
For more information on upcoming meetings and how to stay prepared for the storm call the St. John Office of Emergency Operations at (985)-652-2222 or access their website at http://stjohnla.us/eoc.asp.
By CALEB FREY
Staff Reporter
LAPLACE - While St. John Parish was spared from the devastating effects of Katrina last summer, the St. John Office of Emergency Operations feels it's never too early to have a hurricane plan ready. This was the focus of their hurricane preparedness meeting in the St. John Library Thursday night.
Many people are under the assumption that only breaches in the levee system caused flooding in last year's storms, according to Kathryn Gilmore, Deputy Director for the St. John Parish Office of Emergency Operations.
She feels it's important to not become complacent because the storm came so close yet left the River Parishes virtually unscathed.
“The city of Kenner's storm surge sent the water over their levees; there was no breach,” Gilmore said.
“Had the storm passed seven or eight miles more to the west, we could have experienced the same storm surge.”
Knowing this, Gilmore uses these meetings to help parish residents understand the urgency of the upcoming hurricane season.
She discusses in detail the “Ten Step Survival Plan” which can be found in the TRAC Louisiana Storm Survival Guide.
The booklet contains checklists and ideas for nearly every scenario with reminders and tips on everything from planning an evacuation route to finding pet friendly lodging.
The 60 page booklet can be obtained through Emergency Preparedness or downloaded from the TRAC website at http://www.trac4la.com.
For more information on upcoming meetings and how to stay prepared for the storm call the St. John Office of Emergency Operations at (985)-652-2222 or access their website at http://stjohnla.us/eoc.asp.
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