RTA to cut services to fit budget
By Gordon Russell
Staff writer Times Picayune Friday, May 26, 2006
As New Orleans City Hall puts the final touches on a $150 million line of credit to pay for operations as the city tries to regain its footing, Regional Transit Authority officials this week said they are getting ready to live within their means starting in just over a month, when emergency federal funding is set to end.
For riders and employees, it may not be pleasant. They could find a bare-bones transit system that in the worst-case scenario would mainly serve the Central Business District, with limited service to Gentilly and Algiers and other nearby areas, RTA officials said. It’s a prospect that makes the current, already limited service that FEMA has paid for since October, look vibrant.
The end of the current federal subsidy, scheduled for June 30, is likely to cause hundreds of layoffs as well.
Running on its own juice will be a though task for the RTA, as the agency’s income is a far cry from what it used to be. Consultants project that revenue this year from fares, sales tax and hotel-motel taxes will be around $30 million, down from about $95 million before Katrina. The projections are somewhat lower than recent reports from the city and other governmental agencies would seem to indicate.
Meanwhile, the annual federal subsidy of about $15 million that the authority traditionally received before Katrina is not a sure thing this year, although agency leaders said they have gotten verbal assurances they’ll still get it.
What does appear to be a sure thing is that FEMA will no longer pay for the system’s operation past the end of June. So by June 15, in order to achieve self-sufficiency by July 1, RTA board members will have to adopt an operating budget that reflects a significantly diminished system.
Though Mayor Ray Nagin said during the campaign that he hoped to get an extension of the federal reimbursement, and that he had been encouraged by the response from top federal officials, RTA officials said they are proceeding as if they won’t get any more help.
On Thursday, board members got a peek at several scenarios reflecting different revenue forecasts for the upcoming year. Which scenario proves true will depend in large part on whether the Federal Transit Administration agrees to “freeze” its annual grants to the city at pre-Katrina levels. Local tax and fare-box collections will be the other driving factors.
In the “worst-case” plan, the system would run just 17 bus routes and one streetcar route — none of them on weekends or at night. Routes would be concentrated in the Central Business District, with no service to Lakeview or eastern New Orleans and limited service to Gentilly and Algiers. The agency’s current staff would be cut by 80 percent, from almost 800 to just 150. Pre-Katrina, the RTA employed about 1,340 people; none have been fired, but about 550 did not return, officials said.
RTA Chairman Jimmy Reiss said such draconian cuts are unlikely. He believes the agency will be able to count on revenues of $35 million or more. That would allow for a system that runs nights and weekends, includes two streetcar routes and around 25 bus routes, with more service to outlying parts of the city, including eastern New Orleans. The number of staffers would likely be trimmed by about half, to 400 or less, he said.
Which routes survive will depend in large part on current ridership. Under the plan, only routes that demonstrate viability would be continued. The current system includes 28 bus routes, while the pre-Katrina RTA had 46 routes.
That said, the consultants advising the authority — a group that includes HNTB, a Boston firm with experience in transportation; the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm; and the engineering firm DMJM Harris — say that the reconfigured system will “lead the recovery” rather than react to it.
In other words, the plan is to offer more service than what receipts justify, operating under the assumption that ridership will grow as people return to the city. It’s important to do it that way, the consultants said, because some people won’t be able to return unless transit is available to get them to work.
Reiss said he met Wednesday with leaders of the hospitality industry to discuss the possibility of a public-private partnership to help RTA. While he didn’t reveal many details, he said that some industry leaders indicated they’d be willing to offer some financial aid to the system so their employees remain able to get to work.
Reiss said he’d hate to hazard a guess about what form such a subsidy would take, or how much the business leaders might kick in. But he suggested, for instance, that they might promise to purchase large blocks of discounted fares, or to help foot drivers’ salaries.
In spite of the dire projections, the RTA’s consultants are optimistic that within a couple of years ridership will be growing, and that more old routes will come back online — and perhaps former employees rehired.
Though it hardly came up at Thursday’s board meeting, the shrinkage of the workforce — whatever the final number is — is likely to provoke a wrenching debate.
Board member Earline Roth, one of only four members to attend the meeting in person, said at several points that the scenarios presented were too bleak and underestimated the numbers of displaced New Orleanians who plan to return for the fall semester of school.
“When I look at this plan, it’s almost like a shutdown,” she said.
Reiss said later that the staff cuts will be the hardest part of a generally unpleasant action.
“It’s nasty,” he said. “But we’re going to do everything we can do to help these people, even if they have to relocate.”
Among other things, Reiss said, the agency will help try to place laid-off employees at other transit agencies, and it will provide a “termination payment” based on an employee’s years of service.
Though he acknowledges that the proposed cuts will be unpleasant to make, Reiss said he believes making them is the right call. In fact, he said he hopes Mayor Ray Nagin, who appointed him to his post, uses the RTA’s methodology as inspiration for further tightening City Hall’s belt as well. Nagin already cut the city’s workforce by nearly half since the storm to prevent bankruptcy, though he left intact some departments, such as police and fire.
“They ought to do police, fire and sanitation at full strength, and then call in some professionals to reorganize the rest of City Hall,” Reiss said. “Hopefully, this might be a road map.”
While the service cuts being contemplated at RTA are serious ones, the agency’s fiscal woes don’t end there.
Consultants said the authority, absent some cash infusion, is likely to run out of money in September. At the same time, the agency is also struggling to pay its debt. Several weeks ago, it failed to make a $6 million debt payment. In all, the authority has about $190 million of outstanding debt and liability.
Reiss and the authority’s consultants said that they hope to get help from a state bond issue that will be aimed at helping agencies hard-hit by Katrina to solve their financial problems. The authority will also try to negotiate a better deal with its bondholders and angle for aid from the Federal Transit Administration.
In addition, the authority is still waiting on the final word from FEMA regarding how much of the roughly $61 million in ruined equipment and buildings the federal government will replenish. Streetcars and buses took the brunt of the damage.
Thus far, the RTA has recouped just under $11 million in insurance settlements, and authority officials don’t predict they’ll get much more. However, they are optimistic that FEMA will fund most of RTA’s requests for new buses and streetcars.
News from Central Gulf Focus: La./Miss (Ala contributors)
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Audrey2Katrina
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Audrey2Katrina
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Latest from Gulf Coast News:
Alligators close a portion of the beach in Gulfport...Body found on Ship Island Thursday has yet to be identified....Harrison County supervisors say the proposed increase in the state's windpool insurance rates is unaffordable. The State Insurance Commission will hold a public hearing on the windpool insurance rate increase June 5th in Jackson... FEMA reports that debris removal along the three Coast counties is nearing completion...Isle of Capri has plans for a casino in west Harrison County...Biloxi residents want MDOT to change North-South Connector route...Tougher seat belt laws go into effect statewide this Memorial Day weekend... Cell phone companies have hardened their equipment since Katrina. The hurricane shutdown most of the Coast's communications system for weeks right after the storm...Hancock County officials are asking FEMA to reopen the right-of-entry process to help remove nearly 3,000 destroyed homes abandoned by their owners. Rental rates for even modest homes skyrocketing on Coast...The Coast is still in relief mode not recovery nine months after Hurricane Katrina. 5/26/06 4:29 PM
Alligators close a portion of the beach in Gulfport...Body found on Ship Island Thursday has yet to be identified....Harrison County supervisors say the proposed increase in the state's windpool insurance rates is unaffordable. The State Insurance Commission will hold a public hearing on the windpool insurance rate increase June 5th in Jackson... FEMA reports that debris removal along the three Coast counties is nearing completion...Isle of Capri has plans for a casino in west Harrison County...Biloxi residents want MDOT to change North-South Connector route...Tougher seat belt laws go into effect statewide this Memorial Day weekend... Cell phone companies have hardened their equipment since Katrina. The hurricane shutdown most of the Coast's communications system for weeks right after the storm...Hancock County officials are asking FEMA to reopen the right-of-entry process to help remove nearly 3,000 destroyed homes abandoned by their owners. Rental rates for even modest homes skyrocketing on Coast...The Coast is still in relief mode not recovery nine months after Hurricane Katrina. 5/26/06 4:29 PM
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Audrey2Katrina
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Coming back strong
Cleveland Avenue residents rebuilding+
By GARY HOLLAND
PASCAGOULA - Families on Cleveland Avenue, whose homes were flooded by 4 feet of Hurricane Katrina's surge, are rebuilding and preparing to move back in after months in FEMA trailers.
Out of 47 families on the four-block avenue, about 75 percent are staying, local residents say. A couple of homes are up for sale. Two have been bulldozed. With 3 to 4 feet of water in the homes, families lost their furniture and had to put in new Sheetrock and flooring.
"I've lived here 53 years and when Katrina hit it was the first time I couldn't drive down Cleveland Avenue," said Wallace Ray. The 82-year-old retired Ingalls engineer was busy recently cutting boards and installing new flooring in his bathroom.
The neighborhood is made up of small, well-built Navy homes from World War II. Some, like Ray's, are remodeled with brick and other additions.
"We could never have made it without the God-sent church disaster teams," said single parent Ruth Rushing. As she was interviewed, a 14-member disaster team from a Shelby, N.C., United Methodist Church was busy putting siding on her home.
Rushing and Ray, like other Cleveland Avenue residents, expect to be back in their homes this summer, as early as June.
"Like everybody else, I can't wait to get out of the FEMA trailer and back into my house, even though I don't have any furniture," said Rushing.
The city is pleased that families of all ages have taken the initiative to personally rebuild their homes, as contractors are scarce and costly.
"I have been impressed how neighbors are helping and encouraging other neighbors in the rebuilding process," said City Manager Kay Kell.
She praised the faith-based volunteers "and all the college kids" who are speeding up the recovery. "Sales taxes are up 40 percent due to construction and rebuilding," Kell added.
She cited a speech by Gov. Haley Barbour, who said a survey shows 96 percent of Mississippians who had left are coming back.
Cleveland Avenue residents rebuilding+
By GARY HOLLAND
PASCAGOULA - Families on Cleveland Avenue, whose homes were flooded by 4 feet of Hurricane Katrina's surge, are rebuilding and preparing to move back in after months in FEMA trailers.
Out of 47 families on the four-block avenue, about 75 percent are staying, local residents say. A couple of homes are up for sale. Two have been bulldozed. With 3 to 4 feet of water in the homes, families lost their furniture and had to put in new Sheetrock and flooring.
"I've lived here 53 years and when Katrina hit it was the first time I couldn't drive down Cleveland Avenue," said Wallace Ray. The 82-year-old retired Ingalls engineer was busy recently cutting boards and installing new flooring in his bathroom.
The neighborhood is made up of small, well-built Navy homes from World War II. Some, like Ray's, are remodeled with brick and other additions.
"We could never have made it without the God-sent church disaster teams," said single parent Ruth Rushing. As she was interviewed, a 14-member disaster team from a Shelby, N.C., United Methodist Church was busy putting siding on her home.
Rushing and Ray, like other Cleveland Avenue residents, expect to be back in their homes this summer, as early as June.
"Like everybody else, I can't wait to get out of the FEMA trailer and back into my house, even though I don't have any furniture," said Rushing.
The city is pleased that families of all ages have taken the initiative to personally rebuild their homes, as contractors are scarce and costly.
"I have been impressed how neighbors are helping and encouraging other neighbors in the rebuilding process," said City Manager Kay Kell.
She praised the faith-based volunteers "and all the college kids" who are speeding up the recovery. "Sales taxes are up 40 percent due to construction and rebuilding," Kell added.
She cited a speech by Gov. Haley Barbour, who said a survey shows 96 percent of Mississippians who had left are coming back.
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TexasStooge
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Audrey2Katrina wrote:Coming back strong
Cleveland Avenue residents rebuilding+
By GARY HOLLAND
PASCAGOULA - Families on Cleveland Avenue, whose homes were flooded by 4 feet of Hurricane Katrina's surge, are rebuilding and preparing to move back in after months in FEMA trailers.
Out of 47 families on the four-block avenue, about 75 percent are staying, local residents say. A couple of homes are up for sale. Two have been bulldozed. With 3 to 4 feet of water in the homes, families lost their furniture and had to put in new Sheetrock and flooring.
"I've lived here 53 years and when Katrina hit it was the first time I couldn't drive down Cleveland Avenue," said Wallace Ray. The 82-year-old retired Ingalls engineer was busy recently cutting boards and installing new flooring in his bathroom.
The neighborhood is made up of small, well-built Navy homes from World War II. Some, like Ray's, are remodeled with brick and other additions.
"We could never have made it without the God-sent church disaster teams," said single parent Ruth Rushing. As she was interviewed, a 14-member disaster team from a Shelby, N.C., United Methodist Church was busy putting siding on her home.
Rushing and Ray, like other Cleveland Avenue residents, expect to be back in their homes this summer, as early as June.
"Like everybody else, I can't wait to get out of the FEMA trailer and back into my house, even though I don't have any furniture," said Rushing.
The city is pleased that families of all ages have taken the initiative to personally rebuild their homes, as contractors are scarce and costly.
"I have been impressed how neighbors are helping and encouraging other neighbors in the rebuilding process," said City Manager Kay Kell.
She praised the faith-based volunteers "and all the college kids" who are speeding up the recovery. "Sales taxes are up 40 percent due to construction and rebuilding," Kell added.
She cited a speech by Gov. Haley Barbour, who said a survey shows 96 percent of Mississippians who had left are coming back.
That's excellent news!
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Audrey2Katrina
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Yes it is... I only wish the same could be said for the New Orleans area... it's coming back....'specially in the downtown and Garden District areas... but it's snail-pace slow in other areas. I'm very happy for the folks in Mississippi and Alabama even though they've still a ways to go. I recently saw a special that there are still areas of FLORIDA (Western panhandle) dealing yet with recovery... this was an unprecedented monster..
A2K
A2K
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Audrey2Katrina
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Lucedale now a haven for hurricane evacuees
Katrina left mark on town's trees
By PAM FIRMIN
LUCEDALE - On Dottie Street eight months after Katrina, there are hopeful sprigs of dogwood sprouting in the bark of an uprooted tree stump that waits for a grinder.
Most of the downed trees on the upscale street are gone now, but a few stumps and roots remain.
The dogwood in Bill and Laura Ballow's yard is one of eight trees they lost. Of the remaining cleanup, she said, "That will come when people aren't so busy."
In this community with roots in the lumber industry, the loss of trees was the hurricane's biggest and most immediate effect.
But there's another effect very noticeable today.
"The city still has more people due to evacuees," said Laura Ballow. "You can tell from the traffic that it's busier." Stores have longer lines and restaurants have longer waits, she said.
"Lucedale always has been a small town," said the Ballows' neighbor, Susanne Whites. "It didn't take you any time to get in traffic and get somewhere. It's not like it used to be. It just takes a little longer now.
"Our grandson is trying to rent a house and there is not a house to rent in Lucedale."
Some of the newcomers are people who work in Biloxi or Pascagoula, lost homes on the Coast and are buying property in Lucedale, said her husband, Dayton Whites, the mayor of Lucedale.
Others are in FEMA trailers, only six or seven in Lucedale but almost 400 in the surrounding county.
Accidents and crime have increased, the mayor said, but Lucedale has also gained a new permanent employer, SIM&S, a communications and technology systems company that does work for FEMA and has hired 52 local people at starting salaries of about $12.50 an hour.
A new neighbor from Pennsylvania is moving in across Dottie Street from the Whites, a family that originally planned to move to the Coast, but not after Katrina.
Katrina left mark on town's trees
By PAM FIRMIN
LUCEDALE - On Dottie Street eight months after Katrina, there are hopeful sprigs of dogwood sprouting in the bark of an uprooted tree stump that waits for a grinder.
Most of the downed trees on the upscale street are gone now, but a few stumps and roots remain.
The dogwood in Bill and Laura Ballow's yard is one of eight trees they lost. Of the remaining cleanup, she said, "That will come when people aren't so busy."
In this community with roots in the lumber industry, the loss of trees was the hurricane's biggest and most immediate effect.
But there's another effect very noticeable today.
"The city still has more people due to evacuees," said Laura Ballow. "You can tell from the traffic that it's busier." Stores have longer lines and restaurants have longer waits, she said.
"Lucedale always has been a small town," said the Ballows' neighbor, Susanne Whites. "It didn't take you any time to get in traffic and get somewhere. It's not like it used to be. It just takes a little longer now.
"Our grandson is trying to rent a house and there is not a house to rent in Lucedale."
Some of the newcomers are people who work in Biloxi or Pascagoula, lost homes on the Coast and are buying property in Lucedale, said her husband, Dayton Whites, the mayor of Lucedale.
Others are in FEMA trailers, only six or seven in Lucedale but almost 400 in the surrounding county.
Accidents and crime have increased, the mayor said, but Lucedale has also gained a new permanent employer, SIM&S, a communications and technology systems company that does work for FEMA and has hired 52 local people at starting salaries of about $12.50 an hour.
A new neighbor from Pennsylvania is moving in across Dottie Street from the Whites, a family that originally planned to move to the Coast, but not after Katrina.
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Audrey2Katrina
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MDOT gets 3 bridge bids
Price proposals due June 5
By DON HAMMACK
SUN HERALD
MDOT got its wish Friday, receiving technical proposals from each of the three bidders on the new U.S. 90 bridge over Biloxi Bay.
The team will submit price proposals on June 5, and the state transportation agency hopes to award the contract the following day.
"We're hopefully going to get three," said Southern District Transportation Commissioner Wayne Brown.
The first time MDOT went through the bid process for this bridge, Granite Archer Western was the only company of the three selected to complete a proposal.
Its $274.9 million bid went for naught, however, when it was decided to build the bridge 10 feet higher than the originally planned 85 feet as a compromise to Gulfport shipbuilders.
Granite Archer Western, which won the right to build the bridge across the Bay of St. Louis and has started that project, was joined by GC Constructors, from Kansas City, Mo., and Yates/Hill Bros., from Philadelphia, Miss., in submitting the design component of its bid Friday.
MDOT chief engineer Harry Lee James said the agency expects the price tag to come in between $275 million and $325 million. He hopes that with three technical proposals submitted, the competition will help keep the price down.
He said the bid process has been smooth this time around.
"It's just been really real mild compared to what we did the first time because we've done it before," James said. "There's been relatively few unknowns we've come across. It's been fairly uneventful."
It will take about 10 days after awarding the contract for the bond, insurance, contract and federal paperwork to be completed, "a lot of rat-killing" according to James.
The contract will call for two lanes to be open to traffic in September 2007, with the entire bridge open in March 2008.
The bridge design was the subject of heated debate, particularly by some in Ocean Springs who felt it was too wide. The bridge will have six lanes of traffic, four breakdown and emergency lanes and a pedestrian-bike path.
The process
A committee of five MDOT engineers will take the design proposals submitted Friday and judge them before the price proposals are due June 5. A technical score (based on compliance with the project requirements, management approach, technical solutions, quality considerations and schedule) will be announced that day before the price envelopes are opened. Those two numbers will be plugged into a formula to determine the "best value proposal."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Biloxi Bay bridge timeline
Aug. 29 - Hurricane Katrina knocks out U.S. 90 bridge over Biloxi Bay.
Nov. 23 - MDOT delays the bidding because it's run out of money waiting on Hurricane Katrina congressional appropriations to trickle down.
Jan. 13 - Construction teams submit technical proposals for the 85-foot-high bridge. The deadline had been pushed back from mid-December while funding and construction technique issues were resolved.
Jan. 23 - Granite Archer Western is the only team to complete a bid on the project, coming in at $274.9 million, well above the estimate of $200 million by MDOT.
February - Discussions about the possible inclusion of a drawbridge to allow Bayou Bernard Industrial Seaway shipping to reach open water result in adding 10 feet to the design height and force new bids.
April 5 - Granite Archer Western, GC Constructors and Yates/Hill Bros. selected to bid.
Friday - All three companies turned in technical proposals.
June 5 - Price proposals due, with announcement of bids and technical scores.
June 6 - Project to be awarded.
September 2007 - Two lanes on bridge to open.
March 2008 - Project to be completed.
Price proposals due June 5
By DON HAMMACK
SUN HERALD
MDOT got its wish Friday, receiving technical proposals from each of the three bidders on the new U.S. 90 bridge over Biloxi Bay.
The team will submit price proposals on June 5, and the state transportation agency hopes to award the contract the following day.
"We're hopefully going to get three," said Southern District Transportation Commissioner Wayne Brown.
The first time MDOT went through the bid process for this bridge, Granite Archer Western was the only company of the three selected to complete a proposal.
Its $274.9 million bid went for naught, however, when it was decided to build the bridge 10 feet higher than the originally planned 85 feet as a compromise to Gulfport shipbuilders.
Granite Archer Western, which won the right to build the bridge across the Bay of St. Louis and has started that project, was joined by GC Constructors, from Kansas City, Mo., and Yates/Hill Bros., from Philadelphia, Miss., in submitting the design component of its bid Friday.
MDOT chief engineer Harry Lee James said the agency expects the price tag to come in between $275 million and $325 million. He hopes that with three technical proposals submitted, the competition will help keep the price down.
He said the bid process has been smooth this time around.
"It's just been really real mild compared to what we did the first time because we've done it before," James said. "There's been relatively few unknowns we've come across. It's been fairly uneventful."
It will take about 10 days after awarding the contract for the bond, insurance, contract and federal paperwork to be completed, "a lot of rat-killing" according to James.
The contract will call for two lanes to be open to traffic in September 2007, with the entire bridge open in March 2008.
The bridge design was the subject of heated debate, particularly by some in Ocean Springs who felt it was too wide. The bridge will have six lanes of traffic, four breakdown and emergency lanes and a pedestrian-bike path.
The process
A committee of five MDOT engineers will take the design proposals submitted Friday and judge them before the price proposals are due June 5. A technical score (based on compliance with the project requirements, management approach, technical solutions, quality considerations and schedule) will be announced that day before the price envelopes are opened. Those two numbers will be plugged into a formula to determine the "best value proposal."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Biloxi Bay bridge timeline
Aug. 29 - Hurricane Katrina knocks out U.S. 90 bridge over Biloxi Bay.
Nov. 23 - MDOT delays the bidding because it's run out of money waiting on Hurricane Katrina congressional appropriations to trickle down.
Jan. 13 - Construction teams submit technical proposals for the 85-foot-high bridge. The deadline had been pushed back from mid-December while funding and construction technique issues were resolved.
Jan. 23 - Granite Archer Western is the only team to complete a bid on the project, coming in at $274.9 million, well above the estimate of $200 million by MDOT.
February - Discussions about the possible inclusion of a drawbridge to allow Bayou Bernard Industrial Seaway shipping to reach open water result in adding 10 feet to the design height and force new bids.
April 5 - Granite Archer Western, GC Constructors and Yates/Hill Bros. selected to bid.
Friday - All three companies turned in technical proposals.
June 5 - Price proposals due, with announcement of bids and technical scores.
June 6 - Project to be awarded.
September 2007 - Two lanes on bridge to open.
March 2008 - Project to be completed.
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Audrey2Katrina
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Corps to buy 17 Lakeview properties
By Michelle Krupa
Staff writer
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will buy out owners of 17 residential properties along Bellaire Drive in Lakeview, close to the site of a flood wall break during Hurricane Katrina, officials said Saturday.
It will mark the first time the federal agency has purchased entire lots in New Orleans to provide room for its construction work, the officials said. The corps is using a similar process to take control of hundreds of residential properties in Plaquemines Parish, and it has moved to purchase slivers of residential properties at other New Orleans storm protection work sites.
The announcement from Janet Cruppi, chief of real estate for the corps’ Task Force Guardian, came during a 10 a.m. meeting called with affected property owners at Mount Carmel Academy. It affects properties from 6780 to 6950 Bellaire Drive which, following storm-surge devastation that moved some houses off their foundations, now hold 14 structures, officials said.
Corps officials said they would, after appraisals, pay owners post-Katrina property values as well as provide other compensation that will ensure they can move into comparable homes elsewhere, with no decline in neighborhood quality. The officials said they would negotiate settlements with owners and, if necessary, use a court process to force buyouts.
While the buyout process will take months, federal officials said they expect Mayor Ray Nagin to use his powers to give the corps control of the Lakeview properties within days.
After the Lakeview lots are used by corps workers they will be turned over to the Orleans Levee Board, which will maintain them as greenspace, federal officials said. The properties will be purchased in the levee board’s name.
By Michelle Krupa
Staff writer
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will buy out owners of 17 residential properties along Bellaire Drive in Lakeview, close to the site of a flood wall break during Hurricane Katrina, officials said Saturday.
It will mark the first time the federal agency has purchased entire lots in New Orleans to provide room for its construction work, the officials said. The corps is using a similar process to take control of hundreds of residential properties in Plaquemines Parish, and it has moved to purchase slivers of residential properties at other New Orleans storm protection work sites.
The announcement from Janet Cruppi, chief of real estate for the corps’ Task Force Guardian, came during a 10 a.m. meeting called with affected property owners at Mount Carmel Academy. It affects properties from 6780 to 6950 Bellaire Drive which, following storm-surge devastation that moved some houses off their foundations, now hold 14 structures, officials said.
Corps officials said they would, after appraisals, pay owners post-Katrina property values as well as provide other compensation that will ensure they can move into comparable homes elsewhere, with no decline in neighborhood quality. The officials said they would negotiate settlements with owners and, if necessary, use a court process to force buyouts.
While the buyout process will take months, federal officials said they expect Mayor Ray Nagin to use his powers to give the corps control of the Lakeview properties within days.
After the Lakeview lots are used by corps workers they will be turned over to the Orleans Levee Board, which will maintain them as greenspace, federal officials said. The properties will be purchased in the levee board’s name.
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Audrey2Katrina
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Sounds like the infamous "Eminent Domain" is going to ring loud and clear in many areas... JMHO (see above reference to "use a court process to FORCE buyouts") . 
..editorial comment! 
A2K
..editorial comment!
A2K
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Man Dies in U.S. 90 Accident
New Orleans police are investigating a one-vehicle accident on U.S. 90 near Lake Catherine that left one man dead early Saturday.
A preliminary investigation showed that a white pickup truck with a Texas license plate was traveling west on U.S. 90 at 1:06 a.m. when the driver lost control for unknown reasons, the New Orleans Police Department reported. The truck flipped three times and all three males riding in the vehicle were ejected, police said.
One was pronounced dead at the scene and two were transported to Northshore Hospital in Slidell, where they were listed in serious condition, police said. The accident victims were not yet identified. The Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office will conduct an autopsy of the dead man to determine the exact cause of death, police said. Traffic investigator Anthony Pontiff is in charge of the police inquiry
New Orleans police are investigating a one-vehicle accident on U.S. 90 near Lake Catherine that left one man dead early Saturday.
A preliminary investigation showed that a white pickup truck with a Texas license plate was traveling west on U.S. 90 at 1:06 a.m. when the driver lost control for unknown reasons, the New Orleans Police Department reported. The truck flipped three times and all three males riding in the vehicle were ejected, police said.
One was pronounced dead at the scene and two were transported to Northshore Hospital in Slidell, where they were listed in serious condition, police said. The accident victims were not yet identified. The Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office will conduct an autopsy of the dead man to determine the exact cause of death, police said. Traffic investigator Anthony Pontiff is in charge of the police inquiry
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Audrey2Katrina
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Katrina Victim's Body found in N.O.
A firefighter search team found the body of an unidentified Hurricane Katrina victim Saturday morning at a Banks Street home in Mid-City.
The discovery came about 9:45 a.m. at 3008 Banks St. as 16 firefighters from the New Orleans Fire Department and Southeast Louisiana Task Force 1 checked houses on a list of missing persons. The list was prepared by the Louisiana Family Assistance Center in Baton Rouge.
There are 47 addresses on an updated search list now in use by the search team, according to the New Orleans Fire Department.
Other details about the body discovery weren’t immediately available. The successful search follows the recovery of a decomposed body believed to be that of a Katrina victim on Wednesday at a home near Southern University at New Orleans. That body was discovered by a Texas company, Victim Relief, that sends two-person teams to check homes on a missing-persons list it prepares using leads from relatives.
A firefighter search team found the body of an unidentified Hurricane Katrina victim Saturday morning at a Banks Street home in Mid-City.
The discovery came about 9:45 a.m. at 3008 Banks St. as 16 firefighters from the New Orleans Fire Department and Southeast Louisiana Task Force 1 checked houses on a list of missing persons. The list was prepared by the Louisiana Family Assistance Center in Baton Rouge.
There are 47 addresses on an updated search list now in use by the search team, according to the New Orleans Fire Department.
Other details about the body discovery weren’t immediately available. The successful search follows the recovery of a decomposed body believed to be that of a Katrina victim on Wednesday at a home near Southern University at New Orleans. That body was discovered by a Texas company, Victim Relief, that sends two-person teams to check homes on a missing-persons list it prepares using leads from relatives.
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Audrey2Katrina
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- Location: Metaire, La.
State and city to talk recovery
Neighborhoods begin crafting their plans
Saturday, May 27, 2006
By Coleman Warner
Staff writer
With pressure building to mesh New Orleans' disparate post-Katrina neighborhood recovery efforts, city officials and Gov. Kathleen Blanco are expected to meet next week to discuss a range of issues.
Many New Orleans residents are confused about how neighborhood planning under the direction of the Blanco-appointed Louisiana Recovery Authority, or LRA, will mesh with work begun weeks ago by planning consultants hired by the City Council.
In addition, several neighborhood groups are crafting their own recovery plans, without waiting for government direction.
"There's no clarity," said LaToya Cantrell, president of the Broadmoor Improvement Association. "People are confused."
One member of an LRA planning task force, Melissa Flournoy, said: "We've got to move a little bit faster here, you know."
Flournoy touched on frustration many have expressed about months of delay in a neighborhood planning effort that was launched by Mayor Ray Nagin's Bring New Orleans Back Commission and ran into a giant snag when it couldn't persuade the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide millions of dollars for technical assistance.
After committing $3.5 million last month for work on a LRA-backed rebuilding plan, a key step in efforts to secure federal money for land-use projects, the Rockefeller Foundation wouldn't discuss what a spokesman called an "unfolding" process.
But Ben Johnson, executive director of the Greater New Orleans Foundation, which is helping the New York-based Rockefeller administer the grant, said: "If we're going to get involved, there has to be an alignment" among different planning efforts. He noted that, ultimately, any New Orleans plan must fit within the LRA's regional planning scheme.
"Great conversations are being had; great opportunities are being discussed," Johnson said. "This is a complicated conversation."
Walter Leger, an LRA member from St. Bernard Parish, said Blanco plans to meet privately on Tuesday with Nagin and City Council representatives. LRA spokeswoman Catherine Heitman confirmed Blanco's intent to do so. "They're going to talk about a number of issues, one of which is planning," Heitman said. Other meeting details weren't available.
Nagin spokesman Terry Davis said a meeting with Blanco isn't on Nagin's schedule but that it can happen on short notice. The Nagin administration couldn't yet respond to questions about how Nagin wants planning to move forward, he said.
City Council President Oliver Thomas said during Thursday's council meeting that he had met with Blanco and the two agreed that all recovery plans must be tied together.
The council approved a resolution promising that its neighborhood planning, overseen by consultants Paul Lambert of Miami and Shelia Danzey of New Orleans, would be coordinated with efforts of the LRA and other state and federal agencies to make sure they are consistent.
While the Rockefeller Foundation and the Greater New Orleans Foundation say they will use a competitive process in hiring consultants, the City Council recently awarded a contract worth nearly $3 million to Lambert and Danzey without seeking competitive proposals. The Bureau of Governmental Research earlier this month said the contract should be canceled because the City Council violated its own rules.
But council members said this week the consultants are moving the broader planning effort forward and that they want the work to continue.
Five community meetings staged by teams hired by the City Council have been held so far, with another set of meetings to be held June 3. Some neighborhood activists complain there has been too little advance notice for meetings, and there are mixed views about whether input provided will have any lasting impact.
Asked about marriage between the council and LRA planning efforts, Lambert said, "The details of that, there isn't a lot of clarity . . . We're forging ahead because the last thing that needs to happen is a delay in the process."
Neighborhoods begin crafting their plans
Saturday, May 27, 2006
By Coleman Warner
Staff writer
With pressure building to mesh New Orleans' disparate post-Katrina neighborhood recovery efforts, city officials and Gov. Kathleen Blanco are expected to meet next week to discuss a range of issues.
Many New Orleans residents are confused about how neighborhood planning under the direction of the Blanco-appointed Louisiana Recovery Authority, or LRA, will mesh with work begun weeks ago by planning consultants hired by the City Council.
In addition, several neighborhood groups are crafting their own recovery plans, without waiting for government direction.
"There's no clarity," said LaToya Cantrell, president of the Broadmoor Improvement Association. "People are confused."
One member of an LRA planning task force, Melissa Flournoy, said: "We've got to move a little bit faster here, you know."
Flournoy touched on frustration many have expressed about months of delay in a neighborhood planning effort that was launched by Mayor Ray Nagin's Bring New Orleans Back Commission and ran into a giant snag when it couldn't persuade the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide millions of dollars for technical assistance.
After committing $3.5 million last month for work on a LRA-backed rebuilding plan, a key step in efforts to secure federal money for land-use projects, the Rockefeller Foundation wouldn't discuss what a spokesman called an "unfolding" process.
But Ben Johnson, executive director of the Greater New Orleans Foundation, which is helping the New York-based Rockefeller administer the grant, said: "If we're going to get involved, there has to be an alignment" among different planning efforts. He noted that, ultimately, any New Orleans plan must fit within the LRA's regional planning scheme.
"Great conversations are being had; great opportunities are being discussed," Johnson said. "This is a complicated conversation."
Walter Leger, an LRA member from St. Bernard Parish, said Blanco plans to meet privately on Tuesday with Nagin and City Council representatives. LRA spokeswoman Catherine Heitman confirmed Blanco's intent to do so. "They're going to talk about a number of issues, one of which is planning," Heitman said. Other meeting details weren't available.
Nagin spokesman Terry Davis said a meeting with Blanco isn't on Nagin's schedule but that it can happen on short notice. The Nagin administration couldn't yet respond to questions about how Nagin wants planning to move forward, he said.
City Council President Oliver Thomas said during Thursday's council meeting that he had met with Blanco and the two agreed that all recovery plans must be tied together.
The council approved a resolution promising that its neighborhood planning, overseen by consultants Paul Lambert of Miami and Shelia Danzey of New Orleans, would be coordinated with efforts of the LRA and other state and federal agencies to make sure they are consistent.
While the Rockefeller Foundation and the Greater New Orleans Foundation say they will use a competitive process in hiring consultants, the City Council recently awarded a contract worth nearly $3 million to Lambert and Danzey without seeking competitive proposals. The Bureau of Governmental Research earlier this month said the contract should be canceled because the City Council violated its own rules.
But council members said this week the consultants are moving the broader planning effort forward and that they want the work to continue.
Five community meetings staged by teams hired by the City Council have been held so far, with another set of meetings to be held June 3. Some neighborhood activists complain there has been too little advance notice for meetings, and there are mixed views about whether input provided will have any lasting impact.
Asked about marriage between the council and LRA planning efforts, Lambert said, "The details of that, there isn't a lot of clarity . . . We're forging ahead because the last thing that needs to happen is a delay in the process."
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Audrey2Katrina
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Orange Beach developer has plea deal with prosecutors
Last Update: 5/27/2006 10:08:06 AM
(MOBILE, Ala.-AP) May 26 -- Federal prosecutors have a plea agreement with one of the resort developers charged in the Orange Beach corruption case.
The developer, Jim Brown, his attorney David Luker and Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Butler have a signed deal in which Brown will plead guilty on June 1 to conspiracy to deprive citizens of honest services.
In exchange for Brown's plea and his cooperation with the government, prosecutos say they will recommend other charges be dismissed.
The conspiracy charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Prosecutors will recommend a prison term at the low end of the sentencing guidelines.
A grand jury earlier indicted former Orange Beach Mayor Steve Russo on mail and wire fraud charges. Also indicted were Brown, Orange Beach City Attorney Larry Sutley and developer Ken Wall.
Last Update: 5/27/2006 10:08:06 AM
(MOBILE, Ala.-AP) May 26 -- Federal prosecutors have a plea agreement with one of the resort developers charged in the Orange Beach corruption case.
The developer, Jim Brown, his attorney David Luker and Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Butler have a signed deal in which Brown will plead guilty on June 1 to conspiracy to deprive citizens of honest services.
In exchange for Brown's plea and his cooperation with the government, prosecutos say they will recommend other charges be dismissed.
The conspiracy charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Prosecutors will recommend a prison term at the low end of the sentencing guidelines.
A grand jury earlier indicted former Orange Beach Mayor Steve Russo on mail and wire fraud charges. Also indicted were Brown, Orange Beach City Attorney Larry Sutley and developer Ken Wall.
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Audrey2Katrina
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Planes, trains and buses could play a role in future evacuations
By John Pope
and James Varney
Staff writers
An armada of airplanes, trains and buses may be used to get as many people as possible out of the New Orleans area in the days before a major hurricane strikes, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Tuesday in a news conference.
In reviewing the evacuation plans for the 2006 hurricane season, federal officials — who said they are working as partners with city and state officials — also offered specifics on how things will work based on the lessons of Katrina.
Waves of buses — about 3,000 — will pick up potential evacuees from staging areas around the city, he said, and negotiations are under way with Amtrak, the federal railroad agency, to provide extra cars.
“We’re looking at air carriers” to provide extra planes to remove residents and tourists from harm’s way, Chertoff said at Touro Infirmary two days before the start of the 2006 hurricane season.
Taking evacuees who have no other means of transportation as far as Atlanta would be a “last resort,” he said. “What is desirable is to keep people in the state of Louisiana.”
Most undesirable, of course, is keeping people within New Orleans and the surrounding parishes with the menace of an advancing storm. To that end, Chertoff and a clutch of Federal Emergency Management Agency officials went through their own mock New Orleans evacuation Tuesday, riding on the RTA buses that will ferry people from potential deepwater zones to staging areas at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.
FEMA officials acknowledge the people handling those “milk runs,” — the city’s RTA drivers — are subject to the same fears other residents will have in the face of a storm that could trigger an evacuation. In other words, the drivers could bolt, too. To combat that possibility, National Guard troops will be on stand by and ready to hop behind the bus wheel, an example of the kind of redundancies FEMA is building into the operations, according to Gil Jamieson, the agency’s deputy director for Gulf Coast recovery.
At the Convention Center, the feds will try to fill another hole: backing up the “long haul buses,” those that will carry people from the city to shelters scattered around the state. Chertoff even sported a plastic bar code bracelet similar to the one that will be issued to evacuees once they arrive and are processed at the staging areas. Evacuees who have a driver’s license will move through one line for processing, while those lacking identification will be placed in another line.
Because all storms are different, Chertoff declined to estimate how early such an operation would have to begin or how much it might cost.
“We’re talking of dozens of hours in advance,” he said. “It could be 48 or 72 (hours before impact) ... that the process would have to get under way.”
In coordinating such a massive evacuation, government is taking “a particularly active role ... to protect those who are vulnerable” and unable to escape, Chertoff said. “For those who can’t help themselves, we want to make sure that we can help them.”
The cost of such an elaborate undertaking “is not an issue here,” he said. “We’re trying to save people’s lives.”
Avoiding a repeat
By preparing for such an exodus in lieu of housing people in a so-called “shelter of last resort,” Chertoff said government wants to avoid the chaos that erupted last summer at the Superdome and the Convention Center, where thousands of people essentially were stranded during and after Katrina.
“We don’t want to have tens of thousands of people in a flood zone where they have to be evacuated,” he said. “We don’t expect staging areas to become shelters.”
If shelters are needed, local leaders will be expected to make public buildings available, Chertoff said.
Coordination among all levels of government is vital, he said, because in Louisiana, every aspect of coping with a hurricane, from evacuation to relief, is made more difficult by what he called “a landscape of fragmented legal authorities.”
“I cannot order an evacuation of New Orleans. The president cannot order one,” he said. “It has to come from a local or state official.”
While that kind of fractured command led to problems in Katrina’s aftermath, Chertoff insisted there was only so much that federal officials could have done to remedy the situation.
In other states with a strong central government, where the governor is powerful, the chain of command can be streamlined, but Louisiana’s crazy-quilt collection of elected officials from constable to governor makes that impossible, he said in a meeting at The Times-Picayune.
“We have to tailor our response to the state, and to override the state on something only in the most extreme circumstances,” Chertoff said.
As secretary of homeland security, his purview includes the Federal Emergency Management Agency, whose director was part of his entourage Tuesday. That organization came under attack last year for its sluggish response to Katrina.
Chertoff described FEMA’s role as choosing from a variety of “lousy options, and trying to pick the one that is least lousy.”
That is especially true now with the advent of hurricane season, a particularly terrifying period for many Gulf Coast residents this year after the last, catastrophic year. Chertoff said that, if the wind and water come, neither the government nor residents can stop nature.
Both that inevitability and the law of averages means people should prepare to evacuate. Areas that were spared Katrina’s wrath may not escape the next storm, Chertoff said.
Chertoff also said that Orleans Parish, with its population reduced, may be easier to evacuate than Jefferson Parish, which has a higher population and could be just as vulnerable to a hurricane on a different track.
“Katrina didn’t hit in the worst place,” he said. “We’re very mindful of not fighting the last war, and anyone who thinks the next hurricane is only going to follow the footprint of Katrina is kidding themselves.”
Finding shelter space
Chertoff said his biggest concern is a lack of temporary shelter. While he said the number is far from final, Chertoff said Louisiana officials have told him they only have 60,000 such spots left over. That is a reduction from the 150,000 shelter spots last year, and while Chertoff was not certain, he said he can “only conclude reluctance” on the part of local agencies is responsible for some of the dropoff. Another factor is that the government decided not to have shelters in areas south of Interstate 10 anywhere in Louisiana.
“That seems to make sense, so there was some loss of capacity there,” Jamieson said.
Regardless of whether people evacuate, the question of long-term shelter remains problematic, especially in an area like New Orleans, which has a dearth of housing stock. Trailers, which are considered particularly vulnerable in a storm, remain an unattractive option, although the secretary said some people living in a trailer may seek other options should the current temporary solution prove too flimsy.
“We’ve got to recognize the unique vulnerability of Louisiana in the middle of a recovery,” he said. “There’s an inherent fragility to some areas here.”
As part of the recurrent theme of Chertoff’s visit — the importance of all sorts of preparation — his press briefing was at Touro Infirmary because he had visited the Uptown hospital to learn about its disaster response program, which is designed to help the hospital function in a crisis by taking care of patients, doctors, other hospital employees and their families; coordinating and communicating with governmental agencies and the public; and providing backup sources of electricity and water.
Being able to keep the lights on and pure water flowing “is a real step forward in promoting resiliency,” Chertoff said.
The 153-year-old hospital stayed open when the storm pounded New Orleans on Aug. 29, but it closed Sept. 1. When Touro reopened Sept. 28, it was the first hospital within the city limits to do so, spokeswoman Debbie Reed said.
By John Pope
and James Varney
Staff writers
An armada of airplanes, trains and buses may be used to get as many people as possible out of the New Orleans area in the days before a major hurricane strikes, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Tuesday in a news conference.
In reviewing the evacuation plans for the 2006 hurricane season, federal officials — who said they are working as partners with city and state officials — also offered specifics on how things will work based on the lessons of Katrina.
Waves of buses — about 3,000 — will pick up potential evacuees from staging areas around the city, he said, and negotiations are under way with Amtrak, the federal railroad agency, to provide extra cars.
“We’re looking at air carriers” to provide extra planes to remove residents and tourists from harm’s way, Chertoff said at Touro Infirmary two days before the start of the 2006 hurricane season.
Taking evacuees who have no other means of transportation as far as Atlanta would be a “last resort,” he said. “What is desirable is to keep people in the state of Louisiana.”
Most undesirable, of course, is keeping people within New Orleans and the surrounding parishes with the menace of an advancing storm. To that end, Chertoff and a clutch of Federal Emergency Management Agency officials went through their own mock New Orleans evacuation Tuesday, riding on the RTA buses that will ferry people from potential deepwater zones to staging areas at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.
FEMA officials acknowledge the people handling those “milk runs,” — the city’s RTA drivers — are subject to the same fears other residents will have in the face of a storm that could trigger an evacuation. In other words, the drivers could bolt, too. To combat that possibility, National Guard troops will be on stand by and ready to hop behind the bus wheel, an example of the kind of redundancies FEMA is building into the operations, according to Gil Jamieson, the agency’s deputy director for Gulf Coast recovery.
At the Convention Center, the feds will try to fill another hole: backing up the “long haul buses,” those that will carry people from the city to shelters scattered around the state. Chertoff even sported a plastic bar code bracelet similar to the one that will be issued to evacuees once they arrive and are processed at the staging areas. Evacuees who have a driver’s license will move through one line for processing, while those lacking identification will be placed in another line.
Because all storms are different, Chertoff declined to estimate how early such an operation would have to begin or how much it might cost.
“We’re talking of dozens of hours in advance,” he said. “It could be 48 or 72 (hours before impact) ... that the process would have to get under way.”
In coordinating such a massive evacuation, government is taking “a particularly active role ... to protect those who are vulnerable” and unable to escape, Chertoff said. “For those who can’t help themselves, we want to make sure that we can help them.”
The cost of such an elaborate undertaking “is not an issue here,” he said. “We’re trying to save people’s lives.”
Avoiding a repeat
By preparing for such an exodus in lieu of housing people in a so-called “shelter of last resort,” Chertoff said government wants to avoid the chaos that erupted last summer at the Superdome and the Convention Center, where thousands of people essentially were stranded during and after Katrina.
“We don’t want to have tens of thousands of people in a flood zone where they have to be evacuated,” he said. “We don’t expect staging areas to become shelters.”
If shelters are needed, local leaders will be expected to make public buildings available, Chertoff said.
Coordination among all levels of government is vital, he said, because in Louisiana, every aspect of coping with a hurricane, from evacuation to relief, is made more difficult by what he called “a landscape of fragmented legal authorities.”
“I cannot order an evacuation of New Orleans. The president cannot order one,” he said. “It has to come from a local or state official.”
While that kind of fractured command led to problems in Katrina’s aftermath, Chertoff insisted there was only so much that federal officials could have done to remedy the situation.
In other states with a strong central government, where the governor is powerful, the chain of command can be streamlined, but Louisiana’s crazy-quilt collection of elected officials from constable to governor makes that impossible, he said in a meeting at The Times-Picayune.
“We have to tailor our response to the state, and to override the state on something only in the most extreme circumstances,” Chertoff said.
As secretary of homeland security, his purview includes the Federal Emergency Management Agency, whose director was part of his entourage Tuesday. That organization came under attack last year for its sluggish response to Katrina.
Chertoff described FEMA’s role as choosing from a variety of “lousy options, and trying to pick the one that is least lousy.”
That is especially true now with the advent of hurricane season, a particularly terrifying period for many Gulf Coast residents this year after the last, catastrophic year. Chertoff said that, if the wind and water come, neither the government nor residents can stop nature.
Both that inevitability and the law of averages means people should prepare to evacuate. Areas that were spared Katrina’s wrath may not escape the next storm, Chertoff said.
Chertoff also said that Orleans Parish, with its population reduced, may be easier to evacuate than Jefferson Parish, which has a higher population and could be just as vulnerable to a hurricane on a different track.
“Katrina didn’t hit in the worst place,” he said. “We’re very mindful of not fighting the last war, and anyone who thinks the next hurricane is only going to follow the footprint of Katrina is kidding themselves.”
Finding shelter space
Chertoff said his biggest concern is a lack of temporary shelter. While he said the number is far from final, Chertoff said Louisiana officials have told him they only have 60,000 such spots left over. That is a reduction from the 150,000 shelter spots last year, and while Chertoff was not certain, he said he can “only conclude reluctance” on the part of local agencies is responsible for some of the dropoff. Another factor is that the government decided not to have shelters in areas south of Interstate 10 anywhere in Louisiana.
“That seems to make sense, so there was some loss of capacity there,” Jamieson said.
Regardless of whether people evacuate, the question of long-term shelter remains problematic, especially in an area like New Orleans, which has a dearth of housing stock. Trailers, which are considered particularly vulnerable in a storm, remain an unattractive option, although the secretary said some people living in a trailer may seek other options should the current temporary solution prove too flimsy.
“We’ve got to recognize the unique vulnerability of Louisiana in the middle of a recovery,” he said. “There’s an inherent fragility to some areas here.”
As part of the recurrent theme of Chertoff’s visit — the importance of all sorts of preparation — his press briefing was at Touro Infirmary because he had visited the Uptown hospital to learn about its disaster response program, which is designed to help the hospital function in a crisis by taking care of patients, doctors, other hospital employees and their families; coordinating and communicating with governmental agencies and the public; and providing backup sources of electricity and water.
Being able to keep the lights on and pure water flowing “is a real step forward in promoting resiliency,” Chertoff said.
The 153-year-old hospital stayed open when the storm pounded New Orleans on Aug. 29, but it closed Sept. 1. When Touro reopened Sept. 28, it was the first hospital within the city limits to do so, spokeswoman Debbie Reed said.
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Audrey2Katrina
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City of New Orleans begins to mail 2006 property tax bills
NOLA Times Picayune May 30, 2006
New Orleans property owners will begin receiving this week their 2006 property tax bills that were delayed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the city said Tuesday.
The bills include new millage rates adopted earlier this month by the City Council and reassessments that have just now been completed, a city press release said.
The entire bill is due June 30, but state law allows for the deferment of payments for properties damaged or destroyed by a disaster or an emergency declared by the governor, as was the case during Katrina. Taxpayers who choose this option, the city said, will be allowed to pay their tax bill in 10 equal installments over the next 10 years.
To qualify for the deferment, the city said taxpayers must file by July 1 an affidavit with the Recorder of Mortgages and the Custodian of Notarial Archives. An original affidavit must be sent to the city's Bureau of the Treasury, and a copy sent to the State Auditor's Office. The 2006 bills include complete instructions on the process, the city said.
The city urged homeowners to pay their bill online at http://www.cityofno.com/treasury. To do so, they will need their tax-bill number and a valid checking account.
Payments by check or money order can be mailed to: P.O. Box 60047, New Orleans, LA 70160-0047. Checks and money orders must be payable to the City of New Orleans.
Residents can also pay in person on weekdays from 8:45 a.m. to 4:40 p.m. at City Hall, 1300 Perdido St., Room 1W39. The city said they should expect long lines.
People with questions concerning the owner's name listed in the bill, mailing address, description of property, or assessment, including homestead exemptions, should contact their respective assessor.
NOLA Times Picayune May 30, 2006
New Orleans property owners will begin receiving this week their 2006 property tax bills that were delayed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the city said Tuesday.
The bills include new millage rates adopted earlier this month by the City Council and reassessments that have just now been completed, a city press release said.
The entire bill is due June 30, but state law allows for the deferment of payments for properties damaged or destroyed by a disaster or an emergency declared by the governor, as was the case during Katrina. Taxpayers who choose this option, the city said, will be allowed to pay their tax bill in 10 equal installments over the next 10 years.
To qualify for the deferment, the city said taxpayers must file by July 1 an affidavit with the Recorder of Mortgages and the Custodian of Notarial Archives. An original affidavit must be sent to the city's Bureau of the Treasury, and a copy sent to the State Auditor's Office. The 2006 bills include complete instructions on the process, the city said.
The city urged homeowners to pay their bill online at http://www.cityofno.com/treasury. To do so, they will need their tax-bill number and a valid checking account.
Payments by check or money order can be mailed to: P.O. Box 60047, New Orleans, LA 70160-0047. Checks and money orders must be payable to the City of New Orleans.
Residents can also pay in person on weekdays from 8:45 a.m. to 4:40 p.m. at City Hall, 1300 Perdido St., Room 1W39. The city said they should expect long lines.
People with questions concerning the owner's name listed in the bill, mailing address, description of property, or assessment, including homestead exemptions, should contact their respective assessor.
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Audrey2Katrina
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Levee slumps; repairs to take weeks
Weak soil discovered in rebuilt Buras section
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
By Mark Schleifstein
Staff writer
With hurricane season only three days away, the Army Corps of Engineers on Monday announced that a 400-foot section of earthen hurricane protection levee being rebuilt near Buras High School in Plaquemines Parish slumped by more than 6 feet overnight Saturday, and repairs could take three to six weeks.
Corps spokesman Jim Taylor said the levee section, just west of the main Mississippi River levee and about 60 miles south of downtown New Orleans, seemed to twist in place, losing 61/2 feet of height at its top. The earth at its toe rose by 3 feet, he said.
The levee had been raised to 15 feet by Saturday, and was scheduled to be raised to 17 1/2 feet by Thursday, the beginning of hurricane season.
"An unexpected event such as this during construction is disappointing, but we will continue to work as quickly as possible to restore the hurricane protection system repairs while making sure the restoration is done correctly," said Col. Lewis Setliff III, commander of Task Force Guardian, which is rebuilding local levees.
Parish President Benny Rousselle said the incident highlights the importance of residents complying with all evacuation orders this year.
"These repaired levees are virgin levees, and they need time to settle and get the grass growing on them again before they're tested with any major storm," Rousselle said.
Since Hurricane Katrina, the corps has spent more than $700 million to restore 169 miles of devastated hurricane levees, floodwalls and gates in the New Orleans area. But Taylor said the speed in restoring hurricane protection has resulted in the levees often being raised to pre-
Katrina standards before samples of soils beneath them are analyzed and returned to the corps. When the results show problems, he said, corps engineers and contractors have moved quickly to repair problem areas.
Corps engineers already were concerned with the Buras section, after test results received last week showed the underlying soil was weaker than other tests indicated before construction began, Taylor said. Corps engineers were looking at ways to compensate for the softer soils when the slumping occurred, he said.
Engineers also are studying similar test results showing softer-than-expected soil conditions beneath levee repairs under way at the Empire Lock, about five miles upriver, Taylor said. He said those were the only two locations with substandard soils among 200 sets of test borings reviewed last week.
At the Buras site, in an effort to take pressure off the underlying soils and halt further slumping, the corps will temporarily reduce the height of an 800-foot stretch of the levee that includes the slumped area to 10 feet above sea level.
The corps may drive sheet piling or look for some other method to provide higher protection in that stretch of levee while additional work is being completed, he said.
Taylor said the slumping did not result from a problem with the quality of the material being used to rebuild the levee.
One potential permanent fix corps engineers are considering is extending a support berm on the inside of the levee from its original width of 210 feet to 340 feet. The additional weight over a broad area would be designed to offset the weight of a higher levee. But it also would require Plaquemines Parish to expropriate additional land in the area of the slump, something Rousselle already has moved to do.
"They may have to excavate the entire section and rebuild it again," Taylor said. "They might have to go very deep" to correct the soft-soil problem.
Hurricane Katrina had breached a floodwall and created a deep scour at the site of the levee repair, Taylor said. The scour was filled with clay meeting corps levee construction standards, he said.
Weak soil discovered in rebuilt Buras section
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
By Mark Schleifstein
Staff writer
With hurricane season only three days away, the Army Corps of Engineers on Monday announced that a 400-foot section of earthen hurricane protection levee being rebuilt near Buras High School in Plaquemines Parish slumped by more than 6 feet overnight Saturday, and repairs could take three to six weeks.
Corps spokesman Jim Taylor said the levee section, just west of the main Mississippi River levee and about 60 miles south of downtown New Orleans, seemed to twist in place, losing 61/2 feet of height at its top. The earth at its toe rose by 3 feet, he said.
The levee had been raised to 15 feet by Saturday, and was scheduled to be raised to 17 1/2 feet by Thursday, the beginning of hurricane season.
"An unexpected event such as this during construction is disappointing, but we will continue to work as quickly as possible to restore the hurricane protection system repairs while making sure the restoration is done correctly," said Col. Lewis Setliff III, commander of Task Force Guardian, which is rebuilding local levees.
Parish President Benny Rousselle said the incident highlights the importance of residents complying with all evacuation orders this year.
"These repaired levees are virgin levees, and they need time to settle and get the grass growing on them again before they're tested with any major storm," Rousselle said.
Since Hurricane Katrina, the corps has spent more than $700 million to restore 169 miles of devastated hurricane levees, floodwalls and gates in the New Orleans area. But Taylor said the speed in restoring hurricane protection has resulted in the levees often being raised to pre-
Katrina standards before samples of soils beneath them are analyzed and returned to the corps. When the results show problems, he said, corps engineers and contractors have moved quickly to repair problem areas.
Corps engineers already were concerned with the Buras section, after test results received last week showed the underlying soil was weaker than other tests indicated before construction began, Taylor said. Corps engineers were looking at ways to compensate for the softer soils when the slumping occurred, he said.
Engineers also are studying similar test results showing softer-than-expected soil conditions beneath levee repairs under way at the Empire Lock, about five miles upriver, Taylor said. He said those were the only two locations with substandard soils among 200 sets of test borings reviewed last week.
At the Buras site, in an effort to take pressure off the underlying soils and halt further slumping, the corps will temporarily reduce the height of an 800-foot stretch of the levee that includes the slumped area to 10 feet above sea level.
The corps may drive sheet piling or look for some other method to provide higher protection in that stretch of levee while additional work is being completed, he said.
Taylor said the slumping did not result from a problem with the quality of the material being used to rebuild the levee.
One potential permanent fix corps engineers are considering is extending a support berm on the inside of the levee from its original width of 210 feet to 340 feet. The additional weight over a broad area would be designed to offset the weight of a higher levee. But it also would require Plaquemines Parish to expropriate additional land in the area of the slump, something Rousselle already has moved to do.
"They may have to excavate the entire section and rebuild it again," Taylor said. "They might have to go very deep" to correct the soft-soil problem.
Hurricane Katrina had breached a floodwall and created a deep scour at the site of the levee repair, Taylor said. The scour was filled with clay meeting corps levee construction standards, he said.
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Audrey2Katrina
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- Age: 75
- Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:39 pm
- Location: Metaire, La.
Home-raising requests raise ire in St. Bernard
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
By Karen Turni Bazile
St. Bernard/Plaquemines bureau
To elevate or not to elevate?
To enclose or not to enclose?
A debate is raging in St. Bernard Parish over how thousands of flooded homes should be rebuilt, with questions of aesthetics, cost and safety at issue.
Parish officials say they want to make homes less prone to flooding, but they also want to maintain the integrity of neighborhoods that before Hurricane Katrina consisted mostly of slab homes. They don't want the parish to become an expanse of raised camp-style homes on exposed wooden piers.
After officials issued about a half-dozen permits that called for homes to be elevated more than 8 feet on exposed pilings, Chalmette attorney V.J. Dauterive filed a lawsuit in state court. At his request, District Judge Manny Fernandez issued a restraining order May 12 stopping the parish from issuing any more permits for elevated homes until the Parish Council spells out requirements for such homes.
Now some residents in St. Bernard, where all but five homes were flooded last year by Hurricane Katrina's massive surge, are complaining that the requirements under discussion could make rebuilding too expensive for those wishing to come back in new elevated homes.
Developer against plan
And local developer Terry Tedesco opposes Dauterive's suit, which Tedesco said could make the parish require homeowners, at considerable cost, to close in the empty spaces under elevated homes so the houses would look like solid buildings from the ground up.
At Councilman Craig Taffaro's suggestion, the council last fall amended the parish's building code to say houses had to be rebuilt to at least pre-Katrina standards and had to maintain the neighborhood's integrity. But the change laid out no specific guidelines.
Council members are preparing to modify the code again in the wake of the temporary restraining order Dauterive won after a home on Center Street was erected on exposed wooden pilings.
"The goal of the code is to provide a balance between what is reasonable and affordable for the residents and still maintain the continuity of design and expectations of what people knew when they were investing in their homes," Taffaro said.
Since Katrina, many St. Bernard residents have become interested in modular homes that are quick to assemble and can easily be elevated, usually either 3 feet or 8 feet off the ground. Tedesco said such homes can be built in as little as seven or eight weeks.
At a recent hearing before the council, Tedesco said officials should keep standards affordable so people can repopulate the parish. Many residents need to buy cars and furniture more than they need to be burdened with the cost of extra features designed only to make the outside of their homes look better, he said.
'We have to get back first'
However, Dauterive, a member of the parish Citizens Recovery Committee, said it's critical to hold builders to standards that won't hurt homeowners who are only renovating their houses, not demolishing them and building new ones raised several feet higher than their neighbors.
"We are at a crossroads and I think it's important to have standards in place now, rather than later on," Dauterive said.
Tedesco said the elevated homes are not hurting property values in flood-damaged neighborhoods in St. Bernard.
"I don't think it's fair to tell anybody what to do on their own property," Tedesco said at the public hearing. "They are building very nice houses. It's just that they are elevated, and I'm sure they will put lattice work and garage doors."
Lee St. Phillip, who began crying as she spoke before the council, said she badly wants to return to St. Bernard, where she is a longtime teacher. "My husband said I couldn't come back until he saw an ad in the paper" for elevated homes that would be higher than the floodwaters, she said.
St. Phillip said she and her husband plan eventually to close in the open first floor of the elevated house Tedesco is going to build for them on their Lloyds Avenue lot in Chalmette, but that they can't afford the added expense of enclosing the bottom floor right now. "We will eventually want to close it in and make it look good," she said. "We have to get back first."
Alice Perniciaro, who works as a deputy clerk in the St. Bernard clerk of court's office, said her house on Center Street near the Mississippi River flooded several times before recent drainage improvements in the area.
After the massive flooding caused by Katrina, she wanted to elevate it and rebuild it as quickly and as affordably as possible because she didn't qualify for any federal government loans, she said.
"This is the only way I could afford to do this," Perniciaro said. "I have worked for St. Bernard Parish for 20 years, and I'm tired of commuting" since the storm.
Taffaro said the modified measure he hopes the council will pass at its June 6 meeting is meant to preserve property values and maintain neighborhood integrity as the parish rebuilds.
Covered pilings
Michael Moolekamp, a St. Bernard Parish firefighter whose new house on Community Street in Arabi will be raised on pilings this week, said he hopes the council carefully crafts the final law with input from housing designers. He said he wants to use lattice work to cover the open space between the pilings, rather than be forced to build a cement block wall or install garage doors, which he said would clash with the design of his new home.
"It is going to cost us more money to do it (enclosed). I presently don't have the money," Moolekamp said.
"I want to put a staircase in front of my building and flowers on lattice work."
Taffaro said he thinks the parish is leaning toward allowing options such as lattice work but that the new law probably will still require that pilings be covered.
Moolekamp and Taffaro said they both like a home on Riverland Drive in Chalmette that was elevated more than 8 feet when it was built years ago, with brick-covered pilings and lattice work enclosing the open ground-level floor.
Taffaro said it's important "to have an appearance code to address a new building era in St. Bernard. . . . We shouldn't lower the bar at this point.
"We should raise the bar or at least maintain the bar in terms of standards. . . . We are trying to close the loopholes that obviously have been exposed. The intent was to prevent unrestricted redesigning of neighborhoods."
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
By Karen Turni Bazile
St. Bernard/Plaquemines bureau
To elevate or not to elevate?
To enclose or not to enclose?
A debate is raging in St. Bernard Parish over how thousands of flooded homes should be rebuilt, with questions of aesthetics, cost and safety at issue.
Parish officials say they want to make homes less prone to flooding, but they also want to maintain the integrity of neighborhoods that before Hurricane Katrina consisted mostly of slab homes. They don't want the parish to become an expanse of raised camp-style homes on exposed wooden piers.
After officials issued about a half-dozen permits that called for homes to be elevated more than 8 feet on exposed pilings, Chalmette attorney V.J. Dauterive filed a lawsuit in state court. At his request, District Judge Manny Fernandez issued a restraining order May 12 stopping the parish from issuing any more permits for elevated homes until the Parish Council spells out requirements for such homes.
Now some residents in St. Bernard, where all but five homes were flooded last year by Hurricane Katrina's massive surge, are complaining that the requirements under discussion could make rebuilding too expensive for those wishing to come back in new elevated homes.
Developer against plan
And local developer Terry Tedesco opposes Dauterive's suit, which Tedesco said could make the parish require homeowners, at considerable cost, to close in the empty spaces under elevated homes so the houses would look like solid buildings from the ground up.
At Councilman Craig Taffaro's suggestion, the council last fall amended the parish's building code to say houses had to be rebuilt to at least pre-Katrina standards and had to maintain the neighborhood's integrity. But the change laid out no specific guidelines.
Council members are preparing to modify the code again in the wake of the temporary restraining order Dauterive won after a home on Center Street was erected on exposed wooden pilings.
"The goal of the code is to provide a balance between what is reasonable and affordable for the residents and still maintain the continuity of design and expectations of what people knew when they were investing in their homes," Taffaro said.
Since Katrina, many St. Bernard residents have become interested in modular homes that are quick to assemble and can easily be elevated, usually either 3 feet or 8 feet off the ground. Tedesco said such homes can be built in as little as seven or eight weeks.
At a recent hearing before the council, Tedesco said officials should keep standards affordable so people can repopulate the parish. Many residents need to buy cars and furniture more than they need to be burdened with the cost of extra features designed only to make the outside of their homes look better, he said.
'We have to get back first'
However, Dauterive, a member of the parish Citizens Recovery Committee, said it's critical to hold builders to standards that won't hurt homeowners who are only renovating their houses, not demolishing them and building new ones raised several feet higher than their neighbors.
"We are at a crossroads and I think it's important to have standards in place now, rather than later on," Dauterive said.
Tedesco said the elevated homes are not hurting property values in flood-damaged neighborhoods in St. Bernard.
"I don't think it's fair to tell anybody what to do on their own property," Tedesco said at the public hearing. "They are building very nice houses. It's just that they are elevated, and I'm sure they will put lattice work and garage doors."
Lee St. Phillip, who began crying as she spoke before the council, said she badly wants to return to St. Bernard, where she is a longtime teacher. "My husband said I couldn't come back until he saw an ad in the paper" for elevated homes that would be higher than the floodwaters, she said.
St. Phillip said she and her husband plan eventually to close in the open first floor of the elevated house Tedesco is going to build for them on their Lloyds Avenue lot in Chalmette, but that they can't afford the added expense of enclosing the bottom floor right now. "We will eventually want to close it in and make it look good," she said. "We have to get back first."
Alice Perniciaro, who works as a deputy clerk in the St. Bernard clerk of court's office, said her house on Center Street near the Mississippi River flooded several times before recent drainage improvements in the area.
After the massive flooding caused by Katrina, she wanted to elevate it and rebuild it as quickly and as affordably as possible because she didn't qualify for any federal government loans, she said.
"This is the only way I could afford to do this," Perniciaro said. "I have worked for St. Bernard Parish for 20 years, and I'm tired of commuting" since the storm.
Taffaro said the modified measure he hopes the council will pass at its June 6 meeting is meant to preserve property values and maintain neighborhood integrity as the parish rebuilds.
Covered pilings
Michael Moolekamp, a St. Bernard Parish firefighter whose new house on Community Street in Arabi will be raised on pilings this week, said he hopes the council carefully crafts the final law with input from housing designers. He said he wants to use lattice work to cover the open space between the pilings, rather than be forced to build a cement block wall or install garage doors, which he said would clash with the design of his new home.
"It is going to cost us more money to do it (enclosed). I presently don't have the money," Moolekamp said.
"I want to put a staircase in front of my building and flowers on lattice work."
Taffaro said he thinks the parish is leaning toward allowing options such as lattice work but that the new law probably will still require that pilings be covered.
Moolekamp and Taffaro said they both like a home on Riverland Drive in Chalmette that was elevated more than 8 feet when it was built years ago, with brick-covered pilings and lattice work enclosing the open ground-level floor.
Taffaro said it's important "to have an appearance code to address a new building era in St. Bernard. . . . We shouldn't lower the bar at this point.
"We should raise the bar or at least maintain the bar in terms of standards. . . . We are trying to close the loopholes that obviously have been exposed. The intent was to prevent unrestricted redesigning of neighborhoods."
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Audrey2Katrina
- Category 5
- Posts: 4252
- Age: 75
- Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:39 pm
- Location: Metaire, La.
Updated Gulf Coast News--from Mississippi
From Gulf Coast Network, updated May 30, 2006
The City of Biloxi this week will seek bids on a contract that includes the replacement of nearly 2,000 street signs and more than 2,000 poles on 630 streets, or about 85 percent of the city’s nearly 800 streets. The project also involves replacing 4,800 square yards of asphalt, 4,500 square yards of sidewalks and 1,600 linear feet of curbing on 83 streets through the city. The work is being performed on so-called “non-federal aid routes,” which qualify for reimbursement from FEMA. Formal advertisement of the project takes place May 31. Work should begin in several weeks, after a low-bidder is identified. The street-repair project represents a fraction of the $160 million the city has in requests pending with FEMA.
Nine months after Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast recovery on many fronts is going slow. Many homeowners that lost their homes to Katrina's storm surge have recovered little, if anything, from insurers and as a result, despair is rampant across the area. Many homeowners have hope that a lawsuit filed against many of the insurance companies will bring relief, but that relief is in the future, if at all. (Click Here for more on this)
Meanwhile, FEMA and the State of Mississippi, are withholding $17 million in debris reimbursement money from Harrison County. Audits by FEMA found some irregularities in how debris contracts were issued. Harrison County disputes the findings and says it needs the money. The county has asked for an independent mediator in the dispute and says the county has done nothing wrong.
Residents living in FEMA trailer parks across the Coast are saying that crime and violence is a real problem even with frequent police patrols and arrests. Part of the problem is the close proximity of life in the parks and the mix of residents as well as the stress from post-Katrina life. Problems have been seen in FEMA parks from Waveland to Pascagoula.
St. Clare's Catholic school in Waveland closed its doors forever after 42 years of operation, reports the Sea Coast Echo. Not long after Hurricane Katrina destroyed St. Clare's Beach Boulevard campus Aug. 29, the decision was made by Bishop Thomas Rodi in Biloxi to consolidate the school with Bay Catholic Elementary to form Holy Trinity Catholic School. Students attended classes for the final time at St. Clare Thursday. The school's 42 years of operation ended with an academic awards ceremony Friday.
The Isle of Capri Casino says it plans to open a casino off of Interstate 10 in western Harrison County. D'Iberville may also finally get a casino. A Las Vegas casino executive has filed a notice of intent with the State Gaming Commission for a casino in that city. D'Iberville has long sought for a casino since gaming was approved in 1990.
Harrison County supervisors say the Mississippi Windstorm Underwriting Association's request to raise residential rates by as much as 398 percent is too costly for Coast residents. The Mississippi Windstorm Underwriting Association is the insurer of last resort for high insurance-risk property owners. The program covers more than 15,000 residential and commercial customers in the six southern counties. The wind pool has also requested a 268 percent hike in commercial property-insurance rates and 60.4 percent for mobile homes.
Supervisors also recommended state insurance regulators spread the cost across the state to decrease the overall rate hike. A public hearing on the rate hike has been set for 9:00 am on Monday, June 5, 2006 in the Old Supreme Court Chambers at the new Capitol Building in Jackson.
FEMA reports that debris removal on the Coast is nearly complete.
In Harrison County, crews have removed 10.82 million cubic yards of debris, or 97 percent of the estimated total.
In Hancock County, 5.75 million cubic yards of debris has been removed, which is 94 percent of the estimated total.
In Jackson County, 5.29 million cubic yards has been hauled away, which is 99 percent of the estimated total.
Cell phone companies say they have hardened the Coast cell towers and transmitting equipment in preparation for this year's hurricane season. When Katrina hit last August 29th, cell towers and communication systems, including the land-line systems of Bell South, failed Coastwide. While the improvements should help in a future storm, problems with the Coast's communications could still fail as a result of call volumn.
The Biloxi City Council voted Tuesday to raise build elevations in the lower areas of the city, but not to the recommendations made by FEMA. The requirement raises current elevations by 4 feet within flood zones FEMA set for 1984 flood maps.
There has been a flurry of major media news coverage of the Coast and Katrina Disaster Zone. Much of the reporting reflects the slow progress of what people call recovery. There are some bright spots. Biloxi is seeing considerable interest by the casino and condo industry, but not so much in Gulfport. Privately, a growing number of businesses say it is too difficult to get new projects underway in that city. Major issues include housing for low and moderate income families, and transportation.
The loss of homes and businesses on the Coast from Hurricane Katrina has still yet to be measured. Taxes on homes and businesses have yet to reflect the loss. Coast counties have not even begun reassessing property values and taxes, but it is certain that people will balk on paying property taxes on slabs at the same rate as last year. This unknown loss of tax income frightens public officials and it should. What is certain is that it will take several years to sort out. Then watch as property becomes valued at the new, much higher, post-Katrina rate, which could force those that survived the hurricane to move.
Nine months after Hurricane Katrina residents in west Gulfport are still complaining that rotten meat is still stinking up their neighborhood. The meat is chicken washed from container cargo from the port in Gulfport. Repeated efforts to get rid of the stinking mass has been hit and miss. According to WLOX TV, the meat remains in areas hard to see and just covered by other debris. There is also some in abondoned swimming pools in the area.
Governor Haley Barbour is seeking federal approval to use $100 million of a $5 billion grant to help rebuild public housing on the Coast that was lost to the hurricane. The loss of low income housing on the Coast is a critical issue as housing is in short supply since Katrina.
Grand Casino’s 12-story Island View Hotel on the east Biloxi waterfront was reduced to a mound of rubble this past week after Mayor A.J. Holloway pressed two buttons to trigger the implosion of the Casino Row structure. Several hundred onlookers who had gathered on the beach just west of Casino Row hollered and applauded after the few seconds it took for the 150-foot tall building to tumble. Workers with Cherry Demolition and Dykon Explosive Demolition Corp. said the implosion occurred in their planned sequence, with the center section of the structure collapsing initially and the northern and southern sections falling inward a fraction of a second later. (Click Here for the full story)
The Los Angeles Times reports that about 3,000 in Mississippi are receiving eviction notices after FEMA has deemed them ineligible for a trailer. FEMA is weeding out those Katrina victims who do not meet the qualifications for its emergency housing program. About 450 households have received eviction letters from FEMA; the rest are scheduled to receive notices in the next few weeks. Mississippi has 38,000 FEMA trailers. Some are clustered on open fields and parking lots; others are parked next to water-spoiled homes. The reasons for the evictions are varied, and many are legitimate. There are trailer dwellers who could not prove they are legal U.S. residents; people who had owned a second, undamaged home all along; and people whose homes were damaged, but not by Katrina. But some people say they are being kicked out in error. (Click Here for the full story.)
State wildlife officials are seeing more alligators in areas they were not found before along the Coast. Most recently, a 6-foot female alligator appeared this week on Freddie Franke Road just north of Pass Christian. Over 11 alligators were found by crews cleaning out the storm drains along U.S. 90 by MDOT contractors since Katrina. While Mississippi has never had a death from an alligator, the number of deaths from alligators in Florida has increased recently in that state. Official here urge caution to residents.
Hancock County has approved three new mobile home parks after months of wrangling over locations and whether those still in need of housing were actually local residents. County supervisors voted authorized FEMA to build two mobile home parks along U.S. 90 and Lakeshore Road, and one at the county arena on Kiln-DeLisle Road. The two privately owned sites on U.S. 90 and Lakeshore Road already have sewer and water lines, and can hold up to 112 mobile homes. At least one of the sites will be visible from the highway.
The Sierra Club has asked for a congressional hearing after it claimed that 30 out of 32 Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers it tested had levels of formaldehyde that were unsafe. The environmental group says thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims in Mississippi and Louisiana may be living in unsafe conditions after tests it conducted showed dangerous levels of formaldehyde in some government trailers.
From Gulf Coast Network, updated May 30, 2006
The City of Biloxi this week will seek bids on a contract that includes the replacement of nearly 2,000 street signs and more than 2,000 poles on 630 streets, or about 85 percent of the city’s nearly 800 streets. The project also involves replacing 4,800 square yards of asphalt, 4,500 square yards of sidewalks and 1,600 linear feet of curbing on 83 streets through the city. The work is being performed on so-called “non-federal aid routes,” which qualify for reimbursement from FEMA. Formal advertisement of the project takes place May 31. Work should begin in several weeks, after a low-bidder is identified. The street-repair project represents a fraction of the $160 million the city has in requests pending with FEMA.
Nine months after Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast recovery on many fronts is going slow. Many homeowners that lost their homes to Katrina's storm surge have recovered little, if anything, from insurers and as a result, despair is rampant across the area. Many homeowners have hope that a lawsuit filed against many of the insurance companies will bring relief, but that relief is in the future, if at all. (Click Here for more on this)
Meanwhile, FEMA and the State of Mississippi, are withholding $17 million in debris reimbursement money from Harrison County. Audits by FEMA found some irregularities in how debris contracts were issued. Harrison County disputes the findings and says it needs the money. The county has asked for an independent mediator in the dispute and says the county has done nothing wrong.
Residents living in FEMA trailer parks across the Coast are saying that crime and violence is a real problem even with frequent police patrols and arrests. Part of the problem is the close proximity of life in the parks and the mix of residents as well as the stress from post-Katrina life. Problems have been seen in FEMA parks from Waveland to Pascagoula.
St. Clare's Catholic school in Waveland closed its doors forever after 42 years of operation, reports the Sea Coast Echo. Not long after Hurricane Katrina destroyed St. Clare's Beach Boulevard campus Aug. 29, the decision was made by Bishop Thomas Rodi in Biloxi to consolidate the school with Bay Catholic Elementary to form Holy Trinity Catholic School. Students attended classes for the final time at St. Clare Thursday. The school's 42 years of operation ended with an academic awards ceremony Friday.
The Isle of Capri Casino says it plans to open a casino off of Interstate 10 in western Harrison County. D'Iberville may also finally get a casino. A Las Vegas casino executive has filed a notice of intent with the State Gaming Commission for a casino in that city. D'Iberville has long sought for a casino since gaming was approved in 1990.
Harrison County supervisors say the Mississippi Windstorm Underwriting Association's request to raise residential rates by as much as 398 percent is too costly for Coast residents. The Mississippi Windstorm Underwriting Association is the insurer of last resort for high insurance-risk property owners. The program covers more than 15,000 residential and commercial customers in the six southern counties. The wind pool has also requested a 268 percent hike in commercial property-insurance rates and 60.4 percent for mobile homes.
Supervisors also recommended state insurance regulators spread the cost across the state to decrease the overall rate hike. A public hearing on the rate hike has been set for 9:00 am on Monday, June 5, 2006 in the Old Supreme Court Chambers at the new Capitol Building in Jackson.
FEMA reports that debris removal on the Coast is nearly complete.
In Harrison County, crews have removed 10.82 million cubic yards of debris, or 97 percent of the estimated total.
In Hancock County, 5.75 million cubic yards of debris has been removed, which is 94 percent of the estimated total.
In Jackson County, 5.29 million cubic yards has been hauled away, which is 99 percent of the estimated total.
Cell phone companies say they have hardened the Coast cell towers and transmitting equipment in preparation for this year's hurricane season. When Katrina hit last August 29th, cell towers and communication systems, including the land-line systems of Bell South, failed Coastwide. While the improvements should help in a future storm, problems with the Coast's communications could still fail as a result of call volumn.
The Biloxi City Council voted Tuesday to raise build elevations in the lower areas of the city, but not to the recommendations made by FEMA. The requirement raises current elevations by 4 feet within flood zones FEMA set for 1984 flood maps.
There has been a flurry of major media news coverage of the Coast and Katrina Disaster Zone. Much of the reporting reflects the slow progress of what people call recovery. There are some bright spots. Biloxi is seeing considerable interest by the casino and condo industry, but not so much in Gulfport. Privately, a growing number of businesses say it is too difficult to get new projects underway in that city. Major issues include housing for low and moderate income families, and transportation.
The loss of homes and businesses on the Coast from Hurricane Katrina has still yet to be measured. Taxes on homes and businesses have yet to reflect the loss. Coast counties have not even begun reassessing property values and taxes, but it is certain that people will balk on paying property taxes on slabs at the same rate as last year. This unknown loss of tax income frightens public officials and it should. What is certain is that it will take several years to sort out. Then watch as property becomes valued at the new, much higher, post-Katrina rate, which could force those that survived the hurricane to move.
Nine months after Hurricane Katrina residents in west Gulfport are still complaining that rotten meat is still stinking up their neighborhood. The meat is chicken washed from container cargo from the port in Gulfport. Repeated efforts to get rid of the stinking mass has been hit and miss. According to WLOX TV, the meat remains in areas hard to see and just covered by other debris. There is also some in abondoned swimming pools in the area.
Governor Haley Barbour is seeking federal approval to use $100 million of a $5 billion grant to help rebuild public housing on the Coast that was lost to the hurricane. The loss of low income housing on the Coast is a critical issue as housing is in short supply since Katrina.
Grand Casino’s 12-story Island View Hotel on the east Biloxi waterfront was reduced to a mound of rubble this past week after Mayor A.J. Holloway pressed two buttons to trigger the implosion of the Casino Row structure. Several hundred onlookers who had gathered on the beach just west of Casino Row hollered and applauded after the few seconds it took for the 150-foot tall building to tumble. Workers with Cherry Demolition and Dykon Explosive Demolition Corp. said the implosion occurred in their planned sequence, with the center section of the structure collapsing initially and the northern and southern sections falling inward a fraction of a second later. (Click Here for the full story)
The Los Angeles Times reports that about 3,000 in Mississippi are receiving eviction notices after FEMA has deemed them ineligible for a trailer. FEMA is weeding out those Katrina victims who do not meet the qualifications for its emergency housing program. About 450 households have received eviction letters from FEMA; the rest are scheduled to receive notices in the next few weeks. Mississippi has 38,000 FEMA trailers. Some are clustered on open fields and parking lots; others are parked next to water-spoiled homes. The reasons for the evictions are varied, and many are legitimate. There are trailer dwellers who could not prove they are legal U.S. residents; people who had owned a second, undamaged home all along; and people whose homes were damaged, but not by Katrina. But some people say they are being kicked out in error. (Click Here for the full story.)
State wildlife officials are seeing more alligators in areas they were not found before along the Coast. Most recently, a 6-foot female alligator appeared this week on Freddie Franke Road just north of Pass Christian. Over 11 alligators were found by crews cleaning out the storm drains along U.S. 90 by MDOT contractors since Katrina. While Mississippi has never had a death from an alligator, the number of deaths from alligators in Florida has increased recently in that state. Official here urge caution to residents.
Hancock County has approved three new mobile home parks after months of wrangling over locations and whether those still in need of housing were actually local residents. County supervisors voted authorized FEMA to build two mobile home parks along U.S. 90 and Lakeshore Road, and one at the county arena on Kiln-DeLisle Road. The two privately owned sites on U.S. 90 and Lakeshore Road already have sewer and water lines, and can hold up to 112 mobile homes. At least one of the sites will be visible from the highway.
The Sierra Club has asked for a congressional hearing after it claimed that 30 out of 32 Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers it tested had levels of formaldehyde that were unsafe. The environmental group says thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims in Mississippi and Louisiana may be living in unsafe conditions after tests it conducted showed dangerous levels of formaldehyde in some government trailers.
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Audrey2Katrina
- Category 5
- Posts: 4252
- Age: 75
- Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:39 pm
- Location: Metaire, La.
Hurricane season starts, but storms unlikely for a couple of months
By Brian Thevenot
Staff writer
After months of hand-wringing and calendar counting, the long-dreaded first post-Katrina hurricane season officially begins Thursday. But if this year is anything like every year since 1855, don’t expect to see many hurricanes in the Gulf for the next month or so.
In more than 150 years, not a single hurricane has hit anywhere near New Orleans in June. During the same period, only four tropical storms have hit the city in summer’s first month.
As for July, only three of 28 total hurricanes have hit in that month, with the only serious storm being a Category 3 that hit land in 1916.
While the hurricane season officially lasts six months — ending November 30 — those given to panic likely won’t need to run for the hills until about mid-August, when the Gulf Coast storm season starts its peak. In the recorded storms that have hit the New Orleans area, 75 percent of hurricanes — including all of the most destructive storms — have struck in either late August or September, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Moreover, storms earlier in the season typically have packed less of a punch, their main threat being heavy rain rather than roof-removing wind or levee-busting storm surge.
So while the first day of June has become a psychological deadline for the onset of flood fear — along with rage over the pace of evacuation plans and levee repairs — it is in reality just an arbitrary date marking the start of a slow climb in storm risk, hurricane experts said.
“We need to stop thinking of June 1 as the magical date after which storms just start suddenly appearing,” said Louisiana State Climatologist Barry Keim. “It’s really more of a transitional period, where sea temperatures start warming to the point where they support tropical storm activity.
“The pinnacle of the season is Sept. 10. Go three weeks on the either side of that date, that’s when you can expect to see the biggest, baddest storms. All the signature storms for the Gulf Coast — Betsy, Camille, Gilbert, Andrew, Katrina — occurred during that time period.”
August, September worst
An examination of the tropical storms and hurricanes that have formed in the North Atlantic region in the last half century shows a pattern: 60 percent of the 656 recorded storms came in August or September. Include October, and the proportion rises to 77 percent.
One striking exception: Hurricane Audrey, which made landfall near the Louisiana-Texas border as a category 4 hurricane on June 28, 1957.
Despite the numbers, Keim and other experts caution that past performance is no guarantee of future results. They also warn that with New Orleans area levee repairs still not complete, even a moderately powerful storm could cause extensive damage and threaten lives. Of additional concern this year is the condition of pumps in New Orleans, some of which burned up after being submerged in brackish floodwater during Katrina’s aftermath..
It’s also more common for tropical storms to occur early in the season. While less intense, the heavy rainfall from those storms have the potential to inundate the city with rainwater flooding.
A prime example can be found in 2001, when a slow-moving Tropical Storm Allison dropped more than 20 inches of rain in the New Orleans area, after earlier dropping 37 inches of rain in Houston. At least 22 people died from the flooding that resulted in Texas, which also bore the brunt of the property damage in what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calls the costliest natural disaster in Houston’s history and the costliest tropical storm in American history.
This year in New Orleans, a wet tropical storm poses a new threat because of diminished pumping capacity on the city’s main canals whenever storm surge rises enough to prompt officials to block the canals. To block surge, corps officials plan to close the hurricane gates — some of which won’t be completed until mid-July — or to use sheet piling if the gates aren’t ready.
In addition, pumps the corps had planned to install at the end of the canals to pump water over closed flood gates still aren’t completed as the hurricane season starts.
Last hurricane season, the most active and destructive on record, also featured more storms earlier in the year than any on record. To some hurricane experts, that serves as an ominous sign that the Gulf Coast may be entering a cycle of more frequent and powerful storms.
Indeed, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts another “very active” season, with 13 to 16 named storms, 8 to 10 hurricanes, and 4 to 6 major hurricanes.
“This prediction indicates the continuation of above-normal activity that began in 1995,” reads anews release from that agency. “However, we do not currently expect a repeat of last year’s record season.”
Last July was busy
In last year’s record-breaking season, deadly storms didn’t wait for the season’s peak to show their might. Two tropical storms entered the Gulf in June and five more named storms — including Dennis, the Category 4 monster that smacked Florida — barrelled through the Gulf in July, also a record.
“July of last year was phenomenal,” Keim said. “We had seven named storms by the time we got to August, which was completely unprecedented. Granted, we’re in the pattern right now where you expect to see a lot of storms, but that will be a very tough record to break.”
Other factors also indicate that many of this year’s storms — particularly those early in the season — may not make their way into the Gulf of Mexico, said Ivor Van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center. The Bermuda High, a roving area of high pressure watched closely by hurricane experts, appears to be moving east, toward Africa, which typically indicates a probability for more activity on the East Coast than in the Gulf, Van Heerden said.
“It looks like, particularly early in the season, that any North Atlantic hurricanes would go up the East Coast,” he said.
Still, it just takes one storm, and nature is anything but predictable, reminds Stanley Goldenberg, a meteorologist with the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.
“That’s why they officially start the season June 1: You can get them that early,” he said. “The peak is in the middle of September, but sometimes that doesn’t matter for an individual place.”
By Brian Thevenot
Staff writer
After months of hand-wringing and calendar counting, the long-dreaded first post-Katrina hurricane season officially begins Thursday. But if this year is anything like every year since 1855, don’t expect to see many hurricanes in the Gulf for the next month or so.
In more than 150 years, not a single hurricane has hit anywhere near New Orleans in June. During the same period, only four tropical storms have hit the city in summer’s first month.
As for July, only three of 28 total hurricanes have hit in that month, with the only serious storm being a Category 3 that hit land in 1916.
While the hurricane season officially lasts six months — ending November 30 — those given to panic likely won’t need to run for the hills until about mid-August, when the Gulf Coast storm season starts its peak. In the recorded storms that have hit the New Orleans area, 75 percent of hurricanes — including all of the most destructive storms — have struck in either late August or September, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Moreover, storms earlier in the season typically have packed less of a punch, their main threat being heavy rain rather than roof-removing wind or levee-busting storm surge.
So while the first day of June has become a psychological deadline for the onset of flood fear — along with rage over the pace of evacuation plans and levee repairs — it is in reality just an arbitrary date marking the start of a slow climb in storm risk, hurricane experts said.
“We need to stop thinking of June 1 as the magical date after which storms just start suddenly appearing,” said Louisiana State Climatologist Barry Keim. “It’s really more of a transitional period, where sea temperatures start warming to the point where they support tropical storm activity.
“The pinnacle of the season is Sept. 10. Go three weeks on the either side of that date, that’s when you can expect to see the biggest, baddest storms. All the signature storms for the Gulf Coast — Betsy, Camille, Gilbert, Andrew, Katrina — occurred during that time period.”
August, September worst
An examination of the tropical storms and hurricanes that have formed in the North Atlantic region in the last half century shows a pattern: 60 percent of the 656 recorded storms came in August or September. Include October, and the proportion rises to 77 percent.
One striking exception: Hurricane Audrey, which made landfall near the Louisiana-Texas border as a category 4 hurricane on June 28, 1957.
Despite the numbers, Keim and other experts caution that past performance is no guarantee of future results. They also warn that with New Orleans area levee repairs still not complete, even a moderately powerful storm could cause extensive damage and threaten lives. Of additional concern this year is the condition of pumps in New Orleans, some of which burned up after being submerged in brackish floodwater during Katrina’s aftermath..
It’s also more common for tropical storms to occur early in the season. While less intense, the heavy rainfall from those storms have the potential to inundate the city with rainwater flooding.
A prime example can be found in 2001, when a slow-moving Tropical Storm Allison dropped more than 20 inches of rain in the New Orleans area, after earlier dropping 37 inches of rain in Houston. At least 22 people died from the flooding that resulted in Texas, which also bore the brunt of the property damage in what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calls the costliest natural disaster in Houston’s history and the costliest tropical storm in American history.
This year in New Orleans, a wet tropical storm poses a new threat because of diminished pumping capacity on the city’s main canals whenever storm surge rises enough to prompt officials to block the canals. To block surge, corps officials plan to close the hurricane gates — some of which won’t be completed until mid-July — or to use sheet piling if the gates aren’t ready.
In addition, pumps the corps had planned to install at the end of the canals to pump water over closed flood gates still aren’t completed as the hurricane season starts.
Last hurricane season, the most active and destructive on record, also featured more storms earlier in the year than any on record. To some hurricane experts, that serves as an ominous sign that the Gulf Coast may be entering a cycle of more frequent and powerful storms.
Indeed, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts another “very active” season, with 13 to 16 named storms, 8 to 10 hurricanes, and 4 to 6 major hurricanes.
“This prediction indicates the continuation of above-normal activity that began in 1995,” reads anews release from that agency. “However, we do not currently expect a repeat of last year’s record season.”
Last July was busy
In last year’s record-breaking season, deadly storms didn’t wait for the season’s peak to show their might. Two tropical storms entered the Gulf in June and five more named storms — including Dennis, the Category 4 monster that smacked Florida — barrelled through the Gulf in July, also a record.
“July of last year was phenomenal,” Keim said. “We had seven named storms by the time we got to August, which was completely unprecedented. Granted, we’re in the pattern right now where you expect to see a lot of storms, but that will be a very tough record to break.”
Other factors also indicate that many of this year’s storms — particularly those early in the season — may not make their way into the Gulf of Mexico, said Ivor Van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center. The Bermuda High, a roving area of high pressure watched closely by hurricane experts, appears to be moving east, toward Africa, which typically indicates a probability for more activity on the East Coast than in the Gulf, Van Heerden said.
“It looks like, particularly early in the season, that any North Atlantic hurricanes would go up the East Coast,” he said.
Still, it just takes one storm, and nature is anything but predictable, reminds Stanley Goldenberg, a meteorologist with the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.
“That’s why they officially start the season June 1: You can get them that early,” he said. “The peak is in the middle of September, but sometimes that doesn’t matter for an individual place.”
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Nagin to begin second term building bridges
By Frank Donze
Staff writer
Let the healing begin.
As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin prepares to take the oath of office Thursday afternoon for a second four-year term, he is looking to shed his “lone wolf” image by reaching out to a pair of politicians he has never counted as allies.
At Nagin’s invitation, Gov. Kathleen Blanco and U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu will be featured speakers on a daylong schedule of inaugural events that includes swearing-in ceremonies for a City Council welcoming four new faces.
Political observers say the inclusion of Blanco and Landrieu, the sister of Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, Nagin’s opponent in last month’s mayoral runoff, offers evidence that the mayor doesn’t intend to go it alone as New Orleans continues its long, slow recovery from Hurricane Katrina.
“He’s calling for unity,” said Ed Renwick, director of Loyola University’s Institute of Politics, “and certainly we need it.”
Nagin, who backed Blanco opponents in the 2003 gubernatorial primary and runoff, has never appeared to work very hard to repair his strained relationship with the state’s top official. And during the mayoral campaign, he often warned voters about the supposed dangers associated with extending the Landrieu “political dynasty.”
At times over the past nine months, Nagin has pointedly blamed the Blanco administration — as well as Congress — for the laggard pace of the city’s rebuilding effort.
But following his May 20 victory speech, Nagin complimented Mitch Landrieu for running a spirited yet honorable campaign, and he pledged to work with the governor “much better than we have in the past.”
The decisions by Blanco, who will speak during a morning service at St. Louis Cathedral, and Mary Landrieu, who will be one of several speakers to precede Nagin’s inaugural address at the Morial Convention Center, to participate in today’s festivities appears to be an indication that all parties are ready to leave the past behind, said University of New Orleans political scientist Susan Howell.
“Now is not the time to play out conflicts from the first administration or harsh words that were exchanged after Katrina,” Howell said. “These next few years are going to resemble a military operation. Now is the time for everyone to be in lockstep.”
Nagin has seized on the unity theme. In fact, his election night call for “one New Orleans” has become the official slogan of his second term.
Political consultant Bill Rouselle, a key Nagin adviser, said the mayor recognizes that he will need the help of everyone to bring the city back.
“It’s one thing to run a campaign,” Rouselle said. “It’s another thing entirely to govern.”
While harmony will be the message of the day, Rouselle said Nagin will address the harsh realities of the months ahead, from the city’s shaky finances, to the lack of housing and basic services, to the potential for mass evacuations during the hurricane season, which ironically begins today.
“Look for the mayor to focus on the importance of personal responsibility,” Rouselle said, “that when a storm approaches, we all need to make sure that we take care of not only our families, but our neighbors too.”
Nagin’s speech also is expected to offer details about the cash-strapped city’s plan to offer a scaled-down summer youth program and what the mayor expects from three committees he has appointed. Those committees are focusing on the first 100 days of Nagin’s second term, the revival of recommendations presented early this year by the Bring New Orleans Back Commission, and the reorganization and staffing of the mayor’s top leadership team.
Besides Landrieu, the inaugural program will feature four other speakers: Donald Powell, the Gulf Coast recovery czar appointed by President Bush; U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, who endorsed Nagin and is the target of a federal corruption probe; the Rev. Jesse Jackson; and businessman Cedric Smith, Nagin’s brother-in-law.
While the day’s festivities will be less lavish than Nagin’s first inaugural in 2002, the event will have a distinctly New Orleans flavor, including a second-line parade from the French Quarter to City Hall that will feature brass bands and Mardi Gras Indian tribes.
Media representatives from around the globe are in town to cover the inauguration including CNN, Reuters, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and news organizations from Japan and Great Britain.
The city’s legislative branch will undergo a significant change today as four new members join the City Council. For the first time in more than 25 years, all seven council members are Democrats.
Returning for new four-year terms are at-large Councilman Oliver Thomas, District D representative Cynthia Hedge-Morrell and District E representative Cynthia Willard-Lewis. All three easily won re-election in the April 22 primary.
The new members won their seats in May 20 runoffs.
Former Saints executive Arnie Fielkow will replace at-large Councilman Eddie Sapir, who was barred by term limits from running again. Fielkow, a political novice, defeated Jacquelyn Brechtel Clarkson, who passed on the option to seek another term as the District C representative to run for the citywide seat.
The other newcomers are Shelley Midura, who defeated incumbent Jay Batt for the District A seat; Stacy Head, who defeated incumbent Renee Gill Pratt in District B; and lawyer James Carter, who replaces Clarkson as the District C representative.
Recognizing the daunting challenge facing them, the three returning council members joined their new colleagues Tuesday for a meeting at the Governor’s Mansion in Baton Rouge where Blanco briefed them on the status of various Katrina recovery initiatives.
The turnover on the council is the biggest since 1994, when the two-term limit kicked in and five newcomers came aboard.
The victory by Midura marks the first time since 1980 that a Republican has not filled the District A seat, which represents some of the city’s most affluent areas, including Uptown and the Lakefront.
Thomas, who served two terms as the District B representative before wining an at-large seat in 2002, is expected to assume the council presidency for the next year before turning it over to Fielkow in May 2007.
Thomas is expected to take over Sapir’s chairmanship of the council’s powerful Utility Committee, which deals with regulating Entergy New Orleans, although jurisdiction over cable TV issues will be split off to a separate committee for the first time. Carter will chair that panel.
Other key committee chairmanships are expected to go to Hedge-Morrell, who will replace Gill Pratt at the head of the Budget Committee, and Fielkow, who will take over leadership of the Special Projects Committee from Willard-Lewis.
Willard-Lewis will get Batt’s seat on the Sewerage & Water Board, and Hedge-Morrell will replace Willard-Lewis as the council’s representative on the Orleans Levee Board.
Under the timeline laid out in the City Charter, new terms for the City Hall leadership should have begun May 1. But the extraordinary havoc wreaked by Katrina forced state officials to delay the city’s election cycle, postponing the primary from Feb. 4 to April and pushing back the March 4 runoff to last month.
By Frank Donze
Staff writer
Let the healing begin.
As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin prepares to take the oath of office Thursday afternoon for a second four-year term, he is looking to shed his “lone wolf” image by reaching out to a pair of politicians he has never counted as allies.
At Nagin’s invitation, Gov. Kathleen Blanco and U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu will be featured speakers on a daylong schedule of inaugural events that includes swearing-in ceremonies for a City Council welcoming four new faces.
Political observers say the inclusion of Blanco and Landrieu, the sister of Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, Nagin’s opponent in last month’s mayoral runoff, offers evidence that the mayor doesn’t intend to go it alone as New Orleans continues its long, slow recovery from Hurricane Katrina.
“He’s calling for unity,” said Ed Renwick, director of Loyola University’s Institute of Politics, “and certainly we need it.”
Nagin, who backed Blanco opponents in the 2003 gubernatorial primary and runoff, has never appeared to work very hard to repair his strained relationship with the state’s top official. And during the mayoral campaign, he often warned voters about the supposed dangers associated with extending the Landrieu “political dynasty.”
At times over the past nine months, Nagin has pointedly blamed the Blanco administration — as well as Congress — for the laggard pace of the city’s rebuilding effort.
But following his May 20 victory speech, Nagin complimented Mitch Landrieu for running a spirited yet honorable campaign, and he pledged to work with the governor “much better than we have in the past.”
The decisions by Blanco, who will speak during a morning service at St. Louis Cathedral, and Mary Landrieu, who will be one of several speakers to precede Nagin’s inaugural address at the Morial Convention Center, to participate in today’s festivities appears to be an indication that all parties are ready to leave the past behind, said University of New Orleans political scientist Susan Howell.
“Now is not the time to play out conflicts from the first administration or harsh words that were exchanged after Katrina,” Howell said. “These next few years are going to resemble a military operation. Now is the time for everyone to be in lockstep.”
Nagin has seized on the unity theme. In fact, his election night call for “one New Orleans” has become the official slogan of his second term.
Political consultant Bill Rouselle, a key Nagin adviser, said the mayor recognizes that he will need the help of everyone to bring the city back.
“It’s one thing to run a campaign,” Rouselle said. “It’s another thing entirely to govern.”
While harmony will be the message of the day, Rouselle said Nagin will address the harsh realities of the months ahead, from the city’s shaky finances, to the lack of housing and basic services, to the potential for mass evacuations during the hurricane season, which ironically begins today.
“Look for the mayor to focus on the importance of personal responsibility,” Rouselle said, “that when a storm approaches, we all need to make sure that we take care of not only our families, but our neighbors too.”
Nagin’s speech also is expected to offer details about the cash-strapped city’s plan to offer a scaled-down summer youth program and what the mayor expects from three committees he has appointed. Those committees are focusing on the first 100 days of Nagin’s second term, the revival of recommendations presented early this year by the Bring New Orleans Back Commission, and the reorganization and staffing of the mayor’s top leadership team.
Besides Landrieu, the inaugural program will feature four other speakers: Donald Powell, the Gulf Coast recovery czar appointed by President Bush; U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, who endorsed Nagin and is the target of a federal corruption probe; the Rev. Jesse Jackson; and businessman Cedric Smith, Nagin’s brother-in-law.
While the day’s festivities will be less lavish than Nagin’s first inaugural in 2002, the event will have a distinctly New Orleans flavor, including a second-line parade from the French Quarter to City Hall that will feature brass bands and Mardi Gras Indian tribes.
Media representatives from around the globe are in town to cover the inauguration including CNN, Reuters, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and news organizations from Japan and Great Britain.
The city’s legislative branch will undergo a significant change today as four new members join the City Council. For the first time in more than 25 years, all seven council members are Democrats.
Returning for new four-year terms are at-large Councilman Oliver Thomas, District D representative Cynthia Hedge-Morrell and District E representative Cynthia Willard-Lewis. All three easily won re-election in the April 22 primary.
The new members won their seats in May 20 runoffs.
Former Saints executive Arnie Fielkow will replace at-large Councilman Eddie Sapir, who was barred by term limits from running again. Fielkow, a political novice, defeated Jacquelyn Brechtel Clarkson, who passed on the option to seek another term as the District C representative to run for the citywide seat.
The other newcomers are Shelley Midura, who defeated incumbent Jay Batt for the District A seat; Stacy Head, who defeated incumbent Renee Gill Pratt in District B; and lawyer James Carter, who replaces Clarkson as the District C representative.
Recognizing the daunting challenge facing them, the three returning council members joined their new colleagues Tuesday for a meeting at the Governor’s Mansion in Baton Rouge where Blanco briefed them on the status of various Katrina recovery initiatives.
The turnover on the council is the biggest since 1994, when the two-term limit kicked in and five newcomers came aboard.
The victory by Midura marks the first time since 1980 that a Republican has not filled the District A seat, which represents some of the city’s most affluent areas, including Uptown and the Lakefront.
Thomas, who served two terms as the District B representative before wining an at-large seat in 2002, is expected to assume the council presidency for the next year before turning it over to Fielkow in May 2007.
Thomas is expected to take over Sapir’s chairmanship of the council’s powerful Utility Committee, which deals with regulating Entergy New Orleans, although jurisdiction over cable TV issues will be split off to a separate committee for the first time. Carter will chair that panel.
Other key committee chairmanships are expected to go to Hedge-Morrell, who will replace Gill Pratt at the head of the Budget Committee, and Fielkow, who will take over leadership of the Special Projects Committee from Willard-Lewis.
Willard-Lewis will get Batt’s seat on the Sewerage & Water Board, and Hedge-Morrell will replace Willard-Lewis as the council’s representative on the Orleans Levee Board.
Under the timeline laid out in the City Charter, new terms for the City Hall leadership should have begun May 1. But the extraordinary havoc wreaked by Katrina forced state officials to delay the city’s election cycle, postponing the primary from Feb. 4 to April and pushing back the March 4 runoff to last month.
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