Just let us take the moneys

This morning the Advocate has a break down of what happens to all that tourism revenue the mayor is arguing with Stephen Perry about.  Just let us have it. Especially let us have the Convention Center money.  If not it will just get passed around indefinitely from Brennan to Brennan or whatever.

Holding onto so much money, however, has turned the Convention Center into something of a piggy bank for local projects that are deemed worthy but lack funding.

That has led the center to agree to provide about $75 million for projects that directly or indirectly relate to promoting tourism:

• $1 million per year to help finance the state troopers in the French Quarter, or a total of $5 million over five years.
• $12 million to purchase the buildings that house the new New Orleans Culinary and Hospitality Institute near Lee Circle.
• $23 million to help finance the narrowing of Convention Center Boulevard to make it more pedestrian-friendly. That sum includes $7.5 million to renovate Spanish Plaza at the foot of Poydras and Canal streets.
• $1.25 million over five years for the "low-barrier" homeless shelter that the city has opened on Gravier Street.
• $295,000 to cover half the cost of a program called “We’re Jazzed to Have You” that paid for an airport billboard and baggage claim signs and for bands, police details and beads for visitors.
• $2.25 million as part of an agreement by state and local governments to pay British Airways $9 million over four years for establishing its New Orleans-London flights.
• $9 million to help the Audubon Nature Commission buy the Gov. Nicholls and Esplanade Avenue wharves for planned conversion to a public park.
• $23 million to install video cameras in and near the French Quarter and to create a central command center where staffers monitor the anti-crime cameras around the clock.