Re-instate the House Arrest

The city has a whole new category of back pay to make up.

NEW ORLEANS -- Dozens and likely hundreds of New Orleans residents have been double-billed for sanitation services every month for years without any way of knowing it, a WWL-TV investigation has found.

One woman who was victimized for 15 years before stumbling on the truth calls it a "scam" because the city is only willing to reimburse her for three years' worth of errors and refuses to make the basis for the charges clear on bills.

"I call it a scam," said Uptown resident Francoise McHugh. "If you knowingly keep a form that's very confusing to people and you do not agree to change it and make it clear, I wonder why this happens."

McHugh and her husband bought their home in 2000. It had been converted from a double shotgun to a single dwelling. The change was clearly indicated on the sale documents at the time, in city tax records since then and by the fact that they have always had only one water meter.

 In New Orleans, the sanitation fee is typically added to everyone's water bill.  Recall that Mayor Landrieu recently pushed for a new measure that allows him to shut off water service to households that are deemed delinquent in paying these fraudulent fees.
 

Wonder if he was trying to sell condos for next Mardi Gras

Because, if he's wondering where all that trash came from in the first place...

Robert Ripley said he was “deeply disappointed” in the company’s work. Black garbage bags were stacked 4 feet high in front of his Royal Street office on Lundi Gras, he said. The real estate agent said the situation was so bad he could not meet clients there.

“It was just so embarrassing that I had to meet them at another office,” he said. “You kind of expect it to some degree on Tuesday because it’s just so difficult to get through, but not on Lundi Gras.”

Ripley said the mountain of trash had been removed by noon Wednesday, but a trash can across the street from his office remained overwhelmed and surrounded by garbage bags.

“I would have expected it to be gone and fresh-smelling and a beautiful day on Royal Street,” said Ripley, adding that he was concerned he will face a similar trash pileup in April during French Quarter Fest. “I hope the city can figure out how to do it because these people are overloaded and clearly understaffed.”

Return of the Clean Team

Oh look, they've printed up more crap for us to throw away.

“Don’t Trash DAT!” is New Orleans’ new anti-littering slogan, and it was introduced this afternoon at Basin Street Station, the visitors’ center near the French Quarter. Many of the city’s top tourism leaders joined Mayor Mitch Landrieu for the kickoff of the campaign, which is one of the keystones in the city’s preparation for a particularly busy 18 months of high-profile events, including the Sugar Bowl and BCS National Championship (Jan. 2012), the NCAA Final Four (March-April 2012) and, of course, the Feb. 2013 Super Bowl.

I suppose it could be worse. In Rio, they're preparing for the "high-profile event" of the 2016 Olympics by attacking the city slums with helicopters. In New Orleans, we aren't yet quite third world enough to where the police can lead paramilitary assaults on neighborhoods in the name of sprucing up for tourist season, but we're getting there.

Of course, Landrieu isn't the first Mayor of New Orleans to try and score points with the cleanlier-than-thou neighborhood association set by initiating an anti-litter campaign. In fact, it's something of a tradition; one that always includes new garbage cans in one way or another.

For those who have complained of not being able to find municipal trash cans, Landrieu said that deputy mayor Cedric Grant would be placing more cans around high-traffic areas.

Will Grant be placing the new cans personally? Are these new garbage cans that have been funded somehow in the new miserly city budget? Or is Grant going to just move some stuff around? If they are new cans, will they have the Mayor's name on them? What happens if we need them to be "bomb-proof"?

Keep recycling weird

Because making it easy and convenient with a clear picture of what the sanitation fees pay for would only confuse people.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration did not answer a host of question on the matter, including why this expense was not disclosed sooner or a ballpark expectation for the cost. Late Monday, the administration said it will tap the city’s capital budget to pay for the carts.

In an unexpected development, the service will be offered only upon request of residents, so not everyone would automatically be issued a recycling can, though every customer saw their trash fee doubled this year. Interested residents can now sign up to get a cart here.

The bid specifications seek carts similar to the regular trash containers used by the city’s three trash companies, rather than the small, open bins familiar to residents before Hurricane Katrina. The recycling carts will be 64 gallons, whereas the most common trash cart is 96 gallons.

Budget fixed

Cost of sanitation contracts goes down.

Sanitation fees paid by residents go up.

The last Mayor made a big deal out of the fact that he was a CPA but I think this one means more business. And not in a good way.

Communications strategy

Trash company makes statement in its dispute with the city by creating more trash.

Curbside recycling

According to reports from WWLTV and WVUE, the city just signed a new deal with Metro disposal.

Recycling added, price cut in Metro Disposal deal with city

The deal is a one-year contract extension that takes the cost per home down to $1599 from $1815. It also includes recycling.

Metro Disposal and city agree on new garbage contract

"Both Richard's and Metro Wednesday submitted to the city of New Orleans offers which included a 10 percent reduction in the rate charged to the city across the board for the remaining six years of the contract term, with the addition of curbside recycling citywide at no additional cost to the city," said attorney Daniel Davillier, who represents both Richard's Disposal and Metro Disposal.

I am going to miss this place while I'm away

Sidney Torres offers $10,000 reward for help finding the "real sludge dumpers"

I thought they wanted to stop measuring it this way

Although I never understood the reasoning behind that decision.

Happy Lundi Gras

Obviously I've been doing Carnival-type stuff this weekend. It's no big loss to the general discourse, however. There certainly wouldn't have been anything here more worth reading than Oyster's two recent posts about the coming 2010 mayoral election and our ridiculous Governor's posturings over Louisiana's share of the stimulus package.

Meanwhile I've been busy getting drunk in the streets. I'll take the time to write about it after it's over but tomorrow is a big day and I've got to get some sleep. In the meantime, please enjoy these photos (and one video) of folks cleaning St Charles Avenue after tonight's Orpheus parade. Over the years I had come to call the elaborate procession of street sweepers, trucks and clean-up crews that follow each parade the Krewe of Municipal Vehicles. But I may have to give that name up as I fear it may raise suspicions from the Inspector General's Office.







Happy Mardi Gras

Still confused

Grace on yesterday's trash stunt:

Oh, about that letter: One, given to The Times-Picayune by a resident, was dated Jan. 28, and said the recipient had 45 to days to line up private collection. Nowhere does it mention the looming crackdown, which came just five days later.

The list of supposedly ineligible addresses, meanwhile, clearly hasn't been scrubbed.

At least two sites are improperly included on the city collection list, SDT owner SidneyTorres said. He knows this because one is a hotel on Royal Street that he owns, and the second a six-unit condo that he developed and later sold.

Some residents of smaller units say they've been wrongly excluded.

And there are residents of larger units report that they've been been assessed the $12 monthly sanitation fee on their Sewerage and Water Board bills. So when Nagin says "we can no longer afford to subsidize and to cover those individuals, so we're asking everyone out there to pay your fair share, " he should remember that some of them already are.

Who exactly needs 45 days to sort things out? The property owners who aren't paying the sanitation fee? The one's who are paying it but shouldn't be? The city, maybe?

See also Moldy City where much of this was foreseen long ago.

Note how none of this has anything to do with pressure washing

And yet it is, indeed.... messy.

Update: Meanwhile Celcus takes back to the scene where excited onlookers continue to watch the trash pile up.

Upperdate: And, as usual, reality outpaces satire.

Tonight I'm going out Uptown

But that's only because it's trivia night. Otherwise, I would LOVE to have a few drinks in the Quarter and watch the garbage pile up. Thank God there are reporters on the case to keep me updated.

Groundhog day

If Sidney Torres's ego doesn't cast a shadow... does that mean we get 6 more weeks of lemon scent?

Too stupid. Even for us

I refuse to believe that this hissy fit is continuing over lemon-scented pressure washing. There must be something else at stake here. Whatever ends up getting cut INSTEAD of the lemon scent is probably what they were after in the first place.

We're going to (stay in) Disney World!

I continue to be amazed at the urgency with which the lemon-scent was treated by both sides in this dispute.

A year and a half ago, Nagin answered the charge that the city's recovery was stalled with, "But we got Disney-like garbage pick-up in the Quarter" It was a laughable insult at the time. Who cares what Bourbon Street smells like while people can't get their Road Home checks in time to stop their houses from being bulldozed? "Enhanced sanitation services" in the French Quarter were an obvious lemon-scented herring.

This year, while we should be focusing on the millions of dollars budgeted for the dubious clearance of Lower Mid-City and other so called "economic development" projects we're instead presented with an absurd scramble to rescue the lemon spray from the Mayor's budget ax. I don't get it.

Nagin held his own unnecessary gimmick... not two years ago his crowning achievement of the recovery... hostage and everybody jumped to save it. Speaking as a regular patron (and for some time employee) of French Quarter businesses over the past decade or so of my adulthood, I can tell you the place was okay before the introduction of the "enhanced sanitation" and would be okay without it. What, exactly, was the point of this circus?

Adrastos likes to say we live in "Debrisville"

The term has more depth of meaning than one would expect.