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?
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