Splash Pad

Probably not the most appropriate project to devote flood recovery funds toward.

A plan to spend $4.2 million in federal disaster-recovery grants on Woldenberg Park in the French Quarter has provoked the ire of community activists who say the money should be spent in areas still suffering from Hurricane Katrina.

The $4.2 million package includes $1.4 million for a new splash pad and playground within the 20-acre park, $516,000 to improve signage and sculptures and $2.25 million to repair the wharves upon which the park is built.

The combined spending is equivalent to about one-fourth of the $16 million capital budget for recreational facilities in the Lower 9th Ward. The grants equal a third of the $12 million in state and federal funds budgeted by the city for clearing abandoned houses and cleaning blight citywide, and one-fourth of the city’s total $16 million blight-fighting budget, including $4 million from the city’s general fund.

Or maybe it's the most appropriate. I can't make up my mind. As to the question of whether or not this constitutes an actual misuse of these funds, I'm not so sure. It certainly seems legal.

Money for Woldenberg comes from $112 million in federal disaster grants set aside by the state for infrastructure and economic-development projects that were not eligible for recovery money through local governments or FEMA’s Long Term Community Recovery Program – the federal government’s primary tool for distributing disaster aid. All governmental and semi-governmental organizations are eligible, including school boards, state universities and economic entities, such the Port of New Orleans, which is in line for $13.5 million from the fund, and the organization that manages the Superdome, approved for $40 million from the fund. The Audubon Institute manages Woldenberg and is the recipient of the $4.2 million.

Other Orleans Parish grantees are Delgado University, Southern University at New Orleans, University of New Orleans, Orleans Parish School Board and New Orleans Redevelopment Authority.

But maybe not exactly in keeping with the spirit of the grant program.

Chief among the few hard and fast federal rules that dictate spending are requirements that disaster grant money only go to facilities that can prove significant storm damages and show that they contribute to federal anti-poverty campaigns by meeting an “urgent” community need, contributing to the clearance of blight or serving a low-income population

By giving the state leeway in how to spend the money, the federal government hopes that state will spend in line with community priorities that can’t be predicted from Washington. In creating its program for using the grants, Louisiana preserved that element of self-determination by allowing all government agencies the ability to apply for grants without coordinating.

In this case, the hopeful leeway might be construed as a ready-made excuse for letting money fall into the hands of already well-funded and well-connected private entities like, well, Audubon for example.

Located on some of the New Orleans’ highest ground, Woldenberg Park did not flood in 2005. But while damages directly related to the storm were minimal, the park qualifies for the federal block grants because of its use during the disaster as a staging ground for rescue operations with Coast Guard boats docking along its wharves and rescue helicopters landing on the grass, Audubon President and CEO Ron Forman said at a public hearing in 2009.

“The park, in the days immediately following Katrina’s landfall, and for some weeks later, was literally a war zone,” Forman told the handful of people gathered at the Louisiana Recovery Authority hearing.

Woldenberg meets the other federal requirement of helping fight poverty because it is open to low-income city residents, Audubon Institute spokeswoman Sarah Burnette said.

I sure hope some portion of that $516,000 for improving signage and sculptures goes toward commemorating this Battle of Woldenberg Park Forman is talking about. That way we'll be sure to get the most bang for our poverty-fighting buck by giving our low-income residents who use the park something interesting to look at until the park closes and the Wackenhut golf cart comes by to shoo them away and back to... whatever underfunded disaster affected neighborhood they came from.