Overboarded

Meet your new "Infrastructure Advisory Board" 

A new seven member board has been appointed to oversee spending of an influx of cash to the Sewerage & Water Board, the result of a deal cut with the state and hospitality industry during this year's legislative session, city officials announced Wednesday.

The deal, which involves a $50-million infusion to the S&WB and $26 million a year that will largely come from new taxes on hotels, was a major priority of Mayor LaToya Cantrell. It included an agreement that a board be assembled to oversee how the money is spent.

These are the guys who are supposed to.. um.. oversee (?) how the new but insufficient revenue from the "fair (but not really) share" deal is spent. It's the board that does, um, something with the money before the Sewerage and Water Board does whatever it will do with it. Looks like, write reports every now and then, mostly.  Anyway Neil Abramson is here so that's something.

Here's who else is in this club?

Chairing the Infrastructure Advisory Board will be Woodward Design and Build CEO Paul Flower, who was appointed by Edwards.

Yeah okay so a major contractor. Here is a story about how Flower conquered the engineering challenge of installing a new swimming pool at his Garden District home in 2012.  That's one. Who else?

Casey Tingle is the Governor's emergency preparedness guy so, okay, check. Bill Hammack owns restaurants so, who knows. Lewis Stirling lords over a massive commercial real estate empire and was therefore a S&WB member until his term expired this year.  Looks like the mayor found something else for him to do. Karen Raymond is, I am pretty sure this Karen Raymond  who currently works at Laitram, in which case, lol.  Elisa Speranza is an independent, um, resilience consultant, I guess? That's the best way I can summarize this.

I help purpose-driven organizations succeed so that people, communities, and ecosystems can thrive and prosper. I am passionate about improving the human condition through environmental stewardship and organizational excellence. I am a strategist, advisor, facilitator, writer, teacher, board member and water geek.

I don't really know what any of that means but the other "water geeks" vouch for her ability to do it. So, okay.  But I did want to point out that her bio is very heavy in CH2M experience which probably doesn't raise red flags immediately with everybody but maybe it should.  Neil is, of course, himself.

Anyway, that's your board over the board.  Hope they have fun signing all the checks or whatever.