Fall reading

Happy Halloween, everybody.  For some reason we stopped posting the book blurbs almost as soon as we started it over the summer.  Let's correct that now.

The Missing Season by Gillian French (2019)

Actually, this YA novel is the reason I'm posting these on Halloween in the first place. Clara's family moves from town to town as her father chases the next demolition job. The latest move is to the fictional town of Pender, Maine where the paper mill that had been the economic heart of the town has closed. For Clara it means adjusting to a new school and new friends again. But it also means a possible encounter with the town's urban legend.  Every year around Halloween, at least one young person seems to turn up dead in the woods around Pender.  Officially the deaths are violent accidents or drug overdoses. But others say a mysterious figure known as "The Mumbler" is to blame.   Clara's family has arrived at Pender in mid-October. Could she become the next victim?

This is a terrific novel for young adults. French's treatment of teenagers, their problems and relationships is realistic and thoughtful. It's also the best kind of horror writing in that it relies on the characters' real life sense of dread rather than shocking imagery or situations.  The fading town and diminishing prospects for its children is a major component in that as well.  I would have liked the ending to have resonated with those themes a bit better.  This one seemed abrupt and just a little out of synch.  Otherwise, a good little Halloween story.

White House Warriors: How the National Security Council Transformed the American Way of War by John Gans (2019)

This keeps the Halloween theme a little bit in a banality of evil sort of way. This dry and anodyne account surveys the evolving role of the National Security Council in generating and executing US foreign policy. Gans focuses on individual staff members serving under each President since the NSC's inception to describe major events (the bombing of Cambodia, the Lebanon intervention, Iran/Contra, the Iraq troop surge, etc) through the eyes of these somewhat behind the scenes actors. The NSC is either an unaccountable "common law" deep state or a flawed but necessary crutch that serves Presidents who would otherwise be overwhelmed by the bureaucracies at DOD and State. Is any of this a good thing or a bad thing? Gans says it's a little bit of both, although the suggestion is it's gotten to be more of the former over time. Either way we're left trying to decide if the sprawling American empire is more chaotic than it is legalistic. All of which causes us to wonder what difference that really makes.

Chaucer's People : Every day lives in Medieval England by Liza Picard (2019)

Picard uses Chaucer's archetypal characters as entry points to brief essays about the lives of the real sorts of people they represented. For example, the Wife of Bath describes what it was like for wealthy travelers of the Middle Ages to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land. (They had to buy Rick Steves videos on VHS back then.) The Ploughman chapter talks about how labor conditions in the wake of the Plague led to official wage suppression, a more rigidly controlled economy and a peasant's revolt.  The Cook's chapter has lots of odd recipes.  The Physician chapter describes the horrifying state of medieval medicine... which I guess is a good place for us to land on our Halloween theme again.  Anyway, you get the idea.

Remaking New Orleans: Beyond Exceptionalism and Authenticity edited by Thomas Jessen Adams,  and  Matt Sakakeeny (2019)

Actually I want to write more about this later.  It's difficult to sum up in a paragraph without simplifying. It's a collection of essays intended to dispel certain myths about the history and culture of New Orleans that have been commodified by the tourism industry while elevating ignored facets of our story that emphasize the city's working class and what has been done to it in various ways over the centuries. Again, that is an extreme simplification but it's what I would say is the gist of this very eclectic assemblage of topics by various authors. It's one of the most original and important books about New Orleans I've read in a while. At the same time I've noticed a few negative reactions from certain corners that have me confused. The common criticism I've noticed, that the book is for and by "gentrifiers," seems to me 180 degrees contrary to the book's actual purpose. It's so surprising, in fact, that I've wondered if it is even offered in good faith (or if some of these critics have actually read the book.)  But, like I said, this is all a subject for a longer thing I want to write.  For now, just know that this exists and that more people should give it a look.

It's just good business sense

Last week the city council's utilities committee passed a resolution aimed at re-setting Entergy's rates for the first time in a decade. In the era of privatized utilities, New Orleans is one of very few places where the city council at least retains some regulatory authority over the private monopoly that sells everybody electricity. So every now and then, the council gets a say in how much you can be charged.

The resolution that passed is actually the result of a compromise brokered by the Cantrell administration. Council wanted to give east bank residents a $4 a month rate reduction. Entergy wanted to raise those rates by $4.46.  Cantrell stepped in with a plan to give average ratepayers a $3.42 break in exchange for making things a bit cheaper for S&WB and other "large energy users"

Meanwhile, the Cantrell administration, the Sewerage & Water Board and several private businesses that are large energy users proposed to reduce typical customers' monthly bills by $3.42 and allow Entergy a 9.35% return, saying that is comparable to what is allowed for other utilities.

The administration intervened "to make sure we're getting the best deal possible for the people of New Orleans and a fair share for the city," Cantrell said in a recent statement.

 Always looking out for you.

Anyway, the full city council still has to vote on this. It's scheduled to happen on November 7. But Entergy's CEO is still pushing for higher rates.

The council's utility committee members said they believe that Entergy's funding is sufficient to allow for lower energy rates and to cover its investment needs, while not harming its credit rating.

Denault said the company doesn't agree with that assessment.

"In New Orleans, the council utility committee issued a resolution that, if adopted, would set a revenue requirement that is below what we believe to be just and reasonable," the Entergy chief said on a conference call Wednesday to discuss its third-quarter results. "We continue to work with council members to reach a fair outcome when the council takes up the matter in early November."

Denault didn't say — and company officials didn't comment — on whether Entergy would challenge the council's rate decision in the courts, which is a course of action open to the company.

Entergy says it needs higher rates in order to  "invest in infrastructure projects."  But one would think that there's plenty of cash on hand after reading this.

Entergy said in its Wednesday earnings statement that it expects profits this year to be higher than previously forecast. The company said it now expects to make about $10 million more in profit this year than it previously expected, which would put full-year profit at just above $1 billion.

And therein lies the problem with private for-profit utilities.  You can't automatically reinvest your surplus into capital improvements when you've got promises to shareholders to think about.

Entergy's shares have been on a long run up, gaining about 65% since early last year to stand at about $121 a share, largely on promises to investors that it will get out of the wholesale business and invest heavily in more efficient plant and infrastructure to increase profitability.

The company has been increasing its dividend payments to shareholders annually at a rate of about 2% to 3%, but has promised to increase that to track earnings, which would mean increases closer to 5% to 7%.

What always happens

In today's nothing-ever-gets-better story, we begin with a lawsuit filed by New Orleans short term rental operators which contends that, even though the city's latest set of regulations gives them almost everything they could want, that still is not enough. These landlords have the resources to keep pushing back until they get their way.  They'll get it eventually.

The suit argues that by preventing owners who formerly held temporary licenses from continuing to operate short-term rentals, the city is violating their rights.

“We were granted a license and had a fair and reasonable expectation that we were going to be able to renew our licenses, as long as we followed the rules,” said Eric Bay, president of the Alliance for Neighborhood Prosperity.

The city did not respond to a request for comment on the suit.

When the council changes the rules on what a property can be used for, existing businesses are typically allowed to stay in operation as “non-conforming uses” as long as they do not close for more than six months.

In discussions leading up to the passage of the new rules, however, city officials said that policy would not apply to temporary rentals since they did not count as full-time uses, a requirement to be granted nonconforming status.

Not being a law talking guy, I can't say what ANP's chances are of winning in court. It sounds to me like a bad argument but you never know, with the right judge...

The case was originally assigned to Civil District Judge Robin Giarrusso, who recused herself because her son is Councilman Joe Giarrusso. It was reassigned to Judge Nakisha Ervin-Knott.

In any case, all they really have to do is keep making the argument over and over.  Their organization has enough money and influence that eventually the right councilperson will take them seriously and they win. Because that's what always happens.

In a way, the damage has already been done. Several years of STR proliferation has supercharged the already out of control speculative real estate market in New Orleans exacerbating the housing crisis. This is reflected in the sticker shock experienced by homeowners all over the city after this year's quadrennial property reassessments. HousingNOLA's Andreanecia Morris writes in this Lens op-ed about the impact of those assessments on renters, who will have the cost of tax increases passed on to them, as well as the city's most vulnerable homeowners.

One of the challenges in dealing with the affordable housing crisis is the fact that some people don’t understand that it affects everyone. The biases many people have lets them (namely middle-class homeowners) believe that they are immune. Those who own their homes are not exempt from the impacts of our city’s affordable housing crisis. HousingNOLA’s data driven process has addressed tax issues from year one. Gentrification of historic neighborhoods and increased market pressure across the city have driven increased property values every year since Hurricane Katrina. Only seven out of 72 neighborhoods include census tracts which did not see an increase in housing values between 2013 and 2017. The median home value in New Orleans has increased by twenty-five percent since 2014, according to MLS data. There is ample data to demonstrate how vulnerable Orleans Parish homeowners are to any significant changes in their tax rates:

• Forty-one percent of homeowners are cost burdened—with nearly a third of owner-occupied households earning an annual income that is below the median income;
• Forty-four percent of owners have paid off their mortgage or inherited their home;
• A third of homeowners are over the age of sixty-five. Eleven percent of all homeowners in Orleans are cost burdened senior citizens.

Unfortunately, the mayor doesn't seem to have much sympathy for housing stressed residents She's also asking voters to approve a whole new 3 mils on this fall's ballot. On top of that, she appeared at a city council budget hearing this week to urge the council to "roll forward" its millage in order to capture the maximum revenue windfall from the higher assessments. She has been talked down to asking for a 50 percent roll forward in recent weeks despite having predicted "dire consequences" for not taking the full amount.  Councilmembers were not very receptive.

Council members have argued that while the city needs more funding, residents are being squeezed out of the city by higher costs of living. They argue that higher property taxes would not only be a risk to lower income homeowners, it would also be a burden to renters because  landlords are likely to pass those costs on to their tenants.

“The message we’re receiving is the city is increasingly unaffordable to live in,” Palmer said.

She again stressed that there could be other sources of revenue the city is leaving on the table. She brought up the amount of money the city could be losing because of homestead-exemption fraud and suggested hiring more sales tax collectors to make sure the city was getting everything it was owed.

In recent months, the council has also discussed cracking down on exemptions for nonprofits and manufacturers that get state tax exemptions. The council also recently created a task force to look into the possibility of creating a parcel fee for property owners.

Yeah, hey, speaking of nonprofit exemptions, here is a pretty big one in the news this week.

There have been multiple efforts to redevelop Charity since the state opted to close it in favor of building the new University Medical Center on the other side of Interstate 10.

The most recent attempt has been underway for more than 2½ years and has largely been led by the Real Estate and Facilities Foundation. That process resulted in officials last year picking 1532 Tulane Partners, a joint venture between the New Orleans-based CCNO and the Israeli company El Ad, to undertake the huge project.

The company said it has been doing due diligence on the property and refining its plans since then.

The redevelopment is expected to cost about $300 million, which will be partially funded with a variety of tax credits. Because LSU will retain ownership of the property, it will be exempt from property taxes.

The lease calls for 1532 Tulane Partners to pay LSU $11.85 million up front and yearly payments for the duration of the 99-year lease. The payments will start at $250,000 a year and increase by 10% every 10 years, eventually totaling about $39 million.

The money from the lease will be divided between the Real Estate and Facilities Foundation and the university itself.

So 1532 Tulane Partners pays LSU to lease the building, takes advantage of various public subsidies and tax credits to renovate it, and none of the money ever gets back to the city. We must be getting something nice in return for that, right?  What are they putting there anyway?

The former hospital building will include about 390 residential units plus retail shops and restaurants.

Tulane University will serve as the anchor tenant in the complex, renting a significant amount of space in the building for student housing and offices, Maurin said.

Plans for the project also include renting about 150 residential units to Sonder, a short-term rental company that already has significant operations in New Orleans. That would be about 50% more units than would be allowed for the property under short-term rental rules the City Council passed earlier this year, which bar renting more than 25% of the units in commercial buildings to tourists.

While the development plans do not need any city approvals because it is state property, the project will have to comply with the city's short-term rental rules, Maurin said. 

That's confusing. How is it they are already breaking the rules they say will have to comply with?  It doesn't say here. Maybe they're planning to be pre-grandfathered in.  Whatever it is, I'm sure they'll get whatever they want while the costs of maintaining the city government continue to fall on those who can least afford to pay. Because that's what always happens.

Where's Frank Scurlock's proposal?

Not a lot of imagination in these bids on developing the new Disney By Convention Center Wonderland. Here they are.

The Domain Companies, run by Matthew Schwartz and Chris Papamichael, gained a local reputation for projects that include the South Market District, a $500 million development along Loyola Avenue that includes properties like The Standard, which has apartments, restaurants and other street-level retail.

River Park Neighborhood Investors is led by Lou Lauricella, a local developer known for projects that include the Elmwood Center, the Astor Crowne Plaza Hotel and the Palace Theaters.

Atomic Entertainment is helmed by Adam Rosenfelt, a movie producer ("Mr. Brooks," "The Barber") turned developer, whose projects have included the $100 million mixed-use revitalization of the Pullman Yards in Atlanta.

Provident Realty Advisors is led by Dallas-based Leon Backes, whose projects include the Preston Hollow Village, a huge, two-phase mixed-use project in North Dallas.

The Woodward/Carpenter consortium is working on the $350 million redevelopment of the former World Trade Center building on Canal Street into a Four Seasons Hotel.

These are respondents to an RFQ so we don't have any detailed bids yet (at least nothing public.) But I think it's safe to say each of these groups would build something that looks a lot like South Market does right now. About the best thing we can say about that is BOORRing! The worst we can say is here comes another round of publicly subsidized luxury apartments and retail in a city with worsening inequality and an affordable housing shortage.

Pragmatism your way out of this

Guess what the latest research on the impact of climate change says.  You will never guess, I am sure.  Go ahead, though, take a second and just throw something out there. Did you say, it's worse than previously thought?  Okay but that seems like a long shot. How could it be any worse? 

Alright alright, yes, it is worse.

Rising seas could affect three times more people by 2050 than previously thought, according to new research, threatening to all but erase some of the world’s great coastal cities. 

The authors of a paper published Tuesday developed a more accurate way of calculating land elevation based on satellite readings, a standard way of estimating the effects of sea level rise over large areas, and found that the previous numbers were far too optimistic. The new research shows that some 150 million people are now living on land that will be below the high-tide line by midcentury.

Yikes! And take a look at the graphics that accompany that story. The maps predict that  Mumbai, Bangkok, Shanghai, several other huge world cities could be submerged in a mere 30 years from now. They didn't publish an infographic map of New Orleans here but I am pretty sure we would hate to see it.

The article does mention us, though. Because, despite the fact that hundreds of millions of people all over the globe are at risk, we are still the world's poster children for this problem.  Kind of makes you almost proud a little bit.  Is proud the word?  

The new data shows that 110 million people already live in places that are below the high tide line, which Mr. Strauss attributes to protective measures like seawalls and other barriers. Cities must invest vastly greater sums in such defenses, Mr. Strauss said, and they must do it quickly.

But even if that investment happens, defensive measures can go only so far. Mr. Strauss offered the example of New Orleans, a city below sea level that was devastated in 2005 when its extensive levees and other protections failed during Hurricane Katrina. “How deep a bowl do we want to live in”? he asked.

So we're either going to have to seriously bulk up our coastal defenses, or start planning to move everybody out of harm's way as safely and equitably as possible. Either way that's going to cost a lot of money.

Who is going to shoulder those costs?  It should probably be the people who have spent the past 150 years or so putting us in this situation in the first place, right?  Not so fast, says the Times-Picayune-Advocate-Georges! This is from their endorsement of John Bel Edwards. They liked his "pragmatism" but disagreed about some things.

Such pragmatism is what Louisiana needs. There are, after all, many problems to solve, and we haven’t always agreed with the governor’s approach to the state’s underlying challenges. Louisiana needs a governor who supports tort reform and will stand up to trial lawyers and teacher unions. Lawsuits against energy companies put our state at a disadvantage when it comes to attracting investment.

No time to mitigate that apocalypse. Not when there's "investment" to attract.

Steve Scalise's script armor

I read this Stephanie Grace column a few times and I still can't figure out why we're supposed to expect there is a difference between Steve Scalise and Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz.

Matt Gaetz is widely considered a camera-hogging fringe player in Congress. The second-term Florida Republican has called the Black Lives Matter movement a “terrorist organization,” and recently accused Democratic colleagues pursuing the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump of acting like “rabid hyenas.”

U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise is the House Minority whip, the second-ranking Republican in the House. That makes him someone whose presence in any situation confers a certain status, an implied assertion of importance and seriousness. Or it would, if Scalise weren’t becoming more and more prone to behaving like Gaetz, his partner in last week’s embarrassing storming-of-the-secure-hearing-room stunt.

What does she mean by "becoming"? Scalise has always been this way.  The self-described "David Duke without the baggage" has addressed gatherings of white supremacists, he has advocated putting guns in schools, he voted against the Martin Luther King holiday.   Why are we surprised to find him working closely with Gaetz on a stunt to defend Donald Trump from the consequences of his many crimes? If these guys aren't cut from the same mold, I don't know

The only difference between them Grace identifies is the "implied assertion of importance" imbued upon Scalise by virtue of his seniority.  But just because an asshole has risen to a position of greater power, does not make that person any less of an asshole.  Isn't that the reason we are considering these impeachment proceedings in the first place?

But equating power with dignity often seems like company policy over at the Advocate.  Have they published an "Our Views" on why people shouldn't have booed Trump last night yet?  Buzz me when it comes out. 

Delicious but deadly

Don't let your kids eat the lead dirt.

The amount of lead in the topsoil of playgrounds, yards and other neighborhood spots may be the best indicator of how likely children are to have high lead levels in their blood, according to a new study from Tulane University.

The study, conducted by Howard Mielke, a Tulane geographer and environmental researcher, upends a common notion that young children have the highest chance of lead exposure inside their homes because of lead paint or pipes.

Instead, research that ties blood lead levels to soil lead levels suggests an underestimated source of exposure is in outside play areas, where young children often engage in what experts call “hand-to-mouth activity” — in other words, inadvertently eating dirt.

The good news is Mielke's more recent study shows a significant drop in lead levels in both soil and blood samples. So things have gotten better.  He also says remediation is relatively easy to do. These Central City residents are hoping it is, anyway.

He's running!

Last week the New York Times gave us one of those obligatory "Democratic Donor Class Is Panicked" articles that start coming out every quarter or so once we reach this stage of the Presidential pre-primary. Oh no are the candidates "too far to the left"?  Why haven't the piggies begun to rally around Amy Klobuchar's stern lectures about what they can't have yet?  Somebody has to do something about this. Who could we call on?

Would Hillary Clinton get in, the contributors wondered, and how about Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor? One person even mused whether Michelle Obama would consider a late entry, according to two people who attended the event, which was hosted by the progressive group American Bridge.

Hey you know that might work. Uncle Joe's exploding eyeballs may have embarrassed the hell out of everyone by yelling at Warren on stage last week.  But here is Hillary with her idea to yell at a completely different person instead.  Should they give that a go?   Maybe.

But hey, look who else appears in this article for some reason.

“I can see it, I can feel it, I can hear it,” Mitch Landrieu, the former New Orleans mayor, said of the unease within the party. He said he thinks Mr. Biden is best positioned to defeat Mr. Trump but called the former vice president’s fund-raising “a real concern.”

It's a "real concern," but like a lot of these establishment Democrats, Mitch is still a Bidenite. Or, at least, he is until he is given permission not to be anymore.  When Joe finally accedes to the concerns of his fundraisers and drops out of the race, all of the career supplicants backing him out of obligation will be free to adopt whatever the next company line might be.

The early odds may have had them all landing on Kamala. But, more recently, one could argue they may cynically gravitate toward Warren.  Right now that seems like a logical evolution of the evergreen strategy of co-opting and crowding out the left. See this excellent analysis by Matt Karp for more on that.

Yet while she is sometimes described as an “economic populist,” Warren’s chief function in the primary race against Bernie Sanders has been to take the populism out of progressive economics. While formally embracing much of Sanders’s 2016 platform, the Warren campaign distinguished itself not by underlining the necessity of popular struggle, but by advertising the comprehensive wonkery of her policy agenda: “She has a plan for that!” Warren’s planfulness is Democratic savior politics in the style of Obama or Hillary Clinton. It does not summon the will of the masses; it says, “Chill out, she’s got this.”

The emphasis here is on the reasonableness of the plans, not the boldness of the demands. Even Warren’s most daring stroke on this front, a 2 percent tax on fortunes over $50 million, elicits chants of “two cents, two cents!” — with the campaign and its supporters alike practically fetishizing the modest limits of the request.

When Warren does vow to challenge the power the wealthy, her rhetoric often works not to stoke the popular mind against America’s inequality but to naturalize it as a fact of national life: “In America, there are gonna be people who are richer and people who are not so rich. And the rich are gonna own more shoes, and they’re gonna own more cars, and they may even own more houses. But they shouldn’t own more of our democracy.”

This isn’t economic populism; it’s closer to a folksy progressive riff on “there is no alternative.” Nor does such a cabined understanding of “democracy” — a question of fair procedures, walled off from the world of material goods — open much room for questioning the tyranny of bosses under capitalism.

Speaking of never questioning the tyranny of bosses, the New Orleans Times-Picayune-Dot-Nola-Dot-Com-Georges-Advoco-Gambit tells us that Mitch Landrieu is back in town to "formally launch" the same foundation he already formally launched a year ago.

Landrieu will formally launch the E Pluribus Unum initiative on Friday, an effort with influential backers including former President Bill Clinton that seeks to reshape the country's conversation about race. The goal, he says, is to more effectively reach out and help people gain a better understanding of racism in modern America.

The message is geared mainly toward the white community.

Mitch has been running around the country meeting with Lauren Powell Jobs, with Bill Clinton, with scores of corporate donors to see how much money he can pile up in the name of talking to white people about racism. That can't possibly mean he's even remotely within the universe of potential emergency Presidential candidates Democratic donors are supposed to be casting about for at the moment. Right?  Well just to be sure let's ask.

With years of work ahead to make a go of his new foundation, Landrieu brushed away suggestions that he might be seeking a position in the administration of any of the presidential contenders, using similar language to the incalculable times he was asked whether he had aspirations for the Oval Office.

“I don’t have any expectations of being in the next president’s cabinet,” he said.

Pretty cryptic! Maybe he's still waiting on the right call.  On the other hand, if Karp is correct about corporate Democrats warming up to an accommodation with Warren, it would mean that the Biden-Harris-Hillary-Mitch mode of centrist campaigning is no longer the new hotness.  But old habits die hard. Let's see how they feel after the convention.

Apocalypse fatigue

What if we had a hurricane tropical storm post-tropical system and nobody hunkered down?

Post-Tropical Storm Olga left tens of thousands of residents and businesses without power in metro New Orleans on Saturday, including at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, as wind gusts nearing 60 mph blew through the area, downing trees and causing other damage.

Not exactly total chaos, then.  Sure, there are a lot of power outages. But, really, that's always a possibility regardless of severe weather.  In fact, it happens so frequently, that a City Council committee just voted this week to fine Entergy $1 million for negligence.

At issue is Entergy’s move to partially defund its power distribution system four years ago, which council members and even the utility’s own representatives have said led to that system’s decline.

In 2013, Entergy diverted about $1 million in maintenance funding that had been slated for that system to other priorities. With less funding to perform repairs, equipment failures and resulting power outages soon became increasingly common in the city, Entergy Vice President Melonie Stewart admitted at a council meeting last year.

The utility also decreased the amount it spent on capital additions to the distribution system by about $21 million from 2014 to 2015, according to an analysis by the council’s consultants.

The Olga-related outages seem to have caused some headaches at the airport too. But compared with the headaches travelers are about to experience just getting to the new airport this doesn't seem too different.

Still, it's fair to say Olga was significantly stronger and more impactful than several storms whose approach have occasioned multiple emergency press conferences and shelter-in-place orders in recent years. According to the tweets, the howling winds woke at least half the city up in the middle of the night.  It woke me up. I thought there might have been a tornado or something.

In any case it was probably the biggest overnight surprise storm since Hurricane Cindy suddenly ballooned to life in 2005. Cindy knocked out power to over 250,000 homes which is significantly more than the 70,000 or so currently attributed to Olga.  But there were no evacuation orders and everybody went to work the next day anyway. A month later came Katrina and we've rarely been this casual about even the lightest of threats ever since.

So it's unusual for us to have been this cavalier about any tropical system. The most likely explanation is we didn't mean to be.  Olga developed and landed so quickly there wasn't enough time to go into panic mode let alone much information as to what we ought to panic about.  Another explanation is that we're just so dang tired of the world coming to an end every other week.  At least we thought the last post-tropical weather thingy was going to blow the death cranes down on everybody. After that, we're kind of ruined for these un-storms for a while.  It's getting to where if nothing has to be exploded, it's probably not that much of an emergency. 

Out of sight out of mind

Apparently it is worse than they would have expected.

Mark Benfield, a professor of oceanography and coastal sciences at LSU, led monitoring of visible marine animals, called megafauna, for about a year after the Deepwater Horizon spill. He found the lack of vitality seen in the video "disturbing."

The video offers the first glimpse of the site since visual inspections ended in 2011.

"Given the amount of time that's passed, I figured that the site would look normal or well into recovery," Benfield said. "I was surprised."

Recall that BP's primary response to the Macondo disaster was to spray the slick with a chemical dispersant called Corexit.  Workers exposed to the chemicals during clean up operations also complained of serious health problems. Their symptoms were positively liked to that exposure.   As early as 2012, it was found to have caused major disruptions to the Gulf marine food chain.

In April 2012, Louisiana State University’s Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences was finding lesions and grotesque deformities in sea life—including millions of shrimp with no eyes and crabs without eyes or claws—possibly linked to oil and dispersants.

The shocking story was ignored by major U.S. media, but covered in depth by Al Jazeera. BP said such deformities were “common” in aquatic life in the Gulf and caused by bacteria or parasites. But further studies point back to the spill.

A just-released study from the University of South Florida found that underwater plumes of BP oil, dispersed by Corexit, had produced a “massive die-off” of foraminifera, microscopic organisms at the base of the food chain. Other studies show that, as a result of oil and dispersants, plankton have either been killed or have absorbed PAHs before being consumed by other sea creatures.

But the important thing to remember about Corexit as it relates to the sea floor anyway, was its purpose. It wasn't intended to clean up the oil so much as it was to sink it. Get it out of sight and out of mind as fast as possible.  Seems like that strategy is still paying dividends. 

The video and study were only possible because researchers were near the site for an unrelated project.

No one is funding research into the impact of the Deepwater Horizon spill on the surrounding sea floor, said Craig McClain, director of LUMCON. Getting money for deep sea research can be difficult because it's "out of sight, out of mind," he said.

But damage to the sea floor ecosystem can permeate through the food chain to commercial fisheries and disrupt the process by which oceans pull carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the deep sea.

All we have is a brief glimpse of the undersea wasteland around the well head. No telling how bad it really is.

The time Teddy Bridgewater saved the world

We're all trying to read the tea leaves as to which quarterback is starting this weekend. But either way, expect the fans to show some love for the Teddyth Man.  It's probably too early to start talking about putting up a monument next to the Gleason statue or anything. But maybe keep the "Teddy" chant going all year even if he doesn't play anymore. I was pretty optimistic when The Teddy Era began but 5-0 was probably more than I was expecting when I wrote that. Anyway, it's been fun. Seriously. Here's Ralph.

If this Sunday is indeed Teddy's final start as a Saint (or if the Chicago win was), it's been fantastic. It'll be an achievement that will be remembered for a long time by Saints fans.

I can make a case that what Teddy Bridgewater has done the last five weeks is as great a quarterbacking achievement any non-Drew Brees Saints signal-caller has managed. Teddy Bridgewater starting 5-0 as Saints quarterback in 2019 was the darndest thing we ever saw, and it will be something we yammer on about in 2050 to grandkids probably.

That's our good ol' psychotic boy

Does Drew Brees has to make every single thing into a hyper-competitive game of some sort?  Yes, of course.

Brees, during a weekly chat with WWL Radio, has said he wants to beat the 6-8 week timeline he was given.

It's the last week before a bye. The team is 6-1. Teddy is doing a good job in the meantime. There's no reason to "beat" the doctor's professional recomendation other than just plain being a weirdo.

Will Eddie Rispone "tort reform" Hard Rock victims out of their fair share?

The city says the demolition, clean up, and recovery operations following the Hard Rock hotel collapse have cost something on the order of  $400,000 per day. That's bound to be a sensitive issue, particularly now that we are heavy into budget season. The mayor assures us, though, that we're going to make sure we're covered.

The presence of police, firefighters and other city workers on the site has been costing taxpayers about $400,000 a day Cantrell said Monday, pledging that those costs would be recouped once the “responsible party” for the disaster is found.

“We’re making sure every step of the way the liability is with the responsible party, and that is not with the city of New Orleans,” Cantrell said.

Determining responsible parties is going to be critical in this case because, unlike many of the disasters we are used to around here, this one won't draw any help from FEMA. The city has also set up a "resource center" at  the Main Library for workers and business owners who were affected by the disruption.  Also there is an intake survey for businesses to fill out online here. Presumably, even the "disrespectful" businesses are allowed to do this.

Despite a week-and-a-half-long interruption to daily life at one of the city’s busiest intersections, Cantrell said displaced residents and many business owners have shown patience. But she also said some businesses had been "downright disrespectful" and impatient in the face of closures and evacuations. She didn't name any of them.

Inevitably all of this is headed to court where the city and various other aggrieved parties will look to hold Hard Rock, the developer Mohan Kailas, and the primary contractor Citadel Builders accountable for damages.  Multiple lawsuits have already been filed.  Because Citadel and its subcontractors had been in the practice of misclassifying workers, many victims and families may not be eligible for healthcare or worker's comp benefits.   In the absence of federal disaster relief, legal action is likely the only recourse for everyone.

Meanwhile, the statewide election is into its runoff stage. Republicans are on the verge of capturing legislative supermajorities and possibly the Governor's office. One of the animating issues for them this year has been "tort reform."

Oil and gas isn’t the only business sector trying to attribute Louisiana’s problems to trial lawyers The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry has long been engaged in demonizing trial lawyers as the bane of Louisiana business, while they’ve waged a campaign for “civil justice reform”, as they’re now calling it. LABI has long been the primary financial backer of Louisiana Lawsuit Abuse Watch, which claims to be “a citizen watchdog group dedicated to stopping lawsuit abuse that threatens local businesses and jobs.”

The remaining Republican candidate for Governor happens to own a large construction industry firm himself.  He has some pretty strong opinions about the rights of injured workers and governments to sue companies who have caused them injury. 

Rispone, who compared himself to President Donald Trump, pointed to Louisiana’s natural resources, including oil and gas, that he said should be bringing the state jobs.

“Lawsuit abuse is killing thousands of jobs,” Rispone said. “You know that better than anybody.”

The soon to be governing power in the State of Louisiana defines the only available path to remuneration for disrupted small businesses, compensation for depleted public finances, justice for injured workers, and reparations for a despoiled environment as "lawsuit abuse" and wants it obliterated. 

Once this radical faction is in office, will it move to obstruct justice for the Hard Rock victims? If so, who will speak out for them? Don't count on the Advocate editorial board.  In its endorsement of John Bel Edwards, the paper offered a few issues on which it continues to disagree with him.

There are, after all, many problems to solve, and we haven’t always agreed with the governor’s approach to the state’s underlying challenges. Louisiana needs a governor who supports tort reform and will stand up to trial lawyers and teacher unions. Lawsuits against energy companies put our state at a disadvantage when it comes to attracting investment.

Once the dust blown about by a building collapsed by criminal capitalism has settled, and the damage incurred by its several victims endures, don't expect much sympathy from the local media monopoly. Not when there is still "investment" to attract and unions to crush, anyway.  

Is this why we couldn't get a moratorium on new STR permits?

Are they able to do this because they're approving the plans before the new rules go into effect?  Or were they always going to get this part of the deal no matter what?

The company is in talks with Sonder, a short-term rental company, that would see some of the units rented to tourists rather than used for long-term housing, Stebbins said. An outline posted to the project’s website stated an agreement was in place for Sonder to use 150 of the 392 units envisioned for Charity.

That would be about 50% higher than the number of units that would be allowed under rules the New Orleans City Council put in place earlier this year and which are set to take effect in December.

Anyway, it's all for our own good. Trust them. 

Stebbins did not say how many units were currently planned for the project, but said the short-term rentals, which are typically far more lucrative than long-term housing, would allow the company to charge lower rents for other units.

We can't do anything about the housing crisis unless we first see to it that some rich people make a ton of money first.

How can the housing crisis be getting worse?

It's worse. It's getting worse. It always gets worse. It's very resilient, that way.

HousingNOLA released its report card on affordable housing in September and gave the city a "D." One reason is because studies showed New Orleans lost more affordable housing than it gained.

"In the last five years alone, we've seen a 50,000 increase on home values and rent has gone up 10 percent over the same time period. Meanwhile, wages have remained the same," Morris said.

Morris said those who can't afford to live in the city are the same people who make New Orleans so great, and if they get pushed out, it would be a problem.

"Our musicians, our artisans. Also, just the people who cook this wonderful food and make this city all that it is. That is all connected to the soul of this city. It's connected to our people. You should care about your community because what we’re doing is going to doom this community," she said

Meanwhile our focus is on building publicly subsidized hotels on our highest, most centrally located ground and permitting other hotels that collapse on top of construction workers.

Well there's something you don't see every day

Anne Milling is.... right about something.... ?

But Anne Milling said that convention centers across the country are not generating as much money or as many out-of-state tourists as they did in the past with the internet allowing people to livestream presentations. Milling said the project was a "folly" and "a far cry" from its original mission of spurring "economic development by hosting trade shows and conventions."

"Rather than acknowledge this change in paradigm, today the commission is suddenly modifying its mission," she said. "No longer is it just about trade shows and conventions, but rather it now wants to be an entrepreneur, a developer, a kingmaker today. But the commission wants to build hotels, parking garages, entertainment centers and even a golf driving range with taxpayer dollars and public subsidies."

Milling said that the money would be better put toward the city's Sewerage & Water Board and other infrastructure issues.

Well my whole universe has been exploded. I'm gonna go think this over for a while. 

All of this just seems too unreal to take seriously

See this is why I try to stay focused on the local doings nowadays.  All that requires a person to wrap one's mind around is exploding cranes, sewer cars, weekly boil orders, the occasional jaguar rampage, you know, normal stuff.  The national politics, on the other hand, I am convinced is not real. How can anyone take any of this seriously?

Everyone is foreign scum these days. Democrats spent three years trying to prove Donald Trump is a Russian pawn. Mitch McConnell is “Moscow Mitch.” Third party candidates are a Russian plot. The Bernie Sanders movement is not just a wasteland of racist and misogynist “Bros,” but — according to intelligence agencies and mainstream pundits alike — the beneficiary of an ambitious Russian plot to “stoke the divide” within the Democratic Party. The Joe Rogan independents attracted to the mild antiwar message of Tulsi Gabbard are likewise traitors and dupes for the Kremlin.

If you’re keeping score, that’s pretty much the whole spectrum of American political thought, excepting MSNBC Democrats. What a coincidence!

But people do. People take all of this bizarre Tom Clancy novel stuff constructed by cable news fantasists to be the actual meat of our national political debate.  Meanwhile poor people all over this country are living isolated lives. Left behind by a hostile ownership class, Americans find themselves without adequate housing, medical care, or any sustainable means of supporting themselves. And yet our politics is dominated by the nightly MSNBC hunt for imaginary Russian sleeper agents. Whenever I feel obliged to say anything about it at all what I want to say is it depresses and exhausts me.

Please just let me drive straight into the nearest flooded out underpass.  That, I can understand.

Never stop shock doctrining

Does anyone ever read these mayoral emergency declarations? This one was scanned sideways so it's very likely no one will look at it for long. Basically it names an "Emergency Authority" comprised of the mayor, the chief of police, the fire chief, and the city's "Homeland Security" director (which, no, of course that last position should not exist.)

The Emergency Authority is empowered to "commandeer or utilize any private property it finds necessary to cope with the local disaster emergency."  It is also empowered "to direct and compel the evacuation of any and all persons from any part of the city."  In other words, they've empowered themselves to arrest you or confiscate your personal property without cause.  Do they really need to do this?  This isn't to say that our public safety officers shouldn't direct and assist the public as to the best way to keep safe during an emergency.  It's fine for the police to set up barricades, or for the mayor to recommend an evacuation. But they don't need any special power to get cooperation from the public. The fact that they automatically assume they do speaks to the hard authoritarian bent of municipal governments in the 21st Century.

There's some other questionable stuff in there. For some reason, the Emergency Authority has to the power to "limit the sale, dispensing, or transporting of alcoholic beverages."  Which is weird since many of us would consider those a critical necessity in these situations. Thankfully, the current Authority appears to agree with us about that.

“Go get a drink. Watch it on TV,” said Collin Arnold, the city’s director of homeland security. “If you’re in line of sight of this, you’re too close.”

The part of the declaration that most interests us, though, is the part where the EA is empowered "to suspend the provisions of any regulatory ordinance prescribing the procedures for conduct of local business, or the orders, rules or regulations of any local agency, if strict compliance with the provisions of any ordinance, rule or regulation would in any way prevent, hinder, or delay necessary action in coping with the emergency."

What that means is they can rush a whole bunch of no-bid contracts into effect. According to WWLTV, even those expedited negotiations haven't gone smoothly. 

NEW ORLEANS — Danger and uncertainty surrounding the demolition of two massive and unstable cranes inside the Hard Rock Hotel collapse site has delayed the risky operation for a second day in a row.

But financial issues may have also played a role, at least in causing the first delay, which pushed back the implosion first planned for Friday afternoon to Saturday.

The developer of the ill-fated hotel project, a group led by Mohan Kailas, did not pay the $5 million demolition price until Saturday morning. The demolition team, a joint venture between D.H. Griffin Wrecking Co. of Greensboro, N.C., and Lemoine Disaster Recovery of Lafayette, required full payment into a trust prior to the demolition, according to public records requested by WWL-TV.

Now maybe it's a stretch to think either Kailas or the contractors would be so crass as to use the "ticking clock" of a collapsing crane as bargaining leverage.  I would have been at least a skeptical of that. But then I read that LaToya says of the negotiations, "This work has not contributed to delays or diverted from the stated priority of keeping the public safe during this trying time," which sounds to me like it has definitely contributed to the delay.

Also, hey, look who is here!

Sanford said Lemoine, a disaster consulting firm that was purchased earlier this year by former Shaw Group founder Jim Bernhard’s Bernhard Capital Partners, is a part of the demolition team. On its website Lemoine touts its “ethical working relationship with the State of Louisiana and parish and government agencies.”

Bernhard's "ethical working relationship" with state, local and federal government in under emergency conditions  is well documented. The Shaw Group picked up a $100 million deal with the Corps of Engineers to "de-water" the city after Katrina. 

Those contracts were awarded without competition under rules that allow agencies to bypass normal procedures during an emergency. Several went to companies that have been major financial supporters of the Bush administration. One firm, Shaw Group Inc., of Baton Rouge, is on the client list of lobbyist and former FEMA director Joe M. Allbaugh, though he has said he does not get involved with contracts.

Shaw also came under criticism for having received favors from the Jindal Administration's dispersal of post-Katrina hazard mitigation contracts.  Shaw also took advantage of an emergency declaration to help Jindal build his infamous "sand berms to nowhere" after the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.

The berm project has been a boon to Louisiana industry: although many of the dredging companies working on the project have out-of-state headquarters, all have a major presence in Louisiana. The Shaw Group, the lead contractor on the project, is based in Baton Rouge and has been one of Mr. Jindal’s leading campaign contributors over the years.

Most recently, Bernhard's relationship with state government extends to a deal with the Edwards administration to privatize energy systems in state buildings.  Although his companies have frequently contributed to Republicans, Bernhard is a registered Democrat.  Clearly he's willing to support any elected person in a position to help him out.  This year he "supported" Edwards by allowing himself to be talked out of running against him. 

Bernhard Energy Solutions partnered with the HVAC company Johnson Controls at the request of the Edwards administration after both firms submitted proposals to the state. Bernhard Energy Solutions is one of several companies controlled by Bernhard Capital Partners, a private equity firm run by former Shaw Group chief executive and Democratic Party official Jim Bernhard, who was floated as a potential candidate for governor before ruling it out last year.

Threatening the Governor's job may not be your traditional emergency management situation but obviously, he takes that pretty seriously.   In any case, Bernhard does appear to know his business.

The ICE police state makes everyone less free

It's quite a police state we're building for ourselves. We're always trying to hire more cops. The jail is never big enough. We can never point enough cameras at one another.  Why do we accept this?  We are so over-policed and paranoid now that Wildlife and Fisheries rangers will just walk up and ask to see your papers.

A Border Patrol spokeswoman said that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents had summoned officers to arrest Ramirez after spotting him fishing without a license. When pressed for identification, the Border Patrol spokeswoman said, Ramirez had only "foreign citizenship documentation."

A game warden can have someone deported.  Why do we accept that? Just that is bad enough but there is other context, besides. Ramirez was among the workers injured during the collapse of the Hard Rock hotel construction site. 

Besides seeking to compensate Ramirez for his injuries, Gray said, he and his colleagues will oppose his deportation, which he said was set in motion by an arrest that occurred within 24 hours of his "making a statement about the tragic events” at the collapse site to a Spanish-language news network.

Gray said Ramirez’s case illustrates why he believes some workers who know what was happening at the construction site ahead of the collapse are afraid to come forward.

They “fear … being deported or some other retribution by their employers,” Gray said at a news conference in the lobby of Civil District Court. “Just like all Americans, however, they do have the rights that are afforded to us within this courthouse.”

The main contractor on the Hard Rock site was Citadel Builders. According to Open Secrets, Its founder Derek Clark is a serial max donor to Republican federal office holders including Donald Trump and Senator John Kennedy who has been a vocal supporter of Trump's brutal immigration policies.

Can we think of any reason a company like Citadel would support the kind of police environment that keeps their workers in perpetual fear of speaking out about safety issues?  Does that police environment make us all more or less free?  Why do we accept it?

Well Rome wasn't imploded in a day

Come back tomorrow and we'll try it again.

The controlled demolition using explosives to take down two giant, unstable construction cranes at the site of the collapsed Hard Rock New Orleans Hotel will start no sooner that noon Sunday, city officials said Saturday afternoon.

The damage to cranes is the prime reason for the delay to Sunday, Fire Chief Tim McConnell said.

As a result, Krewe de Boo, which was originally called off, will roll Saturday, according to Mayor LaToya Cantrell.

Well thank goodness the Halloween parade is back on.  Everybody got pretty mad online when it was announced this morning that it would have to be cancelled for the demolition.

Anyway what happened? 

The delay was caused by new information from demolitions experts inspecting the cranes Saturday morning.

"They got up and got close to it and they found out some things about it that have changed the way they're going to take it down, some of the methodology they're going to use, and that's going to take a little longer for them to accomplish," McConnell said. "The crane's more damaged than they thought. They need to do things that are a little bit safer."

Kind of vague but, basically, it's even worse than they thought.  That's not exactly a comforting thought. But we should say it's a bit better than they pushed back the demolition because Blaine Kern yelled at them about his parade which is another thing we did think about. 

Speaking of structural problems

Forget about the cranes. Who is going to do something about shoring up these guys' joints?

New Orleans Saints starting running back Alvin Kamara and tight end Jared Cook have been ruled out for Sunday's Week 7 game against the Chicago Bears.

Kamara has been battling ankle and knee injuries, while Cook is sidelined with an ankle injury. Neither Kamara nor Cook practiced once this week.

This reminds me we need to catch back up with the Saints over here. To be fair, there's been a lot going on elsewise.  Anyway that defense is pretty good. Can they win with zero offensive players? Let's find out.

Meanwhile

Zion Williamson is going to be sidelined for weeks due to a right knee injury, according to ESPN. While sources confirmed it’s not a severe issue, it should force the No. 1 pick to miss several regular season games, delaying his highly-anticipated debut.

I haven't been wanting to say anything but I've had this nagging feeling Zion might end up being the kind of athlete who puts a lot of "wear and tear" on the knees and ankles. Maybe I'm wrong. Hope I am.

"Good likelihood of further collapse"

I can't get this quote out of my head. At the very least it is the general motto of 2019.  But it could also title your book about post-Katrina New Orelans, or this entire era of human existence in the 21st Century, really. It all depends on how big you want to go with it.

It comes to us from New Orleans Fire Chief Tim McConnel this week as he assessed the status of the two cranes teetering over downtown after the Hard Rock hotel collapse on Saturday.   As he described the situation, it started to feel a lot like a repeat of the struggle to shut down the Macondo oil well after the blowout.

How crews will stabilize the two cranes is still unknown. According to McConnell, the initial idea that more cranes could be brought in to stabilize the site is no longer an option.

“It hasn’t been the best of news,” he said. “It doesn’t appear we’ll be able to use cranes to take this crane apart and stabilize it. We’re working on other ideas and other techniques to stabilize it.”

Experts from all over the world have been brought to New Orleans to find a solution, including engineers who responded after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City, but it’s unlike anything they’ve seen before.

They can't stabilize the cranes. They don't even know how to stabilize them.  It's like nothing anyone has ever seen before.  Hell, there's even a live spill cam online you can watch to keep up with their "junk shots" or "top kills" or whatever it is they think might work.

What they think might work right now is dynamite. In fact, this morning, they were thinking they needed to explode the cranes in a hurry before a fast approaching tropical storm arrived to blow them over because, of course that was a thing also.  Today, they decided they had more time and pushed the demolition to Saturday.

Which is probably good because this is a much different sort of job from your typical controlled building implosion.  Under ordinary circumstances, engineers have weeks and even months to carefully plan and stage a demolition of an existing structure.  But in this case they are dealing with two listing cranes precariously balanced over a garbage heap. It's a complicated and dynamic math problem they have a very limited amount of time to solve.  Also, the Advocate tells us,  they have to protect electrical and gas lines. Also they have to move a bunch of cars out of a nearby garage "so the gasoline inside them cannot explode if the cranes should fall on the garage."   They're dealing with a lot of stuff here.

On the bright side, we have this lovely summary from the Advocate reporters.

If all goes as planned, the cranes that have threatened an intersection packed with critical city utility infrastructure will cascade elegantly into the surrounding rubble in a matter of seconds.

I like that sentence almost as much as McConnel's thing about the "further collapse." If all goes as planned the ad-hoc scramble to blow up the cranes before they fall will leave us with an elegant cascade of broken machinery tumbling down onto a trash pile.  So, yeah, let's hope for that.  What are our chances?  Well the experts tell us they can "gurantee perfect predictability."

Another firm on the ground in New Orleans is Controlled Demolition Inc., a Maryland company that demolished the remains of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City after the 1995 bombing there.

The company boasts on its website that it employs “a world-renowned team of experts drawing on backgrounds in environmental remediation, engineering, dismantling, traditional demolition, explosives, material handling and the latest technology to guarantee complete predictability

Still might want to keep those fingers crossed, though.  I'd keep away from any monkeys' paws, though.  We ought to have learned by this point to be more careful about what we wish for.

But Mayor Ray Nagin said in a news conference that the city, which still has less than half its pre-Katrina population of nearly 500,000, can no longer wait for federal help. "We're not sitting around waiting for anybody any longer," Nagin said in a news conference. "We're going to move this city forward with the resources that we can generate creatively, and everybody who wants to join us later, you're welcome to come on board."

Ed Blakely, who was hired this year to coordinate the city's recovery effort, said the plan must be approved by city residents, the New Orleans City Council and the City Planning Commission before officials begin negotiations with investors and developers later this summer.

"By September, we hope to have cranes on the skyline," Blakely said.

Some questions about these school property sales

The administrators of what used be a public school system in New Orleans unveiled a new facilities plan this week. A big part of that plan involves leaving the system fewer facilities to manage. As most of us know, New Orleans's schools were quasi-privatized after Katrina. That process culminated this year leaving all 78 schools currently operating under the control of charter organizations.  But the system owns more property than that.  There are 26 properties belonging to the school system that are unused and which sit in various states of disrepair. In fact, some of them are now just empty lots where schools used to be.  The plan right now is to sell 12 of them off.  There's a specific order of operations they have to follow for that to happen, though.

To divest itself of unused properties, the OPSB first has to vote to put them on the surplus list, a legal designation. Then the buildings or lots are offered to charter school operators and next to other government agencies for possible property trades. If no charter or agency wants a property, it can be sold through public auction.

We've seen an example of OPSB trading properties with other agencies just this year.  The school board approved a swap that turns the McDonogh 7 building over to HANO to be redeveloped as affordable housing.  Or at least it would do that if the Touro-Bouligny Neighborhood Association loses (or drops) its lawsuit. For its story about the School Board plans, the Advocate obtains and rather credulously presents a quote from the neighborhood association's spokesperson. 

"The (association) is primarily concerned over losing a landmark building that has served as a school to its neighborhood and children for over 140 years," said Zepletal, president of the Touro-Bouligny Neighborhood Association. The group is also worried the building will become "vacant, blighted, and a victim of demolition by neglect, given the current lack of development plans (for it) by HANO," she said.

That's not really what they're worried about, though.  What they actually want is to keep anyone from building any affordable housing near them. That's what they told HANO board members over the summer, anyway. 

In its May suit, the neighborhood group argued that the land ought to remain a school and criticized the OPSB for not giving other charter school operators more time to decide if they want McDonogh No. 7 before offering it to HANO.

(HANO Board VP Lisa) Wheeler also highlighted a swell of neighborhood opposition to HANO’s separate plan to redevelop vacant land as affordable housing in Bywater, another neighborhood with high property values.

“The people in Bywater and in Uptown... are not going to sit idly by, when they say they don’t want to (see something turned into affordable) housing,” Wheeler said. “I would rather see us have housing that’s not necessarily Uptown, but still have housing.”

We saw those sentiments borne out again during the October 12th election where there was a housing question on the ballot in the form of Amendment 4.  This was the measure that would have granted the city special powers to create tax breaks for landlords and developers under the assumption that these would become incentives for the creation of "affordable housing."  It was a constitutional amendment so it needed to pass statewide. It did not.  But it passed in Orleans Parish by a wide margin.

Last week, we expressed our own quibbles with the amendment so we don't doubt that some of the "NO" vote came from people who, like us, favor affordable housing but didn't trust that specific policy approach to achieving it. But that kind of nuanced NO is probably an insignificant minority. Given the media (and the mayor and her PAC) tended to frame the message, by and large, it is safe to assume most voters looked at this measure as more of a simple, "Do you like affordable housing, Yes or No?"

Which is why, when we look at The Lens's map of the results we can see which precincts in Orleans Parish favor more affordable housing and which do not.   Predictably, those who do not are clustered in Lakeview and in the deepest parts of Uptown near Audubon Place.  But take a look, specifically, at these little slivers of NO in orange. Those are precincts 12-6 and 12-8. Right in the heart of Touro-Bouligny around where McDonogh 7 is located.

It's possible the school system could trade more properties to HANO.  But seeing as how that can be controversial, they're more likely to try and shoot on through to auctioning them off. In which case, we should look at this map provided by NOLA.com to guess which properties Sidney Torres might snap up at a discount.

Aside from the land speculation, here are a few other questions regarding this plan to consider.

Reading yesterday's NOLA.com story, we learn from Ken Ducote that selling off properties saves on maintenance and insurance and therefore "makes fiscal sense."

While the district's plan may be unpopular with some residents, it largely makes sense to Ken Ducote, executive director of the Greater New Orleans Collaborative of Charter Schools. Ducote, who oversaw school properties for the district for more than 20 years, said that to keep a building properly maintained, the district must spend an average of 2.5 percent of its value each year. So selling some properties makes fiscal sense.

"When you eliminate property that you don’t need, then you save the operations cost, insurance cost, security and so on," he said. The district estimates it costs $350,000 per year for minimal maintenance on the 12 properties it wants to sell.

Later in the article we are reminded that prior to Katrina, school buildings in New Orleans were, to say the least, not very well maintained. We are also told that, in most cases nowadays, maintenance and insurance costs for schools in operation fall on the charter organizations. How well do charters maintain their facilities anyway? Because most of these buildings were recently repaired with federal recovery funds, it's not appropriate to credit charter operators for their current condition. Over the long haul will they be better stewards of these properties than a properly funded and managed OPSB?

We also learn from this article that the district has a facilities fund to help handle some of these costs but it turns out they're already raiding it.

Realizing this, the Legislature created the School Facility Preservation Program in 2014 to dedicate annual tax money for repairs to New Orleans school buildings. It generates an estimated $35 million a year. But Lewis removed $10 million from the fund last year, with the Legislature's approval, to pay for instructional needs, a move Ducote criticized.

The planned sale of a dozen properties would help supplement funds available for facility needs by paying for future construction, without restrictions that limit the preservation program.

Uh oh. That sounds a lot like a plan to cover recurring costs with "one-time money" raised by selling off assets. For a while, Bobby Jindal was able to cover up the damage he was doing to the state budget by engaging in similar practices.  We've just spent the entire John Bel Edwards administration dealing with the consequences of that. Is this sell-off a budgetary stop gap? And if so, will there be more?

Finally, we are told the 12 properties about to be dumped are too small to meet the needs of "modern schools."  Here is how the plan defines that.

To decide which buildings to keep and which to get rid of, the district created guidelines that said sites smaller than 3.5 acres generally are inadequate for modern schools, which ideally include areas for green space, physical education, the performing arts, and students' drop-off and pickup.

Of the properties for sale, only the 3.4 acre vacant lot that used to be the Lafon School in Central City comes close to qualifying.  But it does raise another question about the schools that continue in operation.  Do they all currently offer the arts and phys ed programs the plan demands space for? "Ideally," they should, right?

Anyway, the board approved the facilities plan at its meeting last night.  The Lens has that story along with a link to the plan itself here. Keep an eye on what happens to these properties next.

"I don't exactly have the authority to do that"

Not exactly, says Lane Grigsby.  But we all get the idea.

Grigsby said he didn't want to see the seat go to the Democratic candidate, so sought a solution that wouldn't split the Republican vote.

“I’m not offering (Foil) a judgeship,” Grigsby said. “I can’t. I don’t exactly have the authority to do that. What I’m saying is 'If you make a sacrifice for the state of Louisiana, I’ll make sure that sacrifice is recognized.'”

Foil has declined to drop out of the race, and Carter, whom Grigsby supports, has also indicated he will stay in.

Asked whether he thought his offer to Foil was illegal, Grigsby said it was not a quid pro quo because he hasn’t spoken to Foil directly. “I’ve just put an offer on the table and it’s public,” he said.

Sternberg says this is "VERY DIFFERENT" from offering cash (and a job) to a candidate for dropping out. But, again, you get the idea.  Let's just Foil was asked to take a Lane check and leave it at that.

Joe Georgusis's expensive obsession

Not the thing on the top of everyone's mind today but this came up last week and I want to make sure I had it bookmarked somewhere.

It may be true that justice is nothing more than a cruel lottery but some people do get to buy a lot of tickets.

Georgusis scored a quiet coup in 2015, a decade after his son’s death, when then-Coroner Jeffrey Rouse -- a major recipient of campaign cash from Georgusis -- changed the classification of Joey’s death to “unknown.”

The revision, reported to the state, was unknown even to the staff of the Coroner’s Office until this newspaper discovered it in state records.

Rouse has hardly been the only official to give the case fresh legs. Others who have probed the case over the years include former Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand, former St. Bernard Parish Sheriff Jack Stephens, former St. Bernard Parish District Attorney Jack Rowley and current Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro.

Joe Georgusis’ crusade to prove his son was murdered and hold others accountable for it continues today. Yet another new probe is unfolding now: a federal grand jury investigation overseen by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Orleans.

Georgusis' company, River Park One, owns interest in commercial real estate all over the metro area. He bought the Iroquois Theater jazz landmark in 2016. He owns strip malls in St. Bernard and Jefferson. He was also involved in some of these "spillionaire" settlement deals after the Macaondo disaster. But that's not important right now.  The point is he's a guy who has a lot of money to throw around pursuing stuff like this.  And he can buy as much local government assistance as he needs. 

Moving the loot around

The Convention Center has done some re-jiggering of the financing that will go into building its new publicly financed for private profit hotel project. There is a lot of money being moved around here. It's a bit of a shell game, though. A more cynical person than I might even think the entire purpose of it is to cause the Advocate to write this.

Michael Sawaya, the center's president and general manager, told the Finance Committee of the facility's governing board that he and his team had negotiated a reduction in the upfront cash contribution to the hotel project that will come from public funds to $7 million, down from a previously proposed $41 million.

A casual observer might read that and think, "oh so they're not taking quite as much public money."  But that's not what this is.  It just means they're taking less public money in the form of a large lump sum payment from the Convention Center.  Instead they are just spreading that money around.  For example, they are subsidizing a parking garage. 

The Morial Center also has agreed to fund construction of the hotel's $27 million parking garage, which the center will own and lease back to the hotel for a base rent of $300,000 a year plus 2% of parking revenue.

"What we’re doing is taking our contribution and investing it in the parking garage, which is a more positive impact for us and the public," Sawaya told the committee.

Why that is a "more positive impact" for the public is anybody's guess.  It probably works out well for lead developer Darryl Berger. We already know he understands the parking business.  Anyway they're also taking steps to hide their subsidy in other ways. In most cases a PILOT, is basically a property tax break. Meanwhile I'd love to hear more about this hotel and sales tax "rebate."

The other main terms of the revised agreement include: a PILOT, or payment in lieu of taxes, to the city of between $3 million and $5 million a year, depending on a formula related to revenue from nearby hotels; a ground lease payment by the hotel developers to the center of $250,000 a year, rising by 2% a year; and hotel tax and non-room sales tax rebates to the hotel of 8.42% and 4%, respectively.

Maybe a smart person can tell us more. But what this looks like is, the hotel is shaving its property tax liability by making up front payments to the city. The savings there, go toward "rent" it pays to the Convention Center.  Then the Convention Center kicks back to the hotel some of what it had paid in sales/hotel taxes. Remember the Convention Center is all public money one way or another so this appears very much as though it's just serving to skim away tax money the hotel would otherwise be paying to the city. That would be more or less in keeping with the Fair Sham ethic.

Again, maybe a smart person can tell me that's wrong. Will there be any at this meeting?

Convention Center leaders said they plan to hold a public meeting Monday and have invited local business leaders and other interested parties to hear about the latest proposals and express their views.

Also, this Friday is the deadline for bids on developing the 47 acre disneyland the Convention Center wants to go up around the hotel project. So hurry up and get your proposals in.  Try to keep the prison labor to a minimum if you can.

Also should mention, Citadel frequently does business with the Convention Center.  Is it too soon for them right now?