Zoning, code enforcement, permitting and other prosaic municipal
matters could wait. The first order of business at Thursday’s City
Council meeting was to acknowledge the civic contributions of a runaway dog named Scrim, who became a furry New Orleans folk hero.
As Council Vice President JP Morrell put it, Scrim “really did exemplify the resilience that is New Orleans.”
The good feelings didn't last too long, though, as councilmembers almost immediately broke into a territorial dispute over bragging rights.
Lesli Harris laughingly said that “this is like one of my most
exciting council days ever,” before she laid claim to Scrim as “the
official mascot of District B.”
District A Council Member Joe Giarrusso, however, immediately
contended that Scrim’s territory had extended into his jurisdiction as
well.
This article also says the dog was presented with, " a framed proclamation and a sack of dog goodies." When I bust out of jail and take two bullets while out on the lam for 6 months, City Council better give me a dang medal.
Anyway, everybody loves Scrim. We even dedicated our Jack-O-Lantern this year in his honor. Look at this good boy.
Michael Sawaya, the president of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, will succeed Ron Forman
as president and CEO of the Audubon Nature Institute, New Orleans’
cherished collection of parks, museums and environmental attractions.
They went on a nationwide safari to find the heir to Ron Forman's grift. What are the odds that the guy they were looking for was here all along!
And, hey, look at the price they got.
In his new role, which begins Jan. 1, Sawaya will earn $525,000 a year
in salary and benefits, according to Audubon officials. That’s far less
than Forman’s $800,000 annual compensation package but more than the
nearly $433,000 Sawaya made at the Convention Center in 2023, according
to a legislative audit.
The "non-profit" zoo that is heavily subsidized with public funds will now be paying its CEO only half a million dollars instead of nearly a million. Personally, I still hope they feed them all to Valerio.
Finally, speaking of big cats ,in order to get around being shitty to one tiger, Governor Landry is forcing LSU to go out and get a whole burner tiger. Unsurprisingly the source is disreputable.
The owner of a live Bengal tiger
slated to appear at the LSU-Alabama game Saturday has a history of
having his big cats escape as the result of employee errors.
The university and Gov. Jeff Landry’s
office won’t say who would be responsible for any accidents involving
Omar Bradley, a 1.5-year-old tiger that’s being transported from Florida
for the game. Landry and Surgeon General Ralph Abraham have pushed to
return a live mascot to the sidelines of Tiger Stadium.
After the Illuminator confirmed that a live tiger will appear in Baton Rouge at the LSU-Alabama game on Saturday, WBRZ reported that the tiger is being supplied by Mitchel Kalmanson, who has a long history of federal citations for mistreating animals.
Sounds pretty exciting. Can't wait to see how that goes. It's good of Governor Landry to take time away from his busy work throwing more children in jail and making poor people pay higher taxes to focus on this. Are we sure he knows what he's doing, though?
Landry’s initial request was for LSU
to bring its own live tiger mascot, Mike VII, to games. Previous tigers
have attended LSU football games, most recently Mike VI in 2015. LSU
announced it was discontinuing this tradition when it adopted Mike VII
in 2017 out of humane concerns.
Landry did not attend LSU but claims to be a lifelong LSU football fan.
“Our hope is that
maybe we can get this tiger to roar a couple of times, and that’ll
indicate how many touchdowns we’ll have, and it’ll be more than
Alabama,” Landry said Friday in an interview with Fox News.
Previous Mikes have been provoked to
roaring by beating on his cage and taunting from the costumed Mike the
Tiger mascot, a practice LSU discontinued.
Who is this for? Which piece of shit Landry donor is pushing this hard to bring back an animal cruelty ritual we all finally moved past a decade ago? Even if you buy into this far enough to be all, "yay the tradition is back!" and are totally cool with the cruelty of it, how do you not still see it as a slap in the face to our beautiful boy Mike VII?
We'll see if the cheer squad wants to be involved in all that this time around. If not, maybe the Governor could get in the cage and try poking the tiger with a stick or something.
A popular chef reported missing in New Orleans
over the weekend has been found alive after his family told local media
he was dead, according to multiple reports.
Family
of Demietriek Scott, who goes by "Chef Scott," reported the cook
missing on Saturday, New Orleans Police Department confirmed to USA
TODAY.
His family later told multiple outlets including WWL his body had been found on the side of a bridge in the city's Ninth Ward on Monday morning.
But on Monday night, New Orleans media reported Scott, 47, had been found alive and well.
“I’ve been around,” Scott told WVUE after he showed up at his family’s home late Monday afternoon. “I essentially just needed some time for myself.”
I don't know if this is a function of the diminished capacity of local news reporting (support your localindieoutlets while you still have them!) But it does seem kind of amazing that the state and city can hold months of negotiations over critical parcels of land downtown and the public doesn't hear about it until the day before the legislature takes up a bill to move it forward.
Under the mayor’s plan, the state would give the city its share of
Duncan Plaza and the Heal parking garage at the back end of the plaza.
In exchange, the state would receive the land under the courthouse at
the corner of Poydras Street and Loyola Avenue, as well as two city
streets that run alongside the Caesars Superdome and the green space
along West Stadium Drive.
There are a ton of tricky points of contention between the city and state that threatened to (and still could) undermine the deal. But they did manage to get by the first legislative hurdle (mostly by just removing the points of disagreement from the law they had to pass.) So there's still a long way to go and we'll see what happens.
Hundreds of homeless people took up residence in Duncan Plaza for a couple of years after Hurricane Katrina. Since then, given its proximity to City Hall, it has been a popular site for protests and rallies. That’s been particularly true in recent months, and the park has become a popular starting or end point for marches protesting various policies of President Donald Trump’s administration.
Weigle said the DDD will not try to curtail that part of the park’s use.
“It’s fair to say that this agreement would not be in place if we had not made a commitment to continue to support that kind of activity in the park,” Weigle said.
“Being someone who loves that part of what it means to be an American, I’d never look to curtail that in any way,” he added. “It’s something we’re looking to celebrate along with all the other uses in the park.”
It's anybody's guess at how sincere Weigle was about any of that. It's a moot question since he's long gone now. Also city officials have been especially hostile toward the homeless as of late which could inform the park design as well.
One of the first buyouts of a home in Gordon Plaza, a largely Black
neighborhood built four decades ago atop a toxic dump, netted a $250,000
profit for the owner, who purchased it in late 2021 as a mass buyout and relocation of the subdivision’s residents was being discussed at City Hall.
The Dorsey family had lived at the ranch house on Gordon Plaza Drive
since it was built in 1982. They’ve lost multiple family members to
cancers they believe can be linked to living on what is now a Superfund
site.
But the Dorseys sold the property 18 months ago for $55,000 to Treme
daycare operator Lizzell Brooks-Williams, who owns several other New
Orleans properties.
It really seems like this is something that could have been avoided in the process of designing the eligibility requirements of the buyout program. Unless, of course, they didn't want to avoid this scenario. Because it just really really seems like they didn't.
A New Orleans truck driver who wanted to get into the real-estate business by starting with something cheap.
An air conditioning and heating company owner who lives in Atlanta.
A
retired police officer who paid fire-sale prices for three
deteriorating homes, which remain blighted but are now valued at
$475,000.
All are among those now benefiting from the city of New Orleans’ $35 million plan to buy out owners of Gordon Plaza, the largely Black neighborhood built four decades ago atop a toxic dump.
One SWB scandal just flows right into the next
A 2021 WWLTV investigation exposed a wide range of irregularities and self dealing at the Sewerage and Water Board. The facet of that story that drew the most attention from law enforcement turned out to be permits officers with side gigs as contractors. The facet that most interested us was that the records of all of this were kept by, well, not the most modern of systems.
A lot of this has been kept under wraps by the Sewerage and Water
Board’s antiquated plumbing permitting system. The board told WWL-TV
that no computerized database of plumbing permits and inspections
exists, not even an index. The station has fought for over a year just
to be able to see the room where permits are kept and maintained by
Arnold and his staff during work hours.
The Louisiana State Licensing Board for Contractors sent a scathing
letter to the Sewerage and Water Board in January, blasting it for being
“obstructionist” to the licensing board’s efforts to root out
contractor and permitting fraud.
Arnold’s permitting office “operates on what can only be described as
index cards, file cabinets and such, (and) it makes it almost
impossible to for state investigators, or the public, to find
information on projects,” the letter said.
The agency had expected to complete the job this week but said Friday
that workers found an additional leak at the bottom of the force main,
at the pumping station at 2800 Florida Ave. They'll keep digging to
repair it.
In a tweet last week (that I cannot embed because of stupid Elon) McBride noted that the amount of raw sewage being dumped into the river is "basically all of the sewage from north of I-610," or 97 million gallons per day.
Sewerage & Water Board employees have complained to management
about a host of other issues in the division in recent years, including
allegations of favoritism, retaliation, unsafe working conditions and
unchecked harassment.
In 2022, a filter gallery employee filed a public whistleblower complaint
that accused managers of using taxpayer dollars to build a “secret
room” inside the Carrollton plant where a select number of employees
would bring people to sleep with both on and off their shift.
Verite interviewed two current employees and one former worker from
the Carrollton Plant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear
of retaliation. In their interviews with Verite, they confirmed the
existence of what one employee described as a “secret sex room.” One
employee provided a video of it, showing couches, a refrigerator, a
microwave, a TV and a shelf full of framed photos of nude women.
Naturally, the "secret sex room" got everyone's imaginations going. We'll likely see the unfortunate results of that next Carnival season. It may not be as salacious as what "one employee" implies, though. I mean it's not too hard to believe that a critical piece of infrastructure requiring a 24 hour labor force and which may also require workers to make themselves available during emergencies, might induce those workers to improvise a makeshift sleeping quarters on site. Now, such a space *might* be used inappropriately. But outside of one person's vague statements, we don't actually know that it was. In any case, it shouldn't surprise anyone that such a room exists.. or did anyway until this story (which is actually about many more credible allegations of payroll fraud) showed up. Besides, from the looks of the video shared on TwiXter, the now shuttered "sex room" has nothing on the $60,000 office Cedric Grant installed when he was there.
Anyway congratulations to SWB are in order on one point. It's been a mostly street flooding free summer thus far. Who would have guessed that the one trick to getting that to happen would be record drought conditions.
Various other things are broken
In addition to the big leaky sewer pipe this summer, residents should also be wary of malfunctioning air conditioners threatening to shut down various city offices at random times, including NOPD headquarters.
The city's deputy chief administrative officer for infrastructure, Joe
Threat, said Tuesday that the Department of Property Management has
struggled to develop new contracts after an Inspector General report
in 2021 found that the Department of Property Management had improperly
utilized an expedited contractor approval process for non-emergency
situations.
Mohan said that attempts at emergency measures were also hamstrung by
city payment issues. He had deployed 45 temporary AC units within the
last month, he said.
When he tried to order another 45, he said
that the supplier put a credit hold on the city because of outstanding
invoices from other city departments.
Councilmembers expressed dismay, but not surprise.
"Dismay, but not surprise," is, by all rights, the city motto at this point.
Cantrell's revelation that a tree inspection was conducted shortly
before the accident came a day after attorney Morris Bart, who is
representing the injured teen and his family, said the city was "grossly
negligent" for not roping off the area after the limb fell in June.
In
a text message Wednesday, Bart, who is preparing a lawsuit against the
city, said that photos of the tree after the first limb failure showed
obvious warning signs.
“The hole left after the limb fell clearly shows rot and damage to the
tree,” said Bart, who noted Tuesday that he had hired a forensic
arborist for the case.
Who knew you could even hire a "forensic arborist"? I guess that's why Morris Bart gets the big bucks.
Oh and speaking of District Attorneys.. or DAs that could have been
Keva Landrum, who lost to Jason Williams in 2020, has been in sitting in limbo awaiting an appointment to the post of US Attorney for the Eastern District in Louisiana. But that expected call hadn't yet come as of this July. So she's removed herself from consideration.
“I just made the decision on my own, based on the length of time it
has taken, and no real timeframe,” she said. “I decided that for me it’s
best to pursue other opportunities.”
Landrum, 50, declined to say
what those opportunities might be. She has been out of public office
since 2020, when she left the bench after a dozen years to run for
district attorney, a race she lost to then-City Councilman Jason
Williams.
She said she was unaware of who might replace her as the nominee in waiting.
U.S.
Rep. Troy Carter, the lone Democrat in Louisiana’s congressional
delegation, said Friday that he understood Landrum “has withdrawn from
consideration because of the inordinate time that the process has
taken.”
It’s unclear what sank her chances, but the sources familiar with the
process said that Landrum had drawn fierce opposition from some
progressive groups.
Wait a minute. Look "progressive groups" could certainly find numerous reasons to rightfully oppose this nomination. And maybe they did that. But I thought it was pretty clear the matter holding things up was Landrum's ties to a political corruption scandal that would fall under the office's jurisdiction.
Peterson was an early endorser of Landrum during her 2020 run for Orleans Parish district attorney.
Landrum, in turn, hired Peterson’s husband, Dana, to help run her
campaign. She paid the Petersons’ consultancy, College Hill Strategy
Group LLC, $130,590 over three months. It is not clear how much of that
was profit: Landrum's campaign expense reports say that much of the
money went to cover the cost of mailers, postage and other items. Karen
Carter Peterson reported income of $513,772 for 2020 on a federal disclosure form when she ran for Congress last year.
Landrum lost the district attorney race to Jason Williams.
See? It was in the paper. Sometimes I wonder if the paper reads the stuff in the paper. Which, again, is why I need to get back to keeping notes.
There are other potential ethical
concerns behind Kaplan’s appointment as well. In October 2021, Kaplan
formed a political action committee (PAC) called the “New Orleans Cultural Economy & Nightlife PAC,” which donated $5,000—the
maximum allowable amount under campaign finance laws—to Cantrell’s
reelection campaign. After Cantrell won, she created the Office of
Nighttime Economy and appointed Kaplan as its director.
Irvin Mayfield was convicted for a fraud in which he diverted non-profit funds intended to support the library toward his own recording studio project. He is making restitution for that now by... overseeing the use of public and non-profit funds intended to support NORD toward his own recording studio project.
Ron Forman is about to get (maybe? The mayor won't say for sure) $15 million in (additional.. he already has about $11 million) public funds to build yet more limited-access tourist forward privatized public space on the riverfront. The plan also involves a scheme to build a big parking garage that Ron can split the revenue from with the other thieves at the French Market Corp.
Other stuff upcoming
Like I said, this is all just backlog. I felt like I needed to get all this down somewhere before the interesting part of the year got rolling in earnest. We're right on the cusp. Soon we'll know if the mayor can pick a police chief. Soon it will be Prime Hurricane Season. Soon it will be Municipal Budget Season. Soon it will be football season.
Oh and the statewide elections are about to get rolling. Qualifying is next week!
And this is why I would like to remind everyone to be on the lookout for suspicious car fires. They tend to happen around this time. I have been trying to keep track over the course of many years. I think this is the most recent post to look back at it.
And now we have another to throw on the pile.
That's one week ago in our neighborhood.We actually heard it go off at about 3am. I don't know the whole story. As far a I can tell, it never made the news, which is weird because often these things do. But maybe in the context of so many things falling down or breaking apart this summer, it's just not surprising anymore. Dismaying, perhaps. But not surprising.
You may have seen a few of these signs adorning the lawns of the nicer Uptown homes this month
Here is a shocker for you. It turns out that all of the differently branded editorial voices belonging to the Georges Media Empire Holding Company are in agreement about how everyone should vote in an election. All of the Georgeses want you to approve the Audubon millage on Saturday's ballot. The Georges-Advocate says Audubon has "done a smart thing" in lumping City Park and a pair of city agencies in with their new tax proposal. The Georges-Advocate-Gambit says some nonsense about how it overcomes "a piecemeal approach" to parks management. The Times-Georges-DotCom says it's "a smart way to maximize tax dollars."
The Mayor and her friends have also dumped several hundred thousand dollars into an all out advertising blitz in favor of the new tax. According to campaign finance filings, the pro-tax PAC "Together For Parks Alliance" had spent over $180,000 through March. The report for April isn't out yet. The PAC had about $35,000 on hand to start the month. Judging from the explosion of mailers and ads on local TV and social media, I'd guess they will have spent something close to $250,000 by the time it's all over. That's a lot to dump into a single ballot measure. They could have bought one "nurse, teacher, or first responder" a whole condo for that.
We've already talked about this in terms of the hypocrisy of the elites in the Audubon adjacent fundraising clubs who think they run the city. But, okay, what is it they're actually asking voters to do? The Georgeses opinionators all say we're being asked to "renew" existing millages. But this isn't really what's happening. The proposed millage is, in fact, a whole new tax that replaces three current millages set to expire two years from now. The Georgeses also tell us that Audubon is graciously redistributing its current revenues in order to "share" something with less well funded entities. That isn't quite right either.
Audubon has two millages set to expire in 2021. One of them (labeled "Audubon Park Zoo" here) is .32 mils and meant to supplement operations and capital improvements at the privately owned and operated facility. The other one, labeled "Aquarium" for 2.99 mils was specifically dedicated to finance the construction of the Aquarium sometime way back in the 1900s. The bonds serviced by those funds are set to be paid off when the millage expires. In other words that tax has paid for what it was meant to pay for. It's just money that has been going directly to the bank for thirty years. Nobody will actually miss it when it's gone.
Although Audubon would lose more than $4 million a year in tax money,
Dietz said it will be able to absorb most of that blow when it finishes
paying off the bonds that financed building of the aquarium in 2021.
"Most" of the $4 million loss in expiring tax revenue could be "absorbed" when the debt is retired. Makes sense since that's what it was for. This is further corroborated today by a person on Twitter who informs us that Audubon has been spending approximately $3.8 million a year on debt service. If they were to come back in a couple of years and ask to renew their expiring .32 mils, that looks like it would cover the difference just fine. We could argue further about whether they're entitled to that, even. But it doesn't matter because what they're asking for is a brand new tax altogether.
The new tax is 6.31 mils. This figure is derived by combining the .32 Audubon base millage with what had been the 2.99 mils dedicated to bond financing. In order to sell the public on the deal, another 3.00 mils is added to match the amount currently shared by NORD and Parks and Parkways. The three entities then divide up the total in a way that allows each to take a little bit of what had been the Aquarium debt fund. City Park is also cut in a share.
Critically, though, for Audubon this means a dramatic increase from .32 mils for discretionary stuff UP to 1.95. The Parks and NORD millages expire in 2021. They could be renewed, or even increased, at that point. There is no need to tie the future of those mils to Audubon other than
to provide Audubon with an excuse to bump up their own funds. The claim that Audubon is actually giving something up in order to
"share" with the other parties is just a shell game. The Georges papers
certainly know this. It's a shame they have three "brands" available
with which to broadcast their lies about it.
There's also something perverse in the idea that Mayor Cantrell, who is supposed to be leading a fight for a "fair share" of tax revenues currently enjoyed by the tourism industry would promote this plan to hold our public parks and recreation departments hostage to the greedy interests of Ron Forman's commercial tourist attractions. But that's the standard procedure around here. There's no such thing as a public good if it doesn't first trickle down through the usual network of oligarchs.
Just as we're finishing up this post it looks like the new plan has passed by an overwhelming margin.
And that's what having a quarter million dollars to throw around on a single ballot question will buy you. As long as we keep funneling public money right back up into the hands of the well-to-do, there's sure to be more where that came from.
Man... I still didn't publish the second half of the Mardi Gras posts I had been working on. I wrote up a whole bunch of stuff about the Zulu blackface controversy which, I suppose, can sit until next year when I'm pretty sure people will be talking about that again. I also had some things in there about the drunk driving accident which is still relevant and will probably get dumped into something else I'm trying to finish. Meanwhile, here are some quick notes from this week before that stuff piles up on me too.
It's city-wide investment property open house season. We used to call that Jazzfest. But things are kind of different now in the "year of enforcement," as the mayor likes to call it. Also the steady stream of people I keep seeing drive slowly through the neighborhood with little notebooks says more about what goes on now. Anyway I heard a rumor that City Council is about to take up the Short Term Rentals thing again soon... as early as next week, perhaps. There are a couple of differentbills before the legislature right now that would impose new taxes on STRs as one instrument in the sprawling and sputtering search for a grand bargain between the city and the tourism industry. If lawmakers successfully tie the fate of STRs to the prospect of infrastructure revenues, it follows that City Council would be even more positively inclined to their proliferation than they already are. Which means we can look forward to seeing even more long time residents displaced by investment properties. Nobody will live here but at least we'll be able to pay for nobody's drainage.
The "Together For Parks and Recreation" moneywad is putting out on an all-out media blitz this week in favor of hooking Ron Forman up with a dedicated millage for twenty more years. They've got mailers, TV ads, all sorts of endorsements from elected persons and editorial writers. It's pretty disgusting. What's worse is even the more skeptical notes I've read are reserved in their criticism of this measure which, pretty obviously, should be rejected. But there's too much wealth and political status sitting behind it and nobody really likes to challenge the money power in this city.
Basically there are three kinds of people who will vote for this thing. They are:
1) Cynical allies of the con-profit oligarchy who have a direct financial interest and/or adjacent political interest in helping them win something.
2) Cynical political actors who have an interest in having been "on the mayor's side" of something in case they want to ask her for something else later.
3) Idiots. I like the idiots. At least they're honest.
In any case, since those are pretty much all three categories of voter that exist in New Orleans, I'm pretty sure the millage is going to pass in a landslide. Oh well. On to the next disaster.
Let's see what else? I knew there was something I wanted to mention.
Oh yeah it was CCC last weekend.
I did a slightly more robust Mardi Gras this year than last so my training was a bit behind schedule. During the Lenten season I ran a full 6.2 miles only three times coming in at or about 56 minutes. That's fine, I guess. But also there were a number of outings when I had to stop altogether after 4 or 5 miles. So I wasn't sure what to expect coming in to race day. And this is why I made the stupid mistake of neglecting to lie about my estimated time so I could sign up for the green corrall instead of the red.
It wouldn't have even been that much of a lie. 56 is just a minute over the dividing threshold. But your starting group makes a huge difference in the lived experience of this race. The reds are ostensibly joggers but the group is loaded up with baby strollers, walking clubs, bunny costumes, and all sorts of obstacles that end up making the first mile as much a lateral run as it is forward. It's fine that all that stuff goes on. But for some reason I always forget it's going to happen and I've only been doing this thing for twenty years or so. Maybe next time I'll know better.
Anyway I managed to finish. In 53:40 at that, so I could have signed up in the green group and that wouldn't have been dishonest in the first place. Still, the trend is not good. Last year was 52:13. The year before that was 48:31. But let's not worry about that too much just yet. See, I won one of these participation trophies.
They also give you one of these at the post-race festvial. But be careful. If you are trying to drink your water from it, you only get a couple of sips before you are prompted to subscribe.
Not this site, though. The Yellow Blog will always be free... if we can manage to keep it updated. Until Google decides to shutter it, of course.
During the last week of March, the City Council approved three new Sewerage and Water Board directors. These three were picked from among the names submitted by the unelected committee of business club members and university presidents who the empowers to decide such matters for some reason.
The three new members were among more than a dozen applicants recommended by a group of local university presidents convened as a selection committee, per state law. Their choices went to Mayor LaToya Cantrell,
who the law charges with making Sewerage & Water Board director
appointments. The City Council approved her appointments Thursday (March
28).
McBride watched the selection committee meeting, god bless him. It was about as bad as you might imagine. The committee members didn't seem to have done much prep. They relied heavily on the fact of current board incumbency as a qualification in and of itself. And they deferred to SWB Executive Director Ghassan Korban's opinion on who they should select as his bosses.
And then it got just plain uncomfortable. About ten minutes into the meeting, selection committee member Dr. John Nicklow made a rather surprising inquiry. I have transcribed the exchange as best as I could...
[TRANSCRIPT PORTION BEGINS]
University of New Orleans President Dr. John Nicklow: One other question, and if this is not appropriate, then so be it. If, if [S&WB Executive Director] Ghassan [Korban] would be willing to, um, speak to any applicants? Because some of these are current members, and, um, I, I, I think if you're comfortable doing so, it might be helpful to, uh, give us an indication of who's ... let me turn it around ... the best way to do it is who may be preferred, who you worked well with, who you think is an asset of the current group. But if you're not comfortable doing that, I would understand.
SWBNO Executive Director Ghassan Korban: I would be comfortable if it's in a closed session, not in an open session [crosstalk]. I don't want to, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings.
Nicklow: Are we permitted to go into a closed session?
Delgado Community College Vice Chancellor for Workforce Development and Institutional Advancement Arlanda Williams: You would have had to notify the public twenty four hours, well, thirty six hours prior to this meeting that we were going to be going into an executive session.
SWBNO Board Relations staffmember Candace Newell: To discuss this, yes.
Nicklow: Okay.
[TRANSCRIPT PORTION ENDS]
So a selection committee member asked the head of the SWBNO staff who he would like to be overseeing him. And the only objection that executive director had was that he was in open session and someone's feelings might get hurt; he'd be more than willing to spill in closed session.
And to clarify, according to state law, even that would not have been cool. Appointments are explicitly excluded from discussion allowed in closed sessions. Also, Ms. Williams was initially correct: the notification period for closed sessions is 24 hours, and the subject of the closed session also has to be notified and allowed to insist on an open session.
And this is the process by which government "watchdog" Janet Howard got appointed to a government oversight board. That and she's clearly close with the mayor. I can't remember the last time the mayor and the Bureau of Governmental Research, which Howard was the head of until recently, disagreed about anything. At least not since Cantrell became mayor, anyway.
Last month they worked together to defeat an emergency plan to shore up funding for senior services. BGR argued and the mayor agreed, we should not trust the "unaccountable" non-profit Council on Aging with dedicated public money even for only five years. We still don't know how the mayor wants to address the problem of underfunded services for seniors now. As "Grace notes" here, it's time for her to get to work on that. LaToya still says she loves the seniors, though. Hope that's enough in the meantime.
Now the mayor and the BGR are working together to promote a scheme to keep public money flowing to the private non-profit Audubon Institute by tying its fate to that of City Park, NORD, and the city Parks and Parkways Department. But if we were to take LaToya/BGR's argument against the seniors millage and apply it to the Audubon plan, we'd have to reject that too. By that standard, Parks and Parkways is really the only entity here sufficiently "accountable" to receive dedicated mils. The others are run by quasi-private boards of fundraisers.... many members of which happen to overlap and intermingle with BGR's crowd. Funny how that works.
The real problem here is we have a network of business insiders and "charitable" non-profits who form a de-facto government in New Orleans. Sometimes they get to pick who runs the Sewerage and Water Board. But even when it's not that, the daily order of business is an inherently anti-democratic exercise in protecting generational wealth through nepotism and money laundering.
BGR's and Cantrell's criticism of the Council On Aging gets us part of the way to recognizing that problem but they won't extend that criticism to similar non-profits they happen to favor. Their actual complaint is that they want to pick and choose which unaccountable elites get to play and which ones don't.
This is exacerbated by the fact that nobody reporting on this recognizes
that BGR is itself another one of these unaccountable anti-democratic
insiders' clubs. Instead they're treated as a benign observer from on
high. Here, Uptown Messenger calls them an "independent New Orleans research group." The Advocate refers to them here as a "nonpartisan policy group." Here is NOLA.com naming them a "watchdog group." This is pretty much routine. BGR is a player in the game just like everybody else. And because they seem to have the mayor's ear as well as the uncritical eye of the press so often, they're a player with a distinct advantage.
On May 4, Mayor Cantrell and BGR are asking you to vote in favor of perpetuating our governemnt-by-wine-and-cheese-clubs status quo. But the good news is they just made a fair argument against doing that one month ago. So if you are looking for a reason to vote the other way, it's right there.
Having two separate elections doubles the cost, creates confusion and
possibly fatigue among voters, and very likely pushes turnout for each
one lower than it might otherwise be.
Louisiana, simply put, allows for too many elections. Consider this silly scenario just one more example of why.
Are you guys fatigued? Frankly, I think it's been far too long since we've voted on something. I was starting to get bored. Mardi Gras ended weeks ago. LSU just got knocked out of the NCAA tournament. The Pelicans have been out of contention for a while now. Sure, Jazzfest is coming. But every year it gets harder and harder to pretend that Jazzfest doesn't suck. We need something to do. Let's go "make our voices heard" or whatever.
I have no idea why Grace hates democracy as much as she does. But it's almost every election day that we find her complaining about how confused or fatigued we poor plebeian voters must be trying to get our heads around all this weighty policy stuff. She's probably just trying to help but it does come off as a little condescending after a while. In Orleans Parish, there's only one item on the ballot this weekend. I'm pretty sure we can figure this out.
Every night there are seniors in New
Orleans going to bed hungry. Though hundreds of older adults are fed
each week by the New Orleans Council on Aging, 1,300 are on the waiting
list to receive a delivered meal. In a city of rising costs, many
homebound seniors, already on a fixed income, have described how they
ration their plate of food from Meals on Wheels to make it last for the
whole day. Hundreds more are on the waiting list for the Homemaker
Program, which provides housekeeping and chore assistance, a service
that for some is the difference between aging in place and leaving their
beloved home.
Mayor Cantrell would prefer we hold off on helping, though. She has spent the last few weeks waving around a report from the Bureau of Governmental Research which calls into question the "accountability" process for disbursing dedicated funds to private non-profits like the Council On Aging as well as the churches, and community groups it contracts with.
I have some sympathy for this argument. Complaining about the web of private clubs, NGOs, fundraisers, and business jerks who function as an informal quasi-government in New Orleans has long been a hobby horse here at the Yellow Blog. Another thing we've noticed, though, has been the way the fundraisers, club members, and business jerks who comprise the membership at BGR like to pick and choose which of these grifts to criticize and which to sanction. Thanks to the fact that we have "too many elections" in Louisiana, a perfect example of this selective criticism arrives in a little over a month.
On May 4, voters will be asked to continue Audubon's entitlement to dedicated tax revenue for 20 years. To most people, subsidizing Ron Forman's six figure salary might seem like a worse use of public funds than propping up Meals On Wheels. Voters rejected Audubon's proposed 50 year extension only a few years ago. So this time, Audubon is asking to share our wealth with the club members and fundraisers who operate City Park, as well as the club members and fundraisers who operate the semi-privatized NORD. A fourth slice of the pie is being offered to the city's Parks and Parkways department.
As the only fully public agency in the group, Parks and Parkways is the only entity here that should pass BGR's "accountability" test for dedicated revenue. City Park is a state entity but it is mostly operated by private non-profiteers and will continue that way. NORD is operated as a series of public-private partnerships. BGR hasn't criticized the Audubon proposal the way it has gone after the Council on Aging, though.
Meanwhile, the mayor has publicly campaigned for the Audubon millage while her PAC has spent $20,000 trying to defeat the Council On Aging. She's definitely made a choice. And since Cantrell never seems to disagree with BGR about anything
(what's up with that, by the way) we can assume no critical report about Audubon is
forthcoming from them.
The same sorts of structural critiques could apply to either millage but Cantrell is backing one and not the other. The key difference probably has something to do with whose hands the questionably "accountable" money passes through before it reaches its intended purpose. Some of those hands are friendlier to LaToya/BGR than others. Anyway they're choosing to feed Boysie Bollinger's lions before they feed needy seniors. I'm sure they have their reasons.
Voters may feel differently, though. Luckily we have "too many elections" so they can let us know about that.
Mayor Cantrell is hosting a series of public townhalls in order to promote the parks/Audubon millage on the March 4 ballot. You can talk to her about that or... probably... whatever else might be on your mind if you stop by at one of these. Here is the schedule.
All meetings will run from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. The schedule is as follows:
Valerio is ready to greet the public again, from a fortified pen designed to keep his bone-crushing bite to himself.
Audubon
Zoo officials announced Monday that they will reopen the New Orleans
zoo's jaguar habitat with 3-year-old Valerio, nearly seven months after
the male jaguar broke through a steel wire barrier and mauled nine other
animals early on a Saturday morning in July, killing them all. .
Valerio will turn 4 years old on March 12, by the way. Here is a photo
from, I believe, the day he turned 1 at the San Diego Zoo where he was
born
Considering the degree to which Audubon's operations are subsidized by public funds, access to rights-of-way, perks and privileges written into various management contracts and cooperative endeavor agreements and stuff.. not to mention the general social deference shown to its leadership... well, then, we'd say something like this is well overdue.
New Orleans residents will get free admission each month to the Audubon Zoo,
the Audubon Nature Institute announced Wednesday (Jan. 8). Free days
also will be offered each month at the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas,
the insectarium and the planetarium.
Every
Wednesday, Orleans Parish residents with a government-issued photo ID
will receive free admission with up to four guests to Audubon
attractions, rotating each week from the zoo, aquarium, butterfly garden
and insectarium and the planetarium at the Louisiana Nature Center.
The schedule is a little complicated but the concept is very good. The article also notes that SNAP card holders can get free daily admission at Audubon attractions and mentions a separate program for high school students with 2.5 or higher GPAs. Additionally there are Audubon passes available for check out at your public libraries. (They're very popular and supplies are limited so keep an eye out.)
Anyway, all of this was announced a few weeks ago but I saw the mayor tweeted it out again today so I thought I'd mention it. Audubon is gearing up to get a (kinder, gentler) version of its millage approved by voters in a few months. These new admission policies, while welcome, are also, it should be noted, a transparent effort to build some good will ahead of that election.
As for me, I'm not going back to the zoo until our hero Valerio returns to public view. Actually, what is taking so long with that? Back in November, he was supposed to be back "in a couple of week" but there has been no announcement since.
According to this adorable video from his younger days, Valerio's birthday is March 12. This year that is one week exactly after Mardi Gras. Maybe we'll look for him then.
It is my greatest regret of the year that I didn't have time to finish typing up an overlong post to preview this Saints' season. It ended up, like so many of these big ideas I never have time to develop anymore, getting thrown up at the last minute as a bare bones twitter thread. This is a thing that happens a lot and I'm starting to think I need a word to describe it. FailTweets isn't really adequate since every tweet is a kind of failure in the first place.
Anyway I said the Saints would win 10 games. That's still looking like a good bet. But I didn't get to tell the story I wanted to tell in the unfinished post. I'm keeping the draft because I think it's an important story which may come up again later. It is a story about Valerio. That tragic hero of this summer's incident at Audubon already has my vote for New Orleanian of 2018 for a number of reasons I'll be happy to go into when the time comes. The point, for now, is I think about him a lot.
I posted that photo of my little gourd tribute to our boy and his fallen animal comrades to social sites last night. It didn't take long for people to recognize the image. Its creator certainly got it anyway.
Never thought a graphic of mine (In this case, the escaped Audubon Zoo jaguar’s killing spree in July) would be turned into a jack-o’-lantern. My work here is done. Happy Halloween, y’all. (H/T @skooks) pic.twitter.com/0q1qsb7UGI
But, while there was obviously some humor intended in the reference, I noticed some reactions from people who inferred a gratuitous or even exploitative vibe there. Nothing can be further from the truth. There is a natural humor in Valerio's story, for sure. But humor is closely related to tragedy, subversion, and catharsis. All of these are part of the story. They are also elements of horror which is why this is a Halloween story.
Valerio's story is a story about doomed resistance. It is about the hubris of our attempt to tame the natural world. It is about the thin, uncomfortable line that exists between order and chaos; particularly when that order is built on suppressed injustices. It is a tragedy born of righteous defiance gone awry. There are themes present which hint at the inescapable consequences of colonialism, of the despoiling commodification of nature, and of the capitalist exploitation that drives it all. To contemplate the tragic horror of Valerio and his (I hesitate to use the word victims. Really they are all victims) we are forced to question our own role in its creation. The scariest monster stories aren't really about monsters.
Well, Happy Halloween. Here are some pictures I took this year at the St. Charles Avenue Skeleton House and later at the Magazine Street "Ghost Manor" Clever stuff but I didn't see any jaguar pumpkins.
The ballot issue being discussed would provide brand new tax revenue
for City Park, the New Orleans Recreation Development Commission, the
city’s Department of Parks and Parkways, and the Trust for Public Land,
the group behind the Lafitte Greenway.
It also would keep tax
dollars flowing to the Audubon Nature Institute, a nonprofit which
operates the Audubon Zoo, Audubon Aquarium of the Americas, Audubon Park
and several other nature-based attractions for the Audubon Commission, a
city agency.
An
Audubon spokeswoman would not discuss how much money the agencies might
seek or when they hope to put the issue before voters, but she said
details will be released soon.
"We are in the process of creating a
robust engagement plan to inform the community about the partnership
... and will have more information in the weeks ahead," Lauren Messina
Conrad said.
That is some heavy word choice from Conrad. You know who else had a "robust" plan to inform the community? The Times-Picayune.
It's fine to ask New Orleanians to boost funding for public parks. But a better deal for everyone would get us to a place where those same public funds aren't also supporting the social and political activities of the elite brunch clubs who sit on the boards of Audubon, City Park, and the Trust for Public Land. And they certainly shouldn't be purposed in ways that help those individuals compound their wealth. But Mayor Cantrell doesn't seem like she cares about any of that. All that matters to her is that everybody gets along. And since a lot of these rich people are friends and allies of hers, it's nice to see them all do well together. She really had to tip her hat to that.
"A lot of people felt like, 'Money is going to Audubon, and we don't know how they are benefiting or not,' " Cantrell said at a luncheon Thursday at City Park. "This time around, I really have to tip my hat to Mr. Forman, because he is rethinking and being creative as the taxes come up for renewal."
A pair of men who opposed the toppling of Gen. Robert E. Lee's statue
from Lee Circle want New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell to replace the
Confederate general with a plaza dedicated to a range of U.S. military
and associated organizations.
And, apparently undeterred by the
year and a half that has passed since Lee was taken from his pedestal,
their plan calls for returning the focus of the St. Charles Avenue
traffic circle to the man who led the Confederacy’s armies in Virginia
with a series of plaques largely dedicated to his biography.
While
the idea of a war memorial itself seems formulated to win broad support
— the proposal specifies new statues should feature figures of diverse
races and genders and include dedications to the troops of many wars,
their families and even the Red Cross — the reintroduction of plaques
lauding Lee would be a controversial move.
Stewart and Charles Marsala want to bring Lee back. Only this time they want to do it "inclusively." According to this logic, anyone who objects to the Lee monument must also hate the troops of diverse races and genders. It's the woke way to commemorate white supremacy.
Cantrell hasn't publicly tipped her hat to this idea yet. But it's very much in the same spirit of what Forman is proposing. And, remember, the mayor said several months back she would be working with monument supporters like Stewart to come up with something that will make them happy.
As
for resurrecting the fallen monuments, Cantrell she said she’d support
the group's intentions but also made it clear where she thinks the
city’s responsibility ends.
“My plan is to work with those who
care about them and come up with a plan that I could support,” she said.
“And they will pay for it.”
That bit about how "they will pay for it" bears watching also. Particularly since they're going to install this on thing in a public space. And especially particularly if Forman's creative funding plan for those public spaces goes through.
Maybe that's a little dramatic since today she only got one out of the twenty four Audubon Commission members. But it's alliterative and therefore valid. It's not clear what Kristin Palmer's overall purpose is in combing through every municipal board's makeup but following it should make for an interesting civics lesson.
Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer, chair of the council’s
governmental affairs committee, is examining all of the city’s 75 boards
and commissions regarding their composition, attendance and other
structural issues. Starting alphabetically with the Audubon Commission,
Gisleson Palmer said she found that the 1886 act of the City Council
establishing the 24-member Audubon Commission specifically required that
all of its members be “citizens and property-tax payers.”
That requirement, however, was apparently lost at some point in the
commission’s 140-year history, so Gisleson Palmer proposed restoring it,
updating the archaic “citizens and property-tax payers” to the more
modern standard of city residents. The Audubon Commission’s own
handbook, she noted, also says the members must be 24 registered voters.
“What we’re doing today is in line with how the commission was first
formed, and how it acts today,” Gisleson Palmer said during the Aug. 30
governmental affairs committee meeting. “It logically flows that members
should have inherent interests in this city and be stakeholders in New
Orleans.”
The updated rules forced one resignation today. This was not because of the residency requirement but because the new rules make it clear that only the mayor can appoint members and it turned out one guy was chosen by the Commission itself as a mid-term replacement.
Riveting stuff, I know. But these boards really do have a lot of power. Regardless of what Palmer thinks she's getting out of it, it's a worthwhile exercise to take a close look at who they are and what they do.
A broader issue — not included in the ordinance, but easy to address
through future appointments — is the lack of geographic diversity on the
Audubon Commission, Gisleson Palmer said. Her office identified 20 of
the commissioners as living “above Canal Street,” with only one in
Algiers, one in New Orleans East and one in Gentilly — even though the
majority of the commission’s holdings are well outside of Uptown, such
as the Aquarium and Insectarium, the new parks along the wharves, and
the wildlife center on the Westbank.
In the meantime, there is an opening on the Audubon Commission. (Current members include such luminaries as Boysie Bollinger, Olivia Manning, and Gayle Benson) I'd nominate Valerio but he's just another Uptown resident so that might not be wholly in the spirit of all this.
Just when the regular assortment of Louisiana plagues (termites, caterpillars, nutria, snails, hogs.. do palmetto bugs even count?) was beginning to feel tiresome, nature.. or I guess... Audubon... found a way.
The invasive Cuban treefrog, whose secretions can burn skin and eyes,
and which can outcompete native Louisiana treefrogs, has established a
breeding colony in Audubon Zoo and
The Fly that is not likely to be eradicated and could spread to the
state's coastal wetlands with potentially devastating impact, according
to researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey and the zoo.
Great. Something else that can fall out of a tree and sting you. Thanks, Ron Forman.
The zoo had imported palm trees and other plant materials from Florida
that year for its Asian exhibit, elephant exhibit and gator run area,
"and we surmised they might have come in with the landscape material
shipments," said Joel Hamilton, vice president and general curator for
the zoo, and a co-author of the paper. "But we don't know for sure."
All that's left to do now is figure out how to get them in the cookbook.
RTA (and Ron Forman's con-profit) have begrudgingly agreed to build a pedestrian bridge to the new Algiers Ferry terminal. They weren't going to do this initially but only agreed to do so after repeated pleas from riders who would very much not like to be run over or made unnecessarily late by trains on their way to work.
Even after agreeing to build the bridge, though, the decision-makers absolutely refused to cover it. This was because 1) they hate hate hate homeless people and 2) that's about it.
Pressed by Guidry, Berni further hinted that aside from added costs,
one impetus for keeping the bridge roofless might be to discourage
homeless people from being there.
"Yeah, I think that's probably one reason," Berni said. "But I'm sure there are many others, including cost."
Since late July, records show the firm designing the bridge, Manning
Architects, has sent city and transit officials several preliminary
budget drafts detailing costs. A first draft of that budget, dated July
20, pegged total estimated costs for the bridge at just under $5
million, up from officials' initial estimate of $2.6 million to $3
million in March.
Eight days later on July 28, the bridge's draft budget swelled to
between $7.8 million and $8.3 million, largely due to the appearance of a
new line item called "Add LED." That item - which later budget drafts
revised to "Add Video Board" - would cost between $1.5 million and $2
million.
Manning's preliminary budget has also included three "contingency"
costs, fluctuating in draft iterations from around $400,000 on July 20
to above $1.2 million on July 28 then back down to about $750,000 in the
budget's most recent Sept. 27 draft.
It's unclear what exactly the "Video Board" line item represents, or
if it would make it into the final budget cut. Officials say that
budget, as well as the bridge's final design, would be set only after a
cooperative endeavor agreement is signed by RTA, the city and the Audubon Nature Institute, which owns land next to its aquarium where the bridge is expected to be built.
In recent years, commuters who had depended on the ferries have endured fare hikes, limited hours, and limited functionality as the car-carrying boats were replaced with pedestrian-only service. They've had to jump up and down just to get this bridge included in the terminal design. But Audubon can always get whatever they want just by adding a line item in the plan somewhere. Just another reminder of who the city leaders believe they're actually providing services for.
