Fool me once, shame on me Fool me six times in two years....

Well then I guess it might be time to rethink things.

NEW ORLEANS — Citywide flooding events like what happened Monday afternoon are "extreme" and require a "thorough investigation," a Sewerage & Water Board spokesperson said.

As much as 5 inches of rain fell across the metro New Orleans area between about 1:30 p.m. and 4:10 p.m. Monday, creating widespread flooding that affected many parts of New Orleans as cars stalled, gridlock formed, businesses flooded and residents dealt with all-too-familiar frustration.

It's at least the sixth time during the past two years that heavy rains inundated different parts of the city following a seemingly routine summer thunderstorm.

S&WB communications director Richard Rainey said the results of Monday's flooding were "extreme," and that the flood events they've witnessed since the notable Aug. 5, 2017, flood are a phenomenon that need to be investigated. 

Was Monday "extreme"?  What does that even mean anymore?  It wasn't quite as bad as the flood we had last month.  But it wasn't nothing. I happened to be headed uptown on St. Charles when it hit. When I saw that Washington was going to be impassable for a while, I pulled over and parked on the sidewalk.  Like a lot of people, I wasn't going anywhere for a while.  Some of these larger vehicles were a little more confident.





I did get out and walk around a bit. The worst of the rain had already cleared up when I took these photos.  It was brief but it dropped enough water to do this.



It also shut down the streetcar which left packs of bewildered tourists to trudge their way up the neutral ground on foot.. provided they stuck to the high ground.  Also it wasn't long until the canoe people started to show up.  Why are there always canoe people when this happens?



I mean I took that picture from the neutral ground just 20 feet away.  My feet weren't even wet.  You didn't need a canoe to get where you were going.  This was strictly a recreational activity.  There was more than one canoe guy too. There's always more than one.  Here you can see a canoe passing in front of the New Orleans and Company offices. Embossed lettering on their building proudly proclaims it the "Headquarters of New Orleans Tourism."



Speaking of which, just across the street in front of the Avenue Plaza, I overheard someone saying, "Back in Atlanta we don't have this shit." That's right.  #OnlyInNOLA, baby.



But, okay, probably just the fact that we're talking about seeing the canoes every time this happens means something is wrong.  How often should this be happening?  Six major street floods in the space of two years is a lot.  And it's not just the frequency of the flooding that is unusual. It's also the locations.  This stretch of St. Charles is relatively high ground. The river side tends to pool up a little bit from time to time but I can't recall seeing the whole street inundated like that until very recently.  Same goes for this stretch of Carondelet which was flooded Monday.



This one is from the July flood. It's Third and Carondelet. I've lived nearby for almost 20 years and I've never seen it do this.



Something is definitely different. But what?  Here is one theory.

The S&WB is studying the effects of the massive culverts built in recent years under several Uptown avenues as part of the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, known as SELA. A report on the impact SELA has had on drainage in the area could be complete as early as next month, Korban said.

My goodness. Imagine if after all these years, all the money spent, all the neighborhoods and business disrupted by the construction, all the expensive property damage incurred that SELA actually would have ended up making things worse. Delightful!

Anyway, it's not just SELA they're looking at. Korban says they also want to look at the pipes under the CBD. 

To try to figure out what’s wrong, the S&WB plans to investigate the long length of box canals that run from Julia Street up to Drainage Pump Station 2 on North Broad Street, which is responsible for keeping the area dry. Just blocks away from that station, the S&WB is still working to clean a massive pile of debris, that included at least one car, from the canal that carries water away from the station on its way to the lake.

It's strange that it has taken them so long to admit this, But it turns out that even when the pumps are working at (near) full capacity, they can't pump the water out of the city if it's not even draining down to where they are.  So now we're gonna go down in the culverts.  We learned last week that practically anything could be down there. It's probably not going to be pretty.

But we should point out also that there is more than one reason they're looking at those downtown pipes.  They've actually been planning to go down there for some time; prior to this flood, and before even the much discussed extraction of a Mazda 626 from below Jeff Davis Parkway. In the story about that episode, we read about these negotiations. 

Similar inspections of pipes in the Central Business District are being pitched to the Downtown Development District to encourage it to agree to a new, $3 million tax that was negotiated as part of the Cantrell administration's infrastructure funding deal this year with the hospitality industry, Green said. 

It's not just.. or perhaps even primarily... concern about downtown drainage issues that is motivating the inspections. It's the pursuit of political leverage with a taxing authority that, really, shouldn't even exist in the first place. That doesn't mean going down to look at the pipes is a bad idea. It's just that we should be aware of why they're looking at those pipes in particular.

And to be clear, it's not just support for the new tax, the mayor is asking from DDD. She also wants them to roll their millage forward to maximize windfall from the recent property assessments.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration is asking the DDD to increase its millage by $2.5 million and dedicate that money toward drainage and infrastructure issues in the area. The district had planned to roll back its tax rate in 2020 because of higher property assessments; the additional tax would keep the rate about the same for the area.

An effort to actually identify and begin fixing the drainage problems could help convince the district’s board that such a move is needed, Weigle said.

On Monday morning, the very same day the streets flooded,  Together New Orleans presented a report to City Council about the devastating effects the skyrocketing assessments and potential property tax hikes are likely to have on the city's already severely cost-burdened homeowners and renters.  

Together New Orleans estimated that almost 2,000 households will see their taxes go up by more than $1,000 next year. And because of a recent state constitutional amendment that phases in the higher taxes on assessments that increase a property’s value by more than 50%, nearly 5,200 will have a total increase of more than $1,000 in the next four years due to this year's citywide reassessment.

Some neighborhoods will see tax increases that represent more than 4% of the average median income of the residents living there, Together New Orleans said.

“When you add all that together, there’s no way folks can continue to live here even if they make a decent wage,” the Rev. Joe Connelly, a member of the group, told the council.

Councilmembers were apoplectic. But also they seemed to be at a loss for solutions.  At one point, Helena Moreno even wondered out loud if we could just ignore the assessment and decide to collect this year's property taxes assuming the previous values. That's not likely to happen.  But it's also clear that rolling forward isn't going to be a popular option with Councilmembers either.

But City Council isn't the only body who will be making decisions about millage rates. In fact Council actually only controls something like half of them. The others are spread out among several taxing authorities including the Sheriff's office, Audubon, the Convention Center, and, yes, the Downtown Development District where it looks like the mayor, via Sewerage and Water Board has found some leverage.  It almost makes you wonder whether or not LaToya might want to think about shoving a few cars down the storm drain herself just to provide a little extra motivation.

Why do we even have a DDD?

It's a little bit different from most of the parcel fees and security districts that fragment our municipal map. But only in that it's even more of a ridiculous slush fund.  What they're arguing about here is Mitch's decision to raid DDD in order to shore up city pension funds a few years back.  That was probably technically illegal... but also without a doubt one of the best things Mitch did while he was in office.

That doesn't make its director happy. But only because it means less money he gets to pass out to friends and patrons to do "economic development."

Weigle shot back that his organization's lawsuit to stop the city from withholding its funds to pay pension costs was necessary.

"Keep in mind, the revenue of the DDD comes from taxpayers downtown," he said. "I think there is a responsibility on behalf of the organization to stand up for its taxpayers and to ensure that DDD funds are spent downtown."

The organization levies a special property tax to pay for enhanced government services, capital projects and economic development efforts in the area bounded by Claiborne Avenue, Iberville, the river and the Pontchartrain Expressway.

Weigle said his organization needs things like an economic development department to help attract retail and other businesses to the Central Business District. And he denied that trash and graffiti abatement is lackluster in areas the DDD maintains.

Notice that line about how the DDD entity is supposed to "stand up for its taxpayers" as if there is some sort of legitimacy imbued by their skimming arrangement. Nobody elected Kurt Weigel to anything. None of these taxpayers belong to him or to DDD which shouldn't even exist in the first place.

Property > people

Sometimes the parody writes itself.

At least 16 self-storage projects are in some phase of development in the New Orleans area, according to real estate investors and industry analysts. The boom will add well over 1 million square feet of new storage space — enough square footage to cover all of Canal Street from the Mississippi River to Interstate 10.

The recent boom in New Orleans is part of a national trend, driven by shifts in the real estate market, low interest rates, and the search by investors for a high-yielding investment that will hold up even in recessions.

The $32 billion dollar self-storage industry has grown by roughly 4.5 percent annually in recent years, significantly faster than the broader economy. In the last year, investors have added $4 billion in new storage spaces.

I especially love the image the Advocate chose to illustrate the extent of the square footage since the river-to-I10 is also a rough description of where most of the above sea level land is located around here.

Anyway, the city of New Orleans... like much of the country... is in the throes of a desperate affordable housing crisis.  Meanwhile capital has decided the best, highest, use of scarce real estate is building big lifeless crates to store things rather than house people.

That has helped push up rental rates on existing spaces. Real estate consultant Kevin Hilbert said investors have begun waking up to the fact that rents on some local storage units “are on a par with” suburban luxury apartments.

“Some storage companies can get $300 a month for a 10-foot by 10-foot unit,” he said. “You can get a pretty nice apartment for $3 a square foot.”

And self-storage, which generally consists of a warehouse divided into “rooms” of varying size, requires only a fraction of the maintenance and other costs that apartment buildings incur.

Real estate investors typically borrow most of the money they use to invest in properties, so low interest rates are allowing them to borrow cheaply.

Not a thing wrong with that market-driven system, right? Not according to  City Planning Comissioners Robert Steeg and Walter Isaacson who had this to say when considering a modest inclusionary zoning plan this month.

Commissioner Robert Steeg asked the CPC staff whether the city would be better “using a carrot rather than a stick” to attract affordable development through tax incentives, and whether there are “any empirical studies or data driven analysis as to which of those two methods works best.”

Isaacson also asked whether the “large amounts of new housing units proposed and coming onto the market” may end up dropping prices into affordable ranges “just by market forces.”

Market forces are going to have us all living in orange metal sheds, I guess, but that's the best we can do.

Update:  This afternoon your friends at CPC just voted to pass a recommendation to allow the Motwani-Sonder STR Strip on Canal St.  on up to City Council. As we've noted previously, the councilmembers don't seem to give a shit about protecting your housing stock from predatory capitalism either.  A lot of people have spent several years and a lot of hard work trying to convince them to give at least a little bit of a shit.  That hasn't worked.  I honestly have no idea if anything will.

Upperdate:  Okay now we can see why this all passed CPC so easily today.  The mayor, the DDD, and a few council members already had the fix in on it. 

Cantrell took a more critical view of the state of Canal Street. She remains concerned about cleanliness and the presence of vagrants often seen sleeping in the street.

"We have great, great space -- we know that and it's historic. But we have to do better," Cantrell said. "Even with pressure washing the buildings, you drive Canal Street, it's nasty. ... It still feels grimy."

Weigle said that in addition to Sonder's deal involving the three Motwani buildings, the Downtown Development District is exploring creative ways to get other buildings back in commerce. On the 800 block of Canal Street, Weigle said there's a plan to combine the vacant upper floors of three separately owned buildings into a new entity that would preserve the property rights of the first-floor owners who want to continue earning revenue from their respective retail spaces.

Love tooo preserve the retailers' property rights. But not nearly as much as we love "quality of life enforcement." 

Weigle said quality of life issues are also going to be key to improving Canal Street. The Downtown Development District is expanding its staff of public safety rangers from six to eight rangers during peak hours and evenings, and from two to four during the 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. shift. The district has also created high priority areas for quality of life enforcement.

Its new enforcement efforts will target obstructing a public passage, public drunkenness, unlawful use of loudspeakers, aggressive panhandling and bicycling on the sidewalks, Weigle said.

Basically, they're gonna scrub the buildings down, hollow them out, and turn them all into vacation rental properties which they will protect the investment value of by aggressively rooting all us drunks, panhandlers and bicyclists out of the neighborhood.  This is Dizneylandrieu on steroids and I'm all out of answers as to what is to be done. For a minute or two we were kind of hoping it would make a difference if we just asked our elected reps to remember the poor folks a little bit when they made their land use decisions. But it's clear they don't give a shit.  Not sure what happens next. 

Actually, I always liked the berms

There are a couple of interesting quotes from Kurt Weigle in this story about the re-make of Duncan Plaza. City Council recently agreed to a lease with the Downtown Development District whose plans for managing the park include a redesign. It appears this is being done so that the park can be a better venue than Lafayette Square for hosting whatever Fried Chicken Festivals of the Future may come along.

“Lafayette Square has really taken a beating in the last 10 years or so because it’s such a wonderful space and a lot of people want to use it for events. But it was never designed to be that type of a park,” Weigle said.

Fine, I guess. But just say that. The sidebar rationalization about perceived safety issues is embarassing.

“A definite problem right now is the berms in the middle that obstruct the views into and out of the park,” Weigle said. “It contributes to a sense that the park is not safe, despite the fact that I can’t remember any incident (of crime) in the park.”

Do the berms make the park unsafe? Well, no, but just say that it feels crimey or whatver. That should get us more space to put the vendors' booths. Anyway, it's fine. They're probably correct. Duncan Plaza does seem like a more suitable and open space to fit the crowds drawn by the 8-10 new random food item festivals we're manufacturing every year now.

As long as they're planning to keep the public space there open to the public, there's no reason to complain. Recall that only a few years ago, the city cleared out a homeless encampment from the park just ahead of preparations to host Super Bowl XLVII. Since then, it's become a prominent gathering space for the increasing number of public protests one sees here in the Time Of Trump.


Inauguration Day "J20" Protest

Weigle says the plan is to maintain the status quo there.  But let's make sure we keep this quote handy as this process moves along just in case.

“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.”