Them or us?
IHT (originally on NYT, but now pay-per-view): Big Plans Are Slow To Bear Fruit In New Orleans
… a year after a celebratory City Hall kickoff, there have been no cranes and no Parisian boulevards. A modest paved walking path behind a derelict old market building is held up as a marquee accomplishment of the yet-to-be-realized plan.
You’d think such an accusation would be a cause for concern for a man who calls himself the Recovery Czar. Oh wait, we live in Absurdia.
“It took us 11 years to do downtown Oakland,” said Mr. [Ed] Blakely, an academic from California who specializes in helping cities recover from disasters. “This is a process of urban redevelopment. You cannot do this overnight, no city, anyplace in the world.”
Then don’t make promises to the people of New Orleans that have OMG! UPCOMING SEPT 1 SOON! deadlines attached to them. Following that, don’t go on the Rumsfeld Defensive.
There are some specific improvements that could have been completed in this time to show as accomplishment to date, but even that is not to be found. Streets repaved in one reoccupied wet neighborhood, say Broadmoor or a portion of it. A grocery store for the Carrollton neighborhood. One phase of one of the 17 unveiled recovery zones. These are just examples of moving forward on something, anything from the plan, not to kill citizen morale. The fallout is that folks aren’t going to hang around in New Orleans for “11 years” for nothing to happen.
So it took 11 years in Oakland. That’s 132 months. We’re 31 months past Katrina/Flood. 31 months / 132 months, i.e. 11 years = 0.234, i.e. 23.5% Has the Recovery Czar’s organization done even 25% of the promised work? Ok, let’s go easy on him, let’s give him 25 years; how about 10%? If Blakely’s going to throw out numbers as excuses, we should demand answers in kind.
“I think people were expecting they’d wake up one morning and it would be nirvana. But little things are happening, cleanups, fixups, and so on.”
Oh, Mr. Blakely, if only citizens rebuilding their homes with little to no outside help could fall asleep much less wake up to such a reality. To quote Dangerblond, “Individual people are fixing up their houses, non-profit local groups organize clean-ups, volunteers, bless their hearts, still come down here from all over to help people gut and clean out the muck from their former homes. Nothing has been done toward New Orleans“ recovery that was not accomplished by individuals using their own money.” These people expect very little from the Recovery Czar after a series of system failures, but have every right to know where their city’s rebuilding funds are going or not.
There have been some uniquely New Orleans hang-ups as well, said the recovery director; “lot of tensions in the staff,” revolving around race. “Black people have a hard time taking instruction from white people,” said Blakely, who is black. There is resentment “if a white person asks them to do something. It’s really bad. I’ve never encountered anything like this.”
Be that as it may, even if City Hall is the biggest dragon in the way of Knight Blakely, he put himself in the job to surmount that which the ordinary citizen cannot accomplish on his or her own. Blakely had to know this was the biggest challenge; the resistance to change and incompetence of City Hall workers, all the way up to the mayor, is not news. Even our new Inspector General, Robert Cerasoli, cites incompetence at City Hall for setbacks and the lack of results. The only reason Cerasoli is more credible than Blakely is that Cerasoli hasn’t been paid anything yet and also has not pulled the wool over our eyes with false deadlines.
We need not to stop at the NYT article and press forward with a “What’s really going on?” line of questioning. Readers, please focus not on the outrageous soundbites and instead on the recovery funds and how they are really being used. The money pot is limited and, if nothing is done in the next few years, this city has very little claim to federal funds that are tied up in plans that are never and can never be executed.
At that point, a lot more folks than Blakely and Cerasoli will throw up their hands and walk away. You don’t need me to tell you this is something New Orleans and American can ill-afford.
It gets better. Infinite jest is, after all, infinite.
NYTimes: Justices Let Stand Ruling on Illegal F.B.I. Search
The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a lower court ruling that the F.B.I. went too far in searching the office of Representative William J. Jefferson, a Louisiana Democrat accused of using his position to promote business deals in Africa.
Tell me it’s ALL a big joke.
