Day 114: Spending $29B; A Streetcar Named Canal; Seasonal Migration

How To Spend $29 Billion?: The Washington Post reports on the financial breakdown of the $29 billion aid package recently approved by US Congress. Please note that the money has been allocated for all 2005-hurricane-ravaged states on the Gulf Coast and not just New Orleans, as some people seem to think.

Some highlights:

• $11.5 billion in Community Development Block Grants to spur economic development and help homeowners without flood insurance rebuild or repair their homes
• $4.4 billion for storm-related Defense Department expenses and facility damage.
• $2.9 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers to continue storm and flood repairs, begin reconstructing levees and accelerate studies on improving Gulf Coast flood protection.
• $1.6 billion for education, including $645 million for schools that took in students, $750 million for schools affected by the hurricanes and $200 million for higher education.

Two glaring thoughts:

1) Businesses and homes will be rebuilt using $11.5 billion, while only about a quarter of that amount goes towards storm and flood repairs. Again, repairs and not protection over and above. Tell me if the phrases temporary solution and recurring expense don’t occur to you.

[I say this while fully understanding the Catch-22 of populating New Orleans and finding these people suitable employment, while simultaneously repairing and rebuilding flood protection. No people => no rebuilding; no rebuilding => no people. However, how about beginning to pour some of that money into a larger-scale redesign of the entire levee system? All I’m asking for is some futuristic thinking.]

2) The grant technically derives from a Defense Department appropriations bill. However, $4.4 billion for “storm-related DoD expenses” has been approved with no questions asked, but Congress continues to argued over a quarter of the amount set aside for education.

“Public school districts that took in hurricane-scattered students would get $6,000 for each displaced student and $7,500 for each special education displaced student. The state reshuffled its own education spending to give school districts that took in students an extra $1,250 per student, but the districts had said that would not cover the expenses for educating them.”

*sigh* Education is our best defense against citizen apathy; energy is wasted on that kind of thought in the short term (and the long one in the case of New Orleans), isn’t it?

—

A Streetcar Named Canal: With a 100,000 residents currently in the city of New Orleans and the population expected to double in the new year, public transportation is once again in motion. YatPundit reports from the scene on the December 18 test of the Canal St. line. St. Charles service is still not available, but that’s just a matter of time.

“The testing went so well that RTA approved limited operations of six Perley Thomas streetcars on a hybrid line consisting of the Riverfront trackage and a portion of the Canal line.”

ABC News article with two-minute video segment on the streetcars of New Orleans and some footage of the Friday test.

On my last trip back, I saw the Magazine St. bus dropping passengers off by the D-Day Museum and heading up towards the direction of my neighborhood. Now I know that I can at least get home from work!

—

Seasonal Migration: Choices, choices. A day spent in Chicago wandering the hallowed halls of the Art Institute (hence re-adopting an old annual pilgrimage), shopping on Michigan Avenue and photography at Millennium Park, followed by spending time with friends in Madison, a Christmas Day dinner cooked by Aunt Candy and a Packers-Bears game at Lambeau Field? [Please don’t lose this one, dearest Packers, even if it means sending the Vikings to the playoffs.]

Or spending five days at home in NO with most of my friends having left town to be with their own families, after months of staying in the city?

Hmmmmm …

Let’s just say that given the limited police and fire services in the city, I don’t want to add to their burden by setting the turkey and pie on fire. Instead, I’m going home to the midwest – to good food, good fun and, as Jorge says, “to where the most number of people who love you are.”

Most fly south in the winter, this bird heads north.

—

This post is dedicated to Garrett Armand Alley, age 16, who passed away on Saturday in his temporary Houston home. My heart and hope go out to his mother, Beverly, who is not only a great colleague but also a brave and ever-cheerful Louisianan. Please keep the Alley family in your thoughts and prayers this holiday season.