A plan with no money
(wdsu.com) NEW ORLEANS — A $14.4 billion rebuilding blueprint for New Orleans passed its first regulatory hurdle Tuesday, with the city planning commission approving the plan — but the panel gave it a less-than-ringing endorsement.
Commissioner Edward Robinson Sr. and other board members said the plan is an imperfect starting point to charting the recovery and rebuilding of New Orleans, but it’s “movable.”
[...]
The plan, which calls for such things as elevating and clustering neighborhoods, is the latest in a litany of proposals that have come forward since Katrina hit in August 2005. It’s been billed as the most comprehensive, developed after a months-long planning process that included extensive public comment.
But it — like its predecessors — has one basic problem: It comes with no money. Finding the money needed to move major infrastructure projects forward has been one of the city’s biggest problems; police are still working out of trailers. Even all the money eyed for city recovery director Edward Blakely’s smaller, $1.1 billion plan is far from being secured. (more…)
Reading this really makes me sick in so many ways. Before Katrina, New Orleans was a forgotten wasteland of corrupt politics, an ever-increasing homicide rate, large welfare demographic, and bad public schools. Each year, folks would flock to this city for one thing only–Mardi Gras. During all those years I cannot recall not one time hearing folks make a big deal about all the issues I just mentioned. Katrina came and folks raised pure hell from coast to coast with a few whip slashes shy of making the Katrina story into a full revisitation of Black slavery in America.
Fast forward to today and who is one of the main roadblocks keeping much needed money away from this city?
Mayor Ray Nagin and state government.
As of Jan. 18, the Federal Emergency Management Agency had agreed to pay $334 million for infrastructure repairs in New Orleans, but Louisiana had forwarded only $145 million to the city. State officials have said city leaders failed to provide required documentation, which Nagin called cumbersome.
Also, eight months after it was hired, a Virginia-based consulting company in charge of dispensing billions in federal aid to people whose homes were damaged by hurricanes Katrina and Rita has received 101,000 applications but handed out fewer than 300 grants. (source)
I say, fire Nagin and replace him with some crusty ol’ “racist” White man (hmmmmm, let’s see ………) I KNOW! Don Imus. With Imus in charge, the case could be made (grit your teeth in anger when you read at this point) that it is HE via his r-r-r-r-racist motivations who is withholding money from this city full of po’ Black folks in order to drive them away to make it into a White city (This would not work under Nagin—okay, stop gritting your teeth)…
(Could you imagine the outrage? Man, there would be a march every week!)
…’cause Lawd knows with decades of maintaining the status quo under mediocure Black leadership, New Orleans is on the fast track of returning to its pre-Katrina era.
But I hear the food is still good!
