Minutes From June 5 Meeting Of Orleans Parish School Board: Using School Buses In Evacs

Orleans Parish Shool Board ^ | June 5 2005 | None

[angkor]

Senator Landrieu was well aware of this shortcoming.

Posted earlier in this thread, School Board member Phyllis Landrieu is related to Sen. Landrieu in some manner (cousin?, sister?).

She was clearly running the Board on June 9.

Check the earlier posts in this thread.

[angkor]

Any way these minutes can be routed to Major Garrett at Fox News? This certainly ties into the Red Cross/Access Denied to Superdome story he's looking into. Doesn't Tony Snow have a FR account?

This thread and the "hurricane minutes" have propagated into the blogosphere.

Some blogs linked to the original Google cache URL in Post#1, which (strangely, very strangely) is now dead. Nothing there.

Whatsup Google???? Access problems to the cached version of the minutes were reported - publicly - within 24 hours of the original post. And now they are GONE.

Other blogs have included the excerpted "hurricane preparedness" minutes from Post#1, en toto, e.g. cut and paste the entire text.

But several Freepers have stored the entire unexcerpted set of June 9 2005 minutes locally - on their own local hard disks - and can repost if necessary.

Anyone who has a newsie, send them here.

[backhoe]

Many thanks- I missed this one.

[mountainfolk]

I read on FR that she is an aunt of drama queen Senator, wannabe Scarlett O'Hara, Mary Landrieu.

[ZinGirl]

wow. great find. save it!

[ZinGirl]

Howlin, I hope I'm remembering correctly that you had found maybe another area where school buses were....aside from the one picture of the buses which floated around quite a bit on various threads (no pun intended!). Anyhow, thought you'd find this interesting. (if I'm wrong...ignore this!)

[RinaseaofDs]

Google is a gaggle of unapologetic liberals. They make no attempt to even disguise it.

[SauronOfMordor]

In the articles I've read, it's eminently clear that A&M was completely running the schools.

And here is an article from June 6, 2005 saying

More than a week after four Orleans Parish School Board members voted to hire an outside firm to take over the district's finances, the same Board members voted Tuesday to sue President Torin Sanders to force him to sign the agreement to hire the firm. Sanders wrote a letter to the state Board of Ethics last Tuesday, saying the 4-3 vote to hire New York consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal was a breach of the Board's fiduciary responsibility. Lourdes Moran, Phyllis Landrieu, Jimmy Fahrenholtz and Una Anderson voted to hire the firm; Sanders, Cynthia Cade and Heidi Lovett Daniels voted against it. Sanders said he wanted to wait to sign the agreement until the state Board of Ethics approved the deal.

So here we have the school board faction dominated by Senator Landrieu's aunt Phyllis installing A&M to take over management of the district, which means that A&M could be counted on to do exactly what the Landrieu clan wanted. Sanders was earlier installed by Landrieu, so I guess he wasn't playing ball to her liking, and she decided this was the only way to effectively remove him from control

[TaxRelief]

The only inconsistency in the theory, is that Alvarez & Marsal have an extraordinary reputation for turn-around success, that it would be highly unlikely that they would jeopardize it for their cronies.

[TaxRelief]

Hyatt and Hilton hired their own bus fleets to accomodate their staff and guests.

[najida]

The Great Southern Saga...
complete with Scarlett O'Hara and Blanche Dubois for Governor.

[TaxRelief]

Great search engine.

Here is the follow-up from June 13, 2005:

Crunch time came last week for the Orleans Parish School Board to address its troubled finances.

School Board President Torin Sanders, who had called on the governor for help while refusing to ratify an agreement to bring in a New York accounting firm to handle the school district's muddled finances, signed on to the deal.

The agreement was reached after the governor's office stepped in to help with negotiations between the state Department of Education and Sanders.

State Superintendent of Education Cecil Picard had demanded that the OPSB hire New York professional services firm Alvarez and Marsal to come in to organize the district's finances. He threatened to withhold millions in federal money for the school district if OPSB did not.

Now we can put this behind us, said School Board member Jimmy Fahrenholtz. We can move forward and start teaching kids again. It's time.

Rebecca Baker, spokeswoman for Alvarez and Marsal, would not comment on how many employees would be on the job or what it entails until after the contract is signed, as expected this week. Although Sanders signed an agreement to hire the firm, a contract still must be negotiated and signed by the state, the OPSB and the firm.

Alvarez and Marsal is delighted that progress is being made and things seem to be moving forward, Baker said. It's a good thing.

Sanders made the mistake of thinking Blanco would help him.

[anglian]

Minutes from a June 2005 Orleans Parish school board meeting show that the city and school district have been wrangling over a plan to use school buses for hurricane evacuations for some time. The minutes have been archived here.
http://home.comcast.net/~ashley_tate/bmin060905.htmhttp://home.comcast.net/~ashley_tate/bmin060905.htm Thanks to Bilges Blogspot. http://bilges.blogspot.com/2005/09/painfully-right-on-buses.html The buses may sit waterlogged instead of having been used to ferry people from the city because no one knew who's budget would be billed for driver time or fuel costs; or there weren't any licensed bus drivers available; or someone was worried about insurance liability or security for the drivers or some other simple consideration that wasn't detailed finely enough in the evacuation plan.

[anglian]

They are here. http://home.comcast.net/~ashley_tate/bmin060905.htm

[sandydipper]

Nagin was waiting for Greyhounds.

[angkor]

Nagin was waiting for Greyhounds.

Because he hadn't gained the authority to use the school buses.

I'm defending Nagin - he's incompetent - but it's important to be factual and accurate.

[angkor]

Correction:

I'm not defending Nagin - he's incompetent - but it's important to be factual and accurate.

[Libloather]

It is our interest to get buses and other vehicles that we may own out of the City in the event it is being evacuated. So those buses should not be empty. It was also his suggestion and call that they should be filled with families and children that may need a ride out of City and may perhaps designate certain high schools in different neighborhoods as staging grounds for families to go to should the need arise for an evacuation. The City is working on arrangements with different Civic Centers in Houma and depending on where the hurricane is coming from, where we need to go. They are making arrangements with institutions in those areas such as Baton Rouge, Mississippi, or Hammond to wait out the hurricane. I just wanted to bring that to your attention. In the last two years we had evacuations and with this season it is predicted to be another big one.

"The buses couldn't be used because they were under water." Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, 9/11/05

[Libloather]

It should be part of a plan in a disaster, and there are many citizens that may want to be part of it. The bottom line is always money, responsibility, and liability.

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