Posted on 11/18/2006 6:39:51 PM PST by Graybeard58
Wilbert Ross is known as a fighter to fellow residents of Renaissance Village, the trailer park for hurricane evacuees in Baker.
His latest battle is to keep bus service for the people who live there.
Several dozen hurricane evacuees, including Ross, met Friday at Faith Chapel Church on Staring Lane with officials from the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority. The evacuees met to express their opposition to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s decision to end funding for emergency transportation services.
The services set to end Nov. 30 because of a lack of funding include the use of RTA vehicles that have supplemented public transportation in Baton Rouge since Hurricane Katrina, including 15 sedans and four lift-equipped vans for the disabled.
“From the beginning, we’ve been fighting to keep things,” said Ross, president of the Renaissance Village advisory council.
He pointed to government-provided propane for heating and an on-site kitchen for free meals as services no longer provided.
He said residents of Renaissance Village rely on the buses to get to school, work, medical appointments, shopping and for many other things.
“If I have to fight FEMA for these services, God knows I will,” Ross said. “I believe the government has let us down.”
“It’s about making sure those babies are comfortable, all those elderly are taken care of,” he added.
The New Orleans Regional Transit Authority has assisted with public transportation in Baton Rouge since October 2005, helping to meet the needs of the Baton Rouge area’s increased population after Katrina, said Mark Major, NORTA general manager.
Originally, FEMA awarded funding of $47 million to provide the emergency transportation through June 30, 2006. FEMA provided an additional $20.3 million to extend the service through Nov. 30, Major said.
In its request for more funding, RTA asked for $40 million to continue the service through Sept. 30, Major said.
So far, he said, FEMA has denied the request.
Major provided a letter from Jim Stark, director of FEMA’s Louisiana Transitional Recovery Office, in which Stark cites “the stable situation in Louisiana” as the reason for denying the extension.
A woman in Stark’s office said he was not available for comment Friday.
FEMA spokeswoman Rachel Rodi described the funding as a “limited interagency agreement intended to meet urgent, immediate and short-term needs.”
That funding no longer is viable because Louisiana now is in the recovery phase, she says in a written statement.
In response to FEMA’s decision to end emergency transportation funding, Louisiana’s congressional delegation asked FEMA on Tuesday to reconsider.
“I don’t believe there’s been a formal response yet,” said Adam Sharp, a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La.
“What this comes down to is a fundamental flaw of logic by FEMA,” Sharp said. “You don’t have to walk very far to see that the situation is not stabilized. Clearly, FEMA has its blinders on.”
Baton Rouge is still the state’s largest city, and was put in that position overnight, Sharp said.
The emergency bus service carried more than 160,000 passengers in August — the size of a small city, Landrieu’s office says.
Sharp said FEMA’s measure that the federal government would continue to provide assistance until the situation becomes stabilized is a good one.
“But we haven’t reached that yet,” he said. “We are nowhere near that.”
Gov. Kathleen Blanco also responded on Friday, with a letter to Donald Powell, federal coordinator for Gulf Coast Rebuilding.
Blanco asks for Powell’s “urgent and active assistance” to have FEMA extend the service.
“Efforts by FEMA to come up with alternative funding and operating plans will not be ready by December,” Blanco’s letter says. “The resulting loss of transit service will result in once again negatively affecting the victims of the storms.”
In the letter, Blanco also disputes the characterization that things in Louisiana have stabilized.
Nadine Dunbar, with the Governor’s Office for Disability Affairs, who attended Friday’s meeting, said she spent hours on the phone with state and federal officials during the week trying to come up with both short-term and long-term solutions.
“We’re trying to secure additional funding sources in the event that FEMA does not continue the funding,” Dunbar said.
I say keep them on a bus route but charge them.
Pay for ones own transportation? Whoever heard of such a thing?
Free transportation is a right isn't it?
I wonder if he considered alternatives to Uncle stealing from other citizens to provide it. I dunno, maybe he could consider charities or something novel like that.
I'm lost. Have you seen America? Which way did she go?
Around here, the United Way helps out with things like this. they get their funding from donations from workers in the area....... oh...ever mind.....
Simple question to this Mr. Ross: "When do you expect the Nanny Government to stop bottle feeding you?"
I didn't know there's anything in the United States Constitution about providing free bus transportation.
If it is getting 160,000 passengers a month, I am sure that even with a fare of, say $1.50, the bus route would be quite viable. Many entire systems don't get those kind of numbers, forget individual bus routes.
I wonder if all those buses sold on eBay.
Yeah, we saw the fine people of New Orleans fighting to keep things, alright. Their neighbours' TVs, stereos, game machines and booze, mostly.
A hurricane came to town, and they've been parked on their plush seats with their grasping hands out ever since.
Compare and contrast the news from Mississippi, which was hit equally hard; or the Alabama seacoast. "What news?" you may ask. Yeah, exactly.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Well Jose, this is why a lot of us were brought up to not DEPEND on the government.
.......like to pick up government checks and casino trips
Doogle
“From the beginning, we’ve been fighting to keep being given things,” said Ross, president of the Renaissance Village advisory council.
What you should have been fighting for is to improve your situation, not maintain the status quo on my dime. It's been well over a year. Time to quit being a victim and start being the master of your own destiny.
Yes and any NOLA resident who is WORKING will think that $1.50 is a bargain to get to work. Oops!
They're trying to turn FEMA into another welfare agency. Time (past-time) for them to go to work and provide for themselves.
Hey, go ask chocolate boy - Mr. Ray Nagin to solve your problem.
He knows about buses.
I know. Nagin is a total dolt and was re-elected. Blanco and Landireau did nothing except sling mud at W, and then they have that crook William Jefferson. What a pathetic, hapless, lazy bunch of fools in that state. I do have empathy for the good poeple in LA though.
What's being asked for here? Is FEMA paying for buses to run around New Orleans (NO's public bus system was called RTA)? Or is FEMA paying RTA to run a route from Baton Rouge to New Orleans? (Never would be allowed when I was there....if you lived in Jefferson Parish the bus left you off once you crossed the Orleans Parish line and then you had to take RTA the rest of the way)...exception was that JT got the Airline Highway route and RTA got the Kenner loop.
Or did New Orleans promise to pay for additional bus service around Baton Rouge if Baton Rouge would take their evacuees and get FEMA to pay for it?
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