Louisiana
Texas
Any further questions?
Posted on 10/26/2005 7:05:32 AM PDT by robowombat
A Shrinking New Orleans Mayor Says Infrastructure Can't Support Previous Population
By Ceci Connolly and Manuel Roig-Franzia Washington Post Staff Writers Wednesday, October 26, 2005; A02
NEW ORLEANS, Oct. 25 -- Mayor C. Ray Nagin, who has vowed to resurrect his crippled city, conceded Tuesday that New Orleans will shrink to nearly half its pre-hurricane population and will have to make do with one-third of its previous budget.
With as many as 250,000 homes uninhabitable and some neighborhoods still lacking basic services, Nagin estimated the city's shattered infrastructure could support 250,000 to 300,000 residents over the next year, compared with the half a million people who lived here before Hurricane Katrina struck Aug. 29.
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In a city that was 67 percent African American, Nagin won by dominating the vote in majority white districts. Many of those make up the "geographic footprint" he has identified for repopulating after the hurricane, including the Garden District, the French Quarter and Uptown.
Even the election has become entangled in disaster recovery. Federal authorities have denied requests for the addresses of Katrina evacuees. City and state officials are battling with federal authorities over the release of addresses of evacuees that could be used in absentee balloting.
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The mayor's staff has identified more than a half-dozen locations that he said could support 4,000 trailers. FEMA housing expert James McIntyre said the agency has approved construction of sites to handle more than 1,700 trailers. Trailers will be placed in the parking lot of Touro hospital, three city parks, public school property and a former Winn-Dixie parking lot. The first few thousand units will be set aside for people involved in the reconstruction, Nagin said.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The US needs a major port at or near the mouth of the Mississippi.
That is needs to be located precisely where the Port of NO was prior to Katrina is by no means as obvious.
It is at least arguable that applying the sum of money that will be spent on repairing NO to building a new city and port at a more defensible location would be more logical.
I disagree. Let ol' New Orleans sink into its own blackhole. Better that than my tax dollars into yet another welfare black tax hole.
Simple and verifiable: Proactive before, Proactive after on a state and local level. Louisiana, Both the Democrat Governor and the Demcorat Mayor didn't have a clue. Neither have an ounce of leadership ability in their bodies. There is no comparison between Governor's Jeb Bush, Rick Perry, Haley Barbour, Bob Riley and that incompetent Democrat Governor, Kathleen Blanco. Believe me, give it time and the truth will opt out about these two misfits that Louisiana elected. At the end of the day they are really not the problem. The problem rests with the citizens and voters of Louisiana. They are getting just what they voted for!!!
"New Orleans will shrink to nearly half its pre-hurricane population and will have to make do with one-third of its previous budget."
Does this make any sense? Was the tax base that heavily weighted towards the poor?
Oh, I get it! Outside tax subsities filled the city coffers!
"They are getting just what they voted for!!!"
Nope. Only 55% of the electorate is getting just what they voted for.
True! Actually things will change for the positive in Louisiana, the politics of the state will be altered significantly over the next few years by the the Hispanic influx and the destruction of Nagin's Democrat "Poverty Central" catered to and supported by the Congressional Black Caucus and the Democrat Party. A "sea change" is afoot.
Talked with a person who has relatives in NO. I asked what they thought of Nagin, the answer: "they like him". This person went on to say Bush should have done something, and obviously blamed any problems suffered in NO on Bush, not the local corrupt politics. There is no help for people like this, they would miss cancer if they were cured.
Good suggestions. But those things are going to happen anyway if the Free market gets to decide.
Individuals are still waiting to hear on the code to rebuild. Do they need to raise their foundations? Will insurance cover them? Will our local government allow them to rebuild? What about our Federal Government....are they going to put further restrictions on the rebuilding process in exchange for Fed dollars. Meanwhile, residents wait and wait and wait on all these factions of governemnt to get their crap figured out. There is a logistics nightmare here that the rest of the country fails to realize and it's all tied up in local, State, and FEDERAL beauracracy, red tape, Fema, etc.
"A "sea change" is afoot."
That's what the good people of Lousiana want to believe. On the political side of things,.....there are people already second-guessing their vote for Blanco when we could have had a super conservative stalwart in the name of Bobby Jindal. We hope he runs again.
"Any further questions?"
Yeah, how are you so sure that's Heineken? It could be Grolsch you know.........
No, it's heineken alright.
Anybody who wants to live in New Orleans should put their money where their mouth is and rebuild it themselves. Then they can rebuild it anyway they want. And get some insurance while they're at it.
Why should we have to pay to rebuild it?
Of course they like him. Compared to Morial, he is a saint.
I just spent 10 days working in a Red Cross shelter in Monroe, LA. Though the population of the shelter was small and shrinking quickly, I still finally got a hint of the size of this problem. Katrina/Rita meant the Red Cross provided over 22 million meals, gave over 3 million overnight stays in shelters, and mobilized over 180 thousand workers to rovide these and other services.
My point (and I do have one) is that this is one HUGE disaster. The crippling, be it never so temporary, of a city with over 800,000 residents was only part of a larger disruption extending from parts of coastal TX through coastal LA and MS, to coastal AL -- a lot of real estate and a whole lot of people.
Nobody is going to get this one right. The paradigm here is not brain surgery, it's the old aviation saying that good landing is one you walk away from (as opposed to one from which pieces of your burned corpse are carried).
I'm not disagreeing with anyone here, just venting and hoping to adumbrate. This is ajob which is worht doing badly and it's going to be done badly -- which is still way better than not doing it at all.
Bless you for your service to the unfortunate. I totally agree with you about the scope of this tragedy and your point that there couldn't have been a perfect response. However, the cold, hard facts won't stop the ignorant from searching for someone to blame their hardship on.
"Then they can rebuild it anyway they want. And get some insurance while they're at it."
You can't rebuild it anyway you want and expect to get "some insurance." It doesn't work that way.
Probably commuters from the suburbs - many of whom have no jobs to return to - made up the difference.
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