I hope they at least buy Valerio something nice

You may have seen a few of these signs adorning the lawns of the nicer Uptown homes this month

Here is a shocker for you.  It turns out that all of the differently branded editorial voices belonging to the Georges Media Empire Holding Company are in agreement about how everyone should vote in an election. All of the Georgeses want you to approve the Audubon millage on Saturday's ballot. The Georges-Advocate says Audubon has "done a smart thing" in lumping City Park and a pair of city agencies in with their new tax proposal. The Georges-Advocate-Gambit says some nonsense about how it overcomes "a piecemeal approach" to parks management. The Times-Georges-DotCom says it's "a smart way to maximize tax dollars."

The Mayor and her friends have also dumped several hundred thousand dollars into an all out advertising blitz in favor of the new tax. According to campaign finance filings,  the pro-tax  PAC "Together For Parks Alliance" had spent over $180,000 through March. The report for April isn't out yet. The PAC had about $35,000 on hand to start the month.  Judging from the explosion of mailers and ads on local TV and social media, I'd guess they will have spent something close to $250,000 by the time it's all over.   That's a lot to dump into a single ballot measure. They could have bought one "nurse, teacher, or first responder" a whole condo for that.

We've already talked about this in terms of the hypocrisy of the elites in the Audubon adjacent fundraising clubs who think they run the city. But, okay, what is it they're actually asking voters to do? The Georgeses opinionators all say we're being asked to "renew" existing millages.  But this isn't really what's happening.  The proposed millage is, in fact, a whole new tax that replaces three current millages set to expire two years from now. The Georgeses also tell us that Audubon is graciously redistributing its current revenues in order to "share" something with less well funded entities. That isn't quite right either.

Here is the Assessor's sheet of current dedicated millages in Orleans Parish.

Audubon has two millages set to expire in 2021. One of them (labeled "Audubon Park Zoo" here) is .32 mils and meant to supplement operations and capital improvements at the privately owned and operated facility.  The other one, labeled "Aquarium" for 2.99 mils was specifically dedicated to finance the construction of the Aquarium sometime way back in the 1900s. The bonds serviced by those funds are set to be paid off when the millage expires. In other words that tax has paid for what it was meant to pay for. It's just money that has been going directly to the bank for thirty years. Nobody will actually miss it when it's gone.

Audubon's spokesperson admits as much in this article. 

Although Audubon would lose more than $4 million a year in tax money, Dietz said it will be able to absorb most of that blow when it finishes paying off the bonds that financed building of the aquarium in 2021.

"Most" of the $4 million loss in expiring tax revenue could be "absorbed" when the debt is retired. Makes sense since that's what it was for. This is further corroborated today by a person on Twitter who informs us that Audubon has been spending approximately $3.8 million a year on debt service. If they were to come back in a couple of years and ask to renew their expiring .32 mils, that looks like it would cover the difference just fine. We could argue further about whether they're entitled to that, even. But it doesn't matter because what they're asking for is a brand new tax altogether.


The new tax is 6.31 mils. This figure is derived by combining the .32 Audubon base millage with what had been the 2.99 mils dedicated to bond financing. In order to sell the public on the deal, another 3.00 mils is added to match the amount currently shared by NORD and Parks and Parkways.  The three entities then divide up the total in a way that allows each to take a little bit of what had been the Aquarium debt fund. City Park is also cut in a share.

Critically, though, for Audubon this means a dramatic increase from .32 mils for discretionary stuff  UP to 1.95. The Parks and NORD millages expire in 2021. They could be renewed, or even increased, at that point. There is no need to tie the future of those mils to Audubon other than to provide Audubon with an excuse to bump up their own funds. The claim that Audubon is actually giving something up in order to "share" with the other parties is just a shell game.  The Georges papers certainly know this.  It's a shame they have three "brands" available with which to broadcast their lies about it. 

There's also something perverse in the idea that Mayor Cantrell, who is supposed to be leading a fight for a "fair share" of tax revenues currently enjoyed by the tourism industry would promote this plan to hold our public parks and recreation departments hostage to the greedy interests of Ron Forman's commercial tourist attractions.  But that's the standard procedure around here.  There's no such thing as a public good if it doesn't first trickle down through the usual network of oligarchs.

Just as we're finishing up this post it looks like the new plan has passed by an overwhelming margin.

And that's what having a quarter million dollars to throw around on a single ballot question will buy you.  As long as we keep funneling public money right back up into the hands of the well-to-do, there's sure to be more where that came from. 

BGR asks you to reelect the shadow government

During the last week of March, the City Council approved three new Sewerage and Water Board directors. These three were picked from among the names submitted by the unelected committee of business club members and university presidents who the empowers to decide such matters for some reason.

The new board members include Janet Howard, the former president and CEO of the watchdog Bureau of Governmental Research; Dr. Maurice Sholas, a New Orleans-based psychiatrist who runs a clinic consulting firm; and Glen Pilié, an attorney with the firm Adams and Reese who worked as a civil engineer with the U.S. Corps of Engineers in the 1970s.

The three new members were among more than a dozen applicants recommended by a group of local university presidents convened as a selection committee, per state law. Their choices went to Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who the law charges with making Sewerage & Water Board director appointments. The City Council approved her appointments Thursday (March 28).

McBride watched the selection committee meeting, god bless him.  It was about as bad as you might imagine.  The committee members didn't seem to have done much prep.  They relied heavily on the fact of current board incumbency as a qualification in and of itself.  And they deferred to SWB Executive Director Ghassan Korban's opinion on who they should select as his bosses.

And then it got just plain uncomfortable. About ten minutes into the meeting, selection committee member Dr. John Nicklow made a rather surprising inquiry. I have transcribed the exchange as best as I could...

[TRANSCRIPT PORTION BEGINS]

University of New Orleans President Dr. John Nicklow: One other question, and if this is not appropriate, then so be it. If, if [S&WB Executive Director] Ghassan [Korban] would be willing to, um, speak to any applicants? Because some of these are current members, and, um, I, I, I think if you're comfortable doing so, it might be helpful to, uh, give us an indication of who's ... let me turn it around ... the best way to do it is who may be preferred, who you worked well with, who you think is an asset of the current group. But if you're not comfortable doing that, I would understand.

SWBNO Executive Director Ghassan Korban: I would be comfortable if it's in a closed session, not in an open session [crosstalk]. I don't want to, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings.

Nicklow: Are we permitted to go into a closed session?

Delgado Community College Vice Chancellor for Workforce Development and Institutional Advancement Arlanda Williams: You would have had to notify the public twenty four hours, well, thirty six hours prior to this meeting that we were going to be going into an executive session.

SWBNO Board Relations staffmember Candace Newell: To discuss this, yes.

Nicklow: Okay.

[TRANSCRIPT PORTION ENDS]

So a selection committee member asked the head of the SWBNO staff who he would like to be overseeing him. And the only objection that executive director had was that he was in open session and someone's feelings might get hurt; he'd be more than willing to spill in closed session.

And to clarify, according to state law, even that would not have been cool. Appointments are explicitly excluded from discussion allowed in closed sessions. Also, Ms. Williams was initially correct: the notification period for closed sessions is 24 hours, and the subject of the closed session also has to be notified and allowed to insist on an open session.

And this is the process by which government "watchdog" Janet Howard got appointed to a government oversight board. That and she's clearly close with the mayor. I can't remember the last time the mayor and the Bureau of Governmental Research, which Howard was the head of until recently, disagreed about anything. At least not since Cantrell became mayor, anyway.

Last month they worked together to defeat an emergency plan to shore up funding for senior services. BGR argued and the mayor agreed, we should not trust the "unaccountable" non-profit Council on Aging with dedicated public money even for only five years.  We still don't know how the mayor wants to address the problem of underfunded services for seniors now.  As "Grace notes" here, it's time for her to get to work on that. LaToya still says she loves the seniors, though. Hope that's enough in the meantime.

Now the mayor and the BGR are working together to promote a scheme to keep public money flowing to the private non-profit Audubon Institute by tying its fate to that of City Park, NORD, and the city Parks and Parkways Department. But if we were to take LaToya/BGR's argument against the seniors millage and apply it to the Audubon plan, we'd have to reject that too. By that standard, Parks and Parkways is really the only entity here sufficiently "accountable" to receive dedicated mils. The others are run by quasi-private boards of fundraisers.... many members of which happen to overlap and intermingle with BGR's crowd. Funny how that works. 

The real problem here is we have a network of business insiders and "charitable" non-profits who form a de-facto government in New Orleans.  Sometimes they get to pick who runs the Sewerage and Water Board. But even when it's not that, the daily order of business is an inherently anti-democratic exercise in protecting generational wealth through nepotism and money laundering.

BGR's and Cantrell's criticism of the Council On Aging gets us part of the way to recognizing that problem but they won't extend that criticism to similar non-profits they happen to favor.  Their actual complaint is that they want to pick and choose which unaccountable elites get to play and which ones don't.
 
This is exacerbated by the fact that nobody reporting on this recognizes that BGR is itself another one of these unaccountable anti-democratic insiders' clubs. Instead they're treated as a benign observer from on high.  Here, Uptown Messenger calls them an "independent New Orleans research group." The Advocate refers to them here as a "nonpartisan policy group." Here is NOLA.com naming them a "watchdog group."  This is pretty much routine. BGR is a player in the game just like everybody else.  And because they seem to have the mayor's ear as well as the uncritical eye of the press so often, they're a player with a distinct advantage.

On May 4, Mayor Cantrell and BGR are asking you to vote in favor of perpetuating our governemnt-by-wine-and-cheese-clubs status quo. But the good news is they just made a fair argument against doing that one month ago. So if you are looking for a reason to vote the other way, it's right there.

Yelling at the mayor opportunities

Mayor Cantrell is hosting a series of public townhalls in order to promote the parks/Audubon millage on the March 4 ballot.  You can talk to her about that or... probably... whatever else might be on your mind if you stop by at one of these. Here is the schedule.

All meetings will run from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. The schedule is as follows:

DISTRICT A MEETING -- FEB. 12

City Park, Parkview Terrace Room

DISTRICT B MEETING -- FEB. 7

Lyons Recreation Center

DISTRICT C MEETING -- FEB. 13

Algiers Regional Library

DISTRICT D MEETING -- FEB. 19

Corpus Christi Community Center

DISTRICT E MEETING -- FEB. 25

East New Orleans Regional Library

Also, speaking of Audubon, New Orleans, it is time to welcome the return of your king. 

Valerio is ready to greet the public again, from a fortified pen designed to keep his bone-crushing bite to himself.

Audubon Zoo officials announced Monday that they will reopen the New Orleans zoo's jaguar habitat with 3-year-old Valerio, nearly seven months after the male jaguar broke through a steel wire barrier and mauled nine other animals early on a Saturday morning in July, killing them all. . 

Valerio will turn 4 years old on March 12, by the way.  Here is a photo from, I believe, the day he turned 1 at the San Diego Zoo where he was born

$42,500 worth of keeping up appearances

Said this before but even if you think Vic Richard is the best candidate to run the new NORD... and I have no reason to believe he isn't... you have to wonder if it's worth paying some consultant to collect resumes and spew bullshit about "best practices" and whatnot just so everyone can pretend they didn't intend to hire him all along.

The New Orleans Recreation Development Commission tonight appointed interim director Vic Richard as its new chief executive after a special hearing where the four finalists were interviewed.

All but one member of the commission, Bobby Garron, who abstained, voted for Richard’s appointment. The commission hired a headhunter for $42,500 and took 93 applications but ultimately landed on Richard, who was appointed to the job by Mayor Mitch Landrieu in 2010.

For some reason, I watched this whole hearing on Cox TV last night. I suppose it was better than waiting for the inevitable 4th quarter Hornets collapse. Unfortunately I can't say that watching the meeting taught me anything I didn't already know or suspect about the candidates or the process.

I suspected, for example, that Wanda Durden and Charlene Braud were token plants and heard nothing to dissuade me from this. For a moment I considered the possibility that Braud was a serious candidate when she told the commission about the time she fired 105 people and replaced them with Americorps volunteers. That sounds like the sort of thing Mitch's "public-private partnership" is interested in seeing more of. But since it was also clear that Braud has been and will continue to be available to advise the Richard and the commissioners it didn't really matter whether she got the job.

Meanwhile, the consultant demonstrated at least some sense of humor by presenting us with ex-NFL star Reggie Williams as a so-called finalist. Williams, who at one point assured the commissioners, "I do know that I have phenomenal skills," exhibited a phenomenal ability to 1) flail his arms about and fidget in his chair while 2) responding with some variant of "I don't really know a whole lot about that" to something like 75% percent of the questions asked. Later, Williams stood up and touched his own toes; a phenomenal skill he said he owes to his experience in ballet.. which also contributed to his success in football. Williams returned many times to the topic of his pro football career.

The one occasion when Williams directly addressed a question put to him was also an error. Asked by the Mayor to describe "your biggest mistake" the other three candidates followed the standard job interview script by choosing instances of "mistakes" that were either someone else's fault, or better, evidence of their own over-charged ambition. Williams instead talked about a time he assented to something he knew was a stupid idea for the sake of political expediency. Also he pronounced the Mayor's name, "Land-row".

So I guess $42,500 can buy you some entertaining patsy competition for your hand-picked appointee if that's what you think you need. In this case, it hardly seems worth the bother.

"You are hurting this recovery and you need to stop it!"

Whenever they tell you you're not being "positive" enough, you're probably on to something.

After the meeting, Glapion suggested to a reporter from The Lens that stories focusing on the committee’s failure to comply with the open-meetings law might not be in the best interests of New Orleans.

“If we want to move the city forward, we’ve got to stay positive with our pen,” Glapion said to the reporter as Glapion walked from the room.

The consultancy economy

It isn't that I think the advice given out by consultants and headhunting firms should actually be heeded. It's just that I imagine one could spend a lot less than $42,000 for the privilege of ignoring whatever crap they say.

Over the objections of the search firm, DHR International, the commission decided that the successful candidate does not have to have a college degree, according to minutes from the commission’s October meeting. That move was pushed by Andy Kopplin, Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s chief administrative officer and a member of the commission.

That change favors Richard, who was chosen by the Landrieu administration as the temporary NORD director; he is one of two finalists without a college degree. Further, the administration has said it’s happy with Richard’s performance.

Why should the NORD director be required to have a college degree? I have no idea. But I do know someone has been paid well to tell us that. And that it doesn't matter. Trading in bullshit is excellent excellent work, though, if you can get it.

Wait. What?

Gambit: City made verbal offer to buy Le Petit Theatre for NORD programming

This afternoon, Ryan Berni, spokesman for Mayor Mitch Landrieu, wrote, "The administration was approached by members of the Board at some point. We were interested in the possibility of using Le Petit for NORDC [New Orleans Recreation Development Commission] programming and to create a theater center. We got to the point of making a verbal offer which was declined." Berni clarified soon after: "it was discussions with board members and not a formal presentation to the full board." Asked whether the "theater center" would have been a somehow reimagined Le Petit with the current board, and how much the city was willing to pay for the building, Berni declined comment.

No, really. How much was the city willing to pay for a "NORD theater center"? I mean how much was the city willing to pay to turn a building over to the "quasi-private" NORD board to manage, and where was that money going to come from?

NEW ORLEANS - The city of New Orleans may be forced to make new budget cuts as the administration identifies what sources say could be a $3.5 million shortfall in the current fiscal year.

Sources say that department heads at City Hall have been warned about the situation and have been told they should begin identifying possible cuts.

Did they also consider, perhaps, buying the Chevron building just for the hell of it?

Means testing

Isn't the new "public-private" NORD interesting.

The fledgling New Orleans Recreation Development Commission has vowed not only to improve opportunities for the city's children, but also to equalize the quality of programs and facilities across wealthy and poor neighborhoods.

The goal faces its first challenge as officials scramble to figure out a way to charge identical fees to every child who enrolls this summer in more than three dozen day camps organized by City Hall.

With registration set to open April 4 for 6,600 slots for children and teenagers, overhauling the established rate schedule -- a handful of camps are free, while others charge $10 to $325 per child -- could delay the May 23 start of camp, officials said.

Rejecting that option, they are investigating the possibility of reimbursing families whose upfront costs exceed a to-be-determined threshold.

I'm not sure what city they thought they were providing a "public" service for where they decided they could charge $325 per child. The article lays out an alternate plan under which there would be a citywide fee of $20 paid to a central account for reimbursing the "private partners". Seems like a semi-rational fix but, again, I wonder if we're unnecessarily complicating a process for the sake of giving the "private partners" a sense of ownership.

Update: Hey, is there a discount if your campsite is contaminated with lead?

NORD

Mitch says privatizing it will solve these problems but no one can explain to me how that's supposed to work. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to picking up a Gambit tomorrow.

Who elects these people?

I often wonder about the many surprising ways we end up deferring power to certain "community leaders" who don't have any direct responsibility to the citizenry. It's bad enough that we've somehow all agreed that University Presidents can be our arbiters of all things ethicsy. (Really, think about how ridiculous that is for a sec) But why the hell would anyone think it's a good idea to give billionaire leeches like Tom Benson and George Shinn a say in how the city manages its public playgrounds?

The other proposed charter amendment would create a new entity to govern the city's recreation facilities and programs. A new 12-member commission would include appointees from the mayor's office, the council and the city's two major professional sports organizations.

What qualifications do they have to fill this function, exactly?