prytaniawaterline.com Blog

Who knew when the Mayor signed those overpriced garbage contracts that they would include a 4:30 wake call on Tuesdays and Fridays. Richards Disposal is very consistent arriving between four and four thirty every morning on collection days.

Rup Raj on WDSU reminds us that hurricane season is only 19 days away. Hurricane Season is that tension packed time of year that will leep the city on edge for the next 6 months. In a normal year we shouldn’t see too much activity around here until August and September.

Okay let’s talk about wasting millions of dollars in a community that is strapped for cash.

First off millions to keep the lights on at the defunct Charity Hospital.

Fom WWL:

Here’s a breakdown of how your taxes are being spent to keep utilities running at Charity’s complex of eight buildings, according to the utility bills:

- More than $1,372,579.74 for electricity

- More than $182,302.30 for water

- More than $2,894,119.21 for air conditioning and heating

That brings the total to $4,449,000.25.

Then there is the story of the council at long last asking for some accountability on the
crime cameras and the 311 deals

All I have to say is that the Nagin administration is a total clusterfuck. The city council now has a responsibility to bring the malfeasence into the open. If City Council doesn’t think that the people of New Orleans have had enough of this shit then they are just as complicit as the Mayor, and just as responsible for the state of this city.

I have been trying to walk a couple of miles everyday at lunchtime. When I work uptown I go to the park and walk around the front which is about two miles. Lately with the heat, it has been uncomfortable walking in work clothes and I am a mess by the time I get back to work.

I’m in the CBD today, I recently discovered, though it is apparently no secret to many who work downtown that the Super Dome makes a great walking track. At lunch time there are quite a few people lapping the dome. THe nice thing a bout walking around the dome is that you can stay in the shade of the overhang, the other benifit is that quite a bit of air conditioning leaks out of the stadium keeping it a little bit cooler than walking in the park. I have guessed that the walk around the dome is about a half mile. Four trips around and I get my two miles in at lunchtime. It beats hitting the CBD streets where you constantly have to stop for traffic or maneuver around people on the sidewalks.

The river level has gone down an the spillway has been closed. you can see mud on the batture again.

The river is still high and the current is running fast but it looks like the spring ritual high river situation has ended . Now we can focus on the upcoming hurricane season.

Three people were killed in a nine hour period , a couple of more people were shot. You would think our Mayor would show some interest in this problem. The theory is that if you are white and don’t do drugs your chances of being murdered are about the same as anywhere else. That doesn’t play very well with me. I am one of those citizens who wants to see it stop. It is going to take a lot more than good police work and incarceration to solve the problem. It is going to take a change of conscience by the City of New Orleans including it’s citizens. Many who look at the murder problem as a process of the bad killing off the bad. A fifteen year old kid was one of the murder victims, I find it hard to believe that this kid deserved to die. We are talking about children here, it is sad to see the loss of another generation of young people in this city to the dark side.

Yesterdays Times Picayune report on the Mayors accoplishments or lack thereof at the mid-term point in his second term. I thought the article was kind of easy on the cable guy. Of course I am extremely biased when I talk about the Mayor, I have never forgiven him for his lack of leadership imediately after the storm. Considering the lack of a workable disaster plan, and the mayor hiding out in the Sheraton after the storm, I lost respect for the man at that point. Since then he has not done anything to change my mind. From his snail like approach to recovery, to the fact that he can’r keep his foot out of his mouth, you wind up with an administration that only seems to care about it’s political image and not the citizens of the City of New Orleans. I continue to hold my nose as he finishes out his term, hoping that in the next election we can elect someone who has the skills and the passion to improve the quality of life of the citizens who have made great sacrifices to return and rebuild. Meanwhile the administration continues to sign contracts that cost New Orleans more than simular contracts across the country. When asked to be accountable the mayor hides behind his staffers who he “delegates” the responsibility of running the city. The recovery of New Orleans continues to be driven by the citizens who have returned, in spite of the roadblocks that City Hall places in their way.

Looks like my lunchtime walk will be put on hold until the summer is over. I was drenched in sweat by the time I got back to the office. I don’t mind sweating I just don’t like returning to work looking like I showered with my clothes on.

It isn’t any big surprise that Chevron is moving across the lake, they announced the move in 2006. About half of Chevron’s employees already live acroos the lake. In reality it makes sense for Chevron to move, with gas prices at record highs who wants to drive to New Orleans every day. It leaves another vacant office tower in downtown New Orleans joining the Rault Center, and the Plaza Tower as monuments to a city that is failing to attract or retain industries and businesses that provide good jobs. Our businessman Mayor has failed in making this city an attractive spot to do business. New Orleans still suffering the effects of Hurricane Katrina and the Federal Flood also suffers from the economic problems that the rest of the country is experiencing. It is a double whammy for the economy of the city. One hopes that the trend would turn around but there are not any signs that that is going to happen any time soon. When I returned to New Orleans in Oct 2006 I wondered if the city had any future, I still wonder the same thing today. I will be here unless New Orleans is covered with water or there is absolutely no way that I can survive here. At the same time I am pessimistic about this city’s ability to remain a major american city much less a world class city. The things needed to accomplish these goals do not seem to be happening.

I was invited to a seminar today, more of a sales pitch than a seminar on virtualization technologies. I am already using the technology that they were pitching but I went anyway. Four hours of hearing what I already know. It wasn’t a total loss it was at Dickie Brennan’s Steak House on Iberville St. Not only did I get a nice steak for lunch they gave us a free IPOD shuffle. Not to mention the fact that I was out of the office for half the day.

As many of you who read my blog, including those of you who read the lost episodes, notice that I have changed my style quite a bit. When I started out, blogging was a crutch to help me deal with the stress and trauma of seeing my home town almost completely destroyed. I used it as my own personal soap box to let the world know how I was feeling as well as to get it off my chest. At some point in the last year the post traumatic stress wore off, I was considering leaving town.

After the storm I have had a number of friends come to town, many of them lived here but had left long before Katrina. I have played tour guide quite a bit, in the process I have started to appreciate what New Orleans has to offer and discovered the reasons that I live here. There are many Hurricane victims who want to return, and I come across many people who lived here long ago who are longing to return. It is harder than one might think, housing, insurance, and good jobs are all factors that play a role in peoples’ ability to return. I can truly say that I feel fortunate when I wake up every morning that I am waking up in New Orleans, the city that I grew up in.