Here is another article from today's Pickayune.....
Give 75% of rebuilding work to locals, council says
It demands access to capital, training
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
By Bruce Eggler
Staff writer
As New Orleans is rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina, 75 percent of the work "must be done by regional businesses with local employees," the City Council has declared.
The council last week voted 6-0, with Councilman Jay Batt absent, to express its "full support" for a list of 10 principles for rebuilding the city drawn up by a coalition of civic leaders and community activists.
One of the 10 principles says: "Our citizens deserve to participate in the economic value created by the rebuilding of New Orleans," with 75 percent of the work assigned to local and regional companies, training available "for jobs that pay livable wages," and "immediate access to capital and support services" for small businesses.
Another principle says the city must have "the highest and best flood protection," with levees strengthened to withstand a Category 5 hurricane.
A third says "temporary housing is critical to recovery but must remain temporary," with residents moved back to permanent housing as soon as possible.
Another principle says reconstruction efforts should "focus first on pre-existing blighted property and government-owned land as a foundation for rebuilding neighborhoods responsibly. Government must move rapidly to expropriate pre-existing blighted property to revitalize neighborhoods and maintain affordability."
Other sections of the document endorse citizen involvement, regional cooperation, increased home ownership, mixed-income neighborhoods, "sound and responsible environmental standards," high-quality public schools "that will attract residents and businesses to New Orleans," and use of "design standards and building codes (that) maintain the cultural and architectural character of the city's neighborhoods and produce flood-insurable buildings."
The council motion endorsing the list of principles has no binding legal effect. But it said the council "will lead in considering action steps to implement the ideas presented in these principles as tools to rebuild all neighborhoods."
The list of principles was presented at the council's meeting Thursday by Keith Twitchell, president of the Committee for a Better New Orleans/Metropolitan Area Committee; Lucinda Flowers, a leader of the New Orleans Neighborhood Development Collaborative and the Affordable Housing Alliance; and Clarence Adams, an official with Ozanam Inn.
The list had been endorsed earlier by the council's Housing and Human Needs Committee, whose chairman is Council President Oliver Thomas.
The council voted several weeks ago to create an 11-member commission to advise it on ways to reconstruct the city, but council members have been slow to nominate members to the panel, and it has yet to meet.
The council's endorsement of the list of principles appeared to give it a stopgap substitute for whatever the commission might eventually recommend.
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