Louisiana Legislative Session Latest & French Quarter Trash Pickup Fight Podcast Por arte de portada

Louisiana Legislative Session Latest & French Quarter Trash Pickup Fight

Louisiana Legislative Session Latest & French Quarter Trash Pickup Fight

Escúchala gratis

Ver detalles del espectáculo

Acerca de esta escucha

 Hy and Christopher take on the legislative session, discussing Gov. Jeff Landry losing influence as the deficit picture changes and several pieces of legislation under consideration.

We also spent some time looking at the trash situation in the French Quarter, and a proposed legislative solution. This is Christopher‘s editorial on the subject:

Trash Bill: the first step at empowering neighborhoods

It’s curious that Mayor LaToya Cantrell reacts with such opposition to French Quarter residents demanding to choose their own preferred trash contract. She predicated her entire pre-Councilmanic career upon the idea of empowering neighborhoods. She first proposed the taxing authority, ultimately passed by the legislature, that allowed neighborhoods to levy a mileage upon homeowners for anything from parks to community enrichments. As long as it passed by democratic vote, Cantrell once believed neighborhoods should be able to take their own destiny into their hands—except, apparently, trash collection.

Louisiana legislators advanced a bill on Wednesday, April 30 which aims to wrest authority from the city's mayor by letting a state-created board in the French Quarter enter sanitation contracts. Sponsored by state Sen. Jimmy Harris, D-New Orleans, and drafted with support from New Orleans City Council members, Senate Bill 195 would allow the 13-member French Quarter Management District to secure "emergency contracts" for sanitation services (ostensibly when New Orleans' city government fails to provide those services in the neighborhood). The city would have to repay the board for the work. The bill moved unanimously from the Senate's Local and Municipal Affairs Committee that afternoon, advancing to the full Senate.

The current controversy centers upon the Mayor’s determination that Henry Consulting will take over the garbage contract in the Vieux Carre’ on Aug. 1 over the highly popular IV Waste, the firm currently performing that work across the city's downtown. Critics, including Councilman At-Large JP Morrell cited to the legislative committee how Henry Consulting had been allowed by the Cantrell Administration to sidestep many provisions of the RFP process, including being granted a 50% reduction and the surety bond needed to win the contract.

The basic truth, though, remains that French Quarter locals trust Sidney Torres’ IV Waste and its “DisneyWorld-level” street cleaners over Henry’s politically-connected firm. If this legislation is passed and signed into law, however, the change will do more than fix a bad contract. It will create the precedent that neighborhoods should be able to control the quality of life elements of their existence at the most local of levels.

Too often, parish governments (and frequently state government) concentrate power far too much in too few hands too far away from the average citizen. Governance often works best when it stands closest to the people. Equally, many minority neighborhoods have suffered at the whims of politicians deciding their fate from afar, deaf to the individual concerns on the level of the streets.
Every neighborhood should have a deciding say in their garbage contracts, as the collection of refuse and the cleaning of the streets often ranks first as the number one quality of life issue, after crime.

In this case, it’s a Black mayor versus a non-minority neighborhood, but control at the household-level would benefit far more minority neighborhoods across Louisiana than the current practice of keeping everything decided by the typically old white male politicians of too many Parish governments.

Overcoming the opposition of New Orleans’ first woman Black mayor in order to return power to a neighborhood over trash will eventually benefit African-Americans homeowners across Louisiana in the long-term (ironically enough) when the first step is taken to empower French Quarter residents. Other neighborhoods, including minority neighborhoods, will follow—in time.
Todavía no hay opiniones