Tough times at the local rag, as covered by the local crew:
Gambit goes in search of a rose…”Rose’s departure from The Times-Picayune staff would follow several other high-profile writers who chose to take the paper’s voluntary buyouts this year, including Rose’s fellow columnist Angus Lind, veteran crime reporter Walt Philbin and theater writer David Cuthbert.”
adrastos another hard copy hold out and Who fan runs down the Sell Out…”What shame. It's people like Gill and Larson who have given the paper both style and substance.”
So before the storm I was a subscriber to Wired Mag. They use to (and maybe still do) run a sort of vision of the future on the last page. Well here we have the Times Picayune circa 2010 at the rate they are going.
What: Blogging 101 Class: An Introduction to Blogging for the Utter Novice
When: Thursday, Nov. 12; 6:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Where: The Bridge Lounge, 1201 Magazine St
Why: To Learn About Blogging and for Free Beer.
Who: Rising Tide
This class will be taught by two local bloggers and will focus on blogging platforms, hosting, getting started, a walk-through of basic blog software, posting, adding media, blogrolls, linking, commenting and more. Laptops are encouraged.
adrastos has bears on the mind watching the latest offering by Ken Burns (a living genius, no seriously, he’s in the pantheon, documentaries have never been the same since Civil War) on the National Parks.
While second rate Who songs are fodder for my own though process, this was the one that came to mind for me; Lyle Lovett covers Steven Fromholz in a live offering. My only complaint is it’s too short.
"I hereby state, and mean all that I say, that I never have been and never will be a candidate for President Mayor; that if nominated by either party, I should peremptorily decline; and even if unanimously elected I should decline to serve.” link
In a great example of the “having your cake and eating it, too” school of development, developers for the Plaza sight in Eastern New Orleans are pushing the boundaries of the “public option”, otherwise known as TIF in a bid to have the city not only pre-pay for the cake, but pay off the mortgage for the bakery all for the privilege of letting the citizens buying a slice, that is, if the cake even gets made.
On Thursday, the New Orleans City Council is expected to consider a proposal to use future tax revenue to help transform the site of the defunct Lake ForestPlaza mall into a modern shopping center called the New Orleans East Marketplace. TP
At least four of the seven council members have endorsed the proposal in principle, but the president of a government watchdog organization says the deal amounts to little more than a public bailout for the developers.
The very libertarian Reason Online has an article on a Cabela’s deal in Texas that points out some of the down side to the TIF model, quoting Greg LeRoy, author of The Great American Jobs Scam: Corporate Tax Dodging and the Myth of Job Creation.
The rest of us pay taxes for normal services like public safety, building inspections, and street maintenance, and those services come out of the general fund. And as the cost of services goes up, and the money from the general fund is given to these businesses through a TIF, the tax burden gets shifted to the regular slobs who don't have the same political clout. It's a crummy way to treat your taxpaying, law-abiding citizens.
Of course, shifting the tax burden to regular slobs is pretty much are the taxation and development models of the last couple of decades.
Pro- oligarchybusiness Republican love them, because someone with very deep pockets won’t be paying taxes anymore, and they can tout the “economic” development the schemes deliver. To be fair Pro- oligarchy business Democrats love them just as much, as the can tout all the “benefits” the people will enjoy paying for items “many times over” with both their taxes and take home pay.
The libertarian wing of the Republican party, once would have put the breaks on such schemes, but it now resembles the back room where Flounder and Pinto are directed in the rush sequence in Animal House where we find Jugdish, Mohammet and Lonny sequestered from the “real” party.
"The mall will serve as an anchor to the revitalization of New Orleans, " said Burgos, a prominent supporter of Mayor Ray Nagin. Burgos plans to redevelop the now mostly empty site through his company, New Orleans East Design LLC. "It's an investment that will pay for itself many times over."
But this is a lot worse than your everyday average TIF scheme. Good ol’ C Ray is caught up in this and you know what that means….
Under an agreement that Mayor Ray Nagin struck with the company in May, Lake Forest would put $1.6 million in escrow, to be released to the city when the TIF is created -- essentially compelling the city to approve the TIF if it wants to get paid -- and the $1.4 million would be forgiven as the developers make progress.
Not only has he strapped the city over a barrel on the financing, he’s worked a clause in to potentially leave the city holding the ball should the project fail.
And there are no provisions for what happens if the project fails, save for a clause that if construction hasn't started in 36 months, the city and developers will "negotiate in good faith" to "successfully develop" the project.
So what’s on the table? Not much. As the article points out, the “big box” tenants being dangled like rotten carrots (and they’re likely to want tax-free deals of their own) are not on board yet, but somehow…
Burgos and Ryan plan to release a study touting their project's potentially powerful economic impact.
So what are the odds, the study will be all Lollipops and Roses? But something tells me that a developer with essentially no risk to themselves, and a built in public bailout procedure is not going to make very prudent decisions.
Heads I win, tails you lose. Lollipops and Roses for sure, just not for us regular slobs.
In case you missed it, there is a new deal with the company currently running the RTA’s public transportation system. For almost a year the system has been run under interm contracts by Veolia Transportation, the US affiliate of the Global Veolia Transport, a French company. It runs the Jefferson Parish Transit system as well. wikipedia
Veolia will now operate the system under a five, with a possible five year renewal based on performance. While, I am not going to comment on whether this is a good or a bad deal. I really do not have an opinion on the current state of Public Transit in this city, other than to say I really like the new smaller busses on the typical New Orleans streets. But according to Veolia themselves, this is a new model for transit management.
New Orleans is the first time in the United States that the “delegated management” model is being fully deployed…This “Delegated Management” model is widely used in Europe, but is not well known in the U.S. Simply put, it means that the RTA Board of Commissioners will fully delegate the management and operation of the transit authority to Veolia Transportation, which will assume responsibility for all the transit authority functions and operations as described above, reporting to the RTA Board of Commissioners which will oversee its contract performance, policies and budgets. Veolia Fluff
Well, okay, but those “Boards of Commissioners” all too often resemble collections of politically connected and cronies in these parts, and its’ funny how “new models” so often resemble the “Good-ole-boy model” once executed, but there does not appear to be anything untoward about the deal so far.
But there is a little something.
If you recall this Moldy City post (and seriously, David has some of the best research on the players in New Orleans on the web, search his archives, you’ll see).
David described how Veronica White’s BFF, the headhunting Tracie Washington “was ultimately dismissed, as the chief counsel of Austin’s (apparently there is corruption in Texas…who knew?) Capital Metro for obstructionist tactics involving (all together now) the release of public records.
He prints a few choice articles on the topic. This one from Mar. 5, 1997 has something we’re looking for:
The requested records range from the compensation package for General Manager Justin Augustine III to a computerized list of the checks that Capital Metro writes.
So why should that name be familiar? This hardly a case for the where are they now file from the coverage of the Veolia negotiations:
Former RTA General Manager Justin Augustine, a vice president for Veolia's California region, would be the company's local general manager if the firm is selected.TP
Nice to see he landed on his feat, several times. But this certainly appears to be one more case of the big company coming to town and being convinced they have to “hire a local” in order to “do business” in this town. Of course if they had brought in someone who cannot provide the proper answer to “where’d you go to school” an equal and opposite reaction would occur. But they jumped into the local option with both feet:
Counting Augustine, a New Orleans native, Veolia officials said they would fill four of five top management positions at the RTA with locals.TP
All one big happy family, it seems. And of course I've failed to mention the name that seems to be conected to all of them. I wonder when Veronica White lands a cushy management position….perhaps Feb. 5, 2010?
"I do think that the quality which makes a man want to write and be read is essentially a desire for self-exposure and is masochistic. Like one of those guys who has a compulsion to take his thing out and show it on the street." - James Jones
