New Orleans – Mayor C. Ray Nagin has formed a commission to advise the city as it rebuilds from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and seeks federal help.
The 17-member “Bring Back New Orleans” commission will issue a plan within 90 days, Nagin said.
And some sections of the city – once home to 500,000 before the storm and flooding that followed – won’t be rebuilt, he said today at a press briefing.
“It’s the right group at the right time, doing the right thing,” Nagin told reporters in downtown New Orleans. “To my fellow New Orleanians, we want you back. We want all of you back.”
Nagin said he has asked the U.S. government to build a light-rail line that travels from downtown New Orleans to the airport and to Baton Rouge so residents who rely on public transportation can use it to flee the city if another evacuation is ordered.
He also asked for cash, tax credits for businesses and residents and help rebuilding the levee system around the city.
An auditor will be hired to monitor spending during the process, he said.
“We’re going to work hard as your partner and we’re going to make this happen,” Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said at the briefing. Nagin hugged Blanco when she walked in after the press conference had begun.
Blanco last week announced a state committee of business leaders and state officials to advise her on a rebuilding plan.
The mayor’s commission includes a local lawyer who is treasurer of the state bar association, an archbishop, a venture capitalist and local business owners.
McKinsey & Co., a management-consulting firm that advises Fortune 1000 companies, also has offered to help Louisiana come up with a plan to rebuild the state, and the state has accepted.
Parish Councilman Ricky Melerine, who lives in and serves the community of Violet, La., and the rest of the council are working on a plan to hire an appraiser to assess every house.
The council has an estimate of $6 million for the job, which it hasn’t accepted yet.
Melerine wants to assess the city by groups of streets. If a section has 90 percent of its homes damaged, then it will be considered totaled and the homeowners will be asked if they want it to be razed.
“We bulldoze it and haul it away,” Melerine said. “It won’t cost them anything.” The hope is that the federal government would then reimburse St. Bernard’s Parish, he said.
Said Barbara Major, co-chair of the mayor’s commission: “Everybody has a right to return to New Orleans and not the old New Orleans – a better New Orleans where there is decent housing and quality schools.”
