Arguing about fine’s amount doesn’t make sense

By Deon Roberts, Social Media Editor

The St. Bernard Parish Council has stirred the pot with it’s $100-a-day fine for properties left blighted in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

I’ve listened to critics who say the fine is too steep.

But this argument makes no sense. For a fine to be effective, it needs to sting. In fact, why not make it $500 a day? That would really get people moving.

The real issue that should be debated is whether or not the parish should levy the fine at all on people still struggling to return. Some say the Council should have brought it the people for a vote. That question should be at the center of discussions, not how high or low the fine should be.

Steel plant sounds great, but where will we get the workers?

By Deon Roberts, Social Media Editor

Starting Sunday and through Wednesday, Gov. Blanco will be away from her hurricane-torn state as she courts a German steelmaker she is trying to lure to Louisiana.

Blanco is hoping ThyssenKrupp will choose the Bayou State over Alabama to construct a new $2.9-billion state-of-the-art steel and stainless steel manufacturing facility.

Construction of the facility is supposed to create 29,000 jobs. When fully operational, the plant should employ 2,700. Over 20 years, the facility should create an additional 38,000 to 52,000 indirect jobs.

This is all well and good. But have we forgotten that post-hurricane Louisiana is having a construction worker shortage? Exactly where are we supposed to get the nearly 30,000 workers to build this facility?

I know of New Orleans area construction companies that have had to hire Latin Americans to fill vacancies, because the local labor pool is too shallow.

So, the question is: Where will ThyssenKrupp get its workers? Will they have to be brought in from other countries? If so, the impact to Louisiana’s economy will be lessened, making Blanco’s efforts not as worthwhile.

Perhaps Blanco should spend more time finding workers to fill the jobs we have now, rather than potentially creating even more job vacancies that can’t be filled.

World Trade Center timeframe has rumor mill running

By Deon Roberts, Social Media Editor

Here’s the latest dish on the World Trade Center’s search for developers to turn the sadly underused building into something other than a mostly empty shell.

On Jan. 31, the WTC began asking for proposals from interested developers across the world for the city-owned, 33-story building at the foot of Canal Street.

The deadline to submit is Feb. 28, and it’s that roughly 30-day timeframe that already has some people crying foul and saying a developer already has the deal locked up.

Some critics are saying 30 days is not enough time to draft a proposal for such a large-scale project. They allege that the short timeframe must mean someone already has a certain developer in mind.

Arthur Sterbcow, president of New Orleans-based Latter & Blum Cos., said 30 days for proposals is preposterous.

“There is no other word to describe it,” Sterbcow said. “You give somebody three weeks? That’s absurd to get the word out (to developers). You can’t even get a roofer out in three weeks.”

Sterbcow is not alone.

Ronnie Theriot, who in the late 1990s was part of a losing team of developers vying for the WTC project – the team’s bid was called unresponsive – is interested in the job this time around. He, too, is calling into question the timeframe for proposals. Theriot’s team is called Grand River.

“A period of only 28 days from the time of advertisement for proposals to the final submittal of bids is an inordinately short period to accomplish all that must be done. Investigating and analyzing the structure and the condition of the existing improvements, planning the usage of the facility, evaluating the project economics and the development and forming of a business plan, developing the preliminary architectural and engineering designs, addressing the life safety code issues and complying with state fire marshal and city permitting requirements, and numerous other necessary tasks demand a tremendous amount of time and effort. After all of that is completed, a reasonable and reliable cost estimate must be done before seeking financing. Grand River submits it is virtually impossible to complete all of this necessary work in less than several months with a concentration of effort, yet only 28 days are allowed,” he wrote in a Feb. 13 letter to Sean Cummings, the head of the New Orleans Building Corp., which oversees city-owned property such as the WTC.

But Cummings said everything is on the up and up.

Cummings described the process as “an unusually well-written request for qualifications with a high degree of transparency to the process.”

Thirty days is ample time, said Cummings, a developer himself.

“The process has a degree of discipline and a timeline attached to it, and that’s what the World Trade Center and the city wanted to follow. It’s not in any way uncommon and again it has a high degree of excellence,” Cummings said. “This strikes me as a superior process. It’s an invitation for a world-class development that is sort of the opposite of how the process was criticized in the past.

“I know of at least three local proposals that are being made. It’s perhaps the best piece of real estate in the South.

“Speaking as a developer, I think that that’s ample time to figure out what you would do with that building and to make an offer on it.”

Cummings commended the WTC organization, saying “they don’t deserve this sort of criticism. And there are very few people who are critical of the process.”

“I can’t say they did it in a dishonest fashion,” Sterbcow said. “I can only say it boggles my mind.

Mardi Gras state of mind

By Stephen Maloney, Staff Writer

In any other city, in any other state, I would have had a very bad night after Endymion rolled the Saturday before Mardi Gras.

Luckily, my story took place in the heart of New Orleans while it was immersed in the state of Mardi Gras.

My friends and I staked out a piece of land on the corner of St. Charles and Louisiana early on Friday.

Like frontiersmen racing to plant our flag on the unclaimed territory of the wide open west at the end of the 19th century, we laid our claim and dug in for the duration.

Most of the group went home and slept in comfortable, clean and warm beds after the last beads were thrown, but my friend Brandon Page and I decided to camp out on the neutral ground.

Bacchus was less than 24 hours away and we weren’t giving up our spot for anyone.

Brandon left to walk one of the girls in the group to her car, leaving me alone to hold down the fort.

At some point, I realized my feet were numb, which probably had something to do with the howling wind and the temperature, which was hovering around freezing all night.

I decided I had to do something about my feet, so I walked over to my car, which was parked half a block off of St. Charles on Toledano, a great and valuable parking spot.

I climbed behind the wheel, cranked the ignition, turned on the heater and reclined my seat.

At some point, I dozed off, partly out of physical exhaustion, but I suspect there were other culprits.

Some of them were still floating in half melted ice inside of my ice chest on the neutral ground, but most had already been relieved of their 12 fluid ounces of revelry.

So I’m in my driver’s seat, listing to the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, feeling the warmth and sensation creep back into my lower extremities, and the next thing I know I’m climbing into my passenger’s seat and some guy I don’t recognize is getting behind the wheel of my still idling car.

An indeterminate amount of time later, I open my eyes and realize something is wrong.

Someone is driving my car. It’s not me. I don’t recognize him at all and I don’t have the foggiest idea where we are going, but thankfully we are still on St. Charles.

I attempt to interrogate the driver, but like a bad nightmare, my words come out garbled and incoherent, probably because of the surreal situation and partly because of the beer.

“I’m Paul, man,” the driver said. “I’m helping you out.”

“Where are we going?” I managed to ask.

“Slidell.”

At this point, I began to suspect that something had gone terribly wrong.

I grabbed my cell phone and called Brandon, hoping he would explain to me why a stranger named Paul, who had shoulder-length blond hair and several piercings on his face, was driving me to Slidell.

When Brandon asked me where I was, I knew I had a problem.

I began peppering Paul with questions, namely why I would possibly want to go to Slidell since I didn’t live there and I had no intention of leaving New Orleans for the foreseeable future.

“Man, I’m trying to help you out,” Paul kept telling me.

By the time we got down to Napoleon, something I said made Paul turn around, but only begrudgingly.

He began to get mad at me, telling me over and over that he was trying to help me out.

Eventually, I said something to him about getting out of my car and he pulled up on the neutral ground next to several police officers and got out, infuriated that I didn’t want to accept his help.

It dawned on me right about then that I didn’t know how long he was in my car before I woke up, so I began searching through my things to see if anything was missing.

“I didn’t take anything from you. I was trying to help you out!” Paul insisted.

I informed him in no uncertain way that since he was no longer driving my car and we were now standing face to face, his best option was to leave my general vicinity immediately.

He did, and I drove back to my spot on Toledano.

Any other place, any other time, and I would have ended up in a hospital or a morgue, not with the mother of all Mardi Gras stories.

Nothing was taken from me, my car and my person escaped harm altogether, and I ended up with a slightly better parking spot at the end of the ordeal.

I still don’t know who Paul was or where he was really taking me, but I do know one thing: the next time I take a nap on St. Charles in the middle of the night; I’m locking my doors and not opening them up for anyone.

Stuck between a frock and a hard place

By Deon Roberts, Social Media Editor

Dressing for work has been giving me a headache lately.

I think part of the problem is my age. I’m 28, and I worry that the current style for professional guys my age borders on unprofessional.

In just about every ad I see, some guy is wearing a coat with a tie, but the top button of his shirt is unbuttoned and the tie is slightly loose, making the guy look like he’s actually coming back from a long day at the office – with a couple of beers in his system to boot – rather than going to work.

Or, in other ads, a guy is wearing a suit without a tie, the shirt underneath is unbuttoned to expose his chest and his face is covered with 2-day-old stubble.

Flip through any issue of GQ and you’ll see what I mean.

I didn’t even get to hair yet. Not only does stubble seem to be in fashion but so does slightly unkempt, “bed-head” hair.

This creates a dilemma: On the one hand, I want to dress trendy, age appropriate and all that. I want to look fashion-forward, as they say, not like a member of the local young Republican club.

On the other hand, I can’t help but wonder what my older colleagues, and business associates, think. Do they appreciate that I am attuned to the latest fashion, that I spent an hour in the salon to get that David Bowie look? Or do they think I’m a slacker, a miscreant, a stain on the corporate linens?

I battle with myself over the issue. There are days when I look in the mirror and am proud of my contemporary, Justin-Timberlake-meets-Harry-Potter-meets-someone-from-”The Apprentice” look.

Then there are days when I glance at a mirror and see my longish bangs and un-ironed shirt and have this what-the-hell-are-you-thinking reaction. When that happens, the voice of my conscience is that of my grandmother, who for Christmas 2005 looked at my hair and called me a hippie. (My hair was that even that long!)

Oy vey! How I long for my company to adopt uniforms.

Learning from the losing gamble of others

By Deon Roberts, Social Media Editor

In the movie “The Wizard of Oz,” there is a song the characters sing to lament what they don’t have.

The scarecrow wants a brain. The lion, nerve. The tin man, a heart.

In the New Orleans area, I’m sure many could add their own refrain since Hurricane Katrina: “If I only had insurance.”

I know many people, including those in my own family, who did not have homeowners insurance at the time of Katrina and Hurricane Rita.

Like many others, my family members dropped the coverage after their homes were paid for, because it was too expensive. Besides, the banks didn’t require it after the loan was repaid.

This has taught me an important lesson: once my home is paid off, it pays to hang onto insurance coverage.

Of course, that’s easier said than done; will I be able to afford homeowners and flood insurance when I retire?

Regardless, Katrina and Rita have taught us it’s a gamble not worth taking.

Blakely is on track with bike tour promise

By Deon Roberts, Social Media Editor

The city’s recovery czar, Ed Blakely, was hired a few months ago to lead the rebuilding of New Orleans.

He hit it out of the park today when he announced plans to go on bike tours so that he can inspect “every blade of grass” in the city before rebuilding begins.

Blakely’s boots-on-the-ground plan is encouraging. If anything, it shows the guy is detail-oriented and willing to do whatever it takes to get it right.

The rebuilding of New Orleans is an tall order.

Blakely, who will earn an annual salary of $150,000 of taxpayers’ money, is already stepping up to the plate.

Way to go!

Harry Lee’s admission shocking yet ignored

By Greg LaRose, Staff Writer

Sheriff Harry Lee’s bold admission last week that his department has hit a dead end in its search for a solution to violent crime in Jefferson Parish should have sent chills through anyone living or working in the parish.

Instead, it was largely glossed over.

“I don’t have the answer to it,” Lee told members of the Harvey Canal Industrial Association at a Feb. 1 luncheon. “Everybody will agree what we’re suffering from now is a result of lack of parenting, lack of morals, lack of education, a whole bunch of things.

“I’ll try what I can. But all of those things at the root cause of the crime problem that we’re faced with now is beyond the scope of the sheriff’s office.”

Parish President Aaron Broussard’s office declined to comment on Lee’s remarks, instead issuing a statement saying the president “is concerned about the violent crime problem and is working with all agencies involved in crime reduction.”

Such a response smacks highly of political expediency in an election year. We’d welcome more specific details on the administration’s interagency work to combat crime.

Lee’s challenge, which he faces with a depleted post-Katrina police force, is taking a proactive approach while fostering stronger relationships with residents in crime-ridden neighborhoods.

Evidence that the sheriff’s office still has fences to mend can be found in the Shrewsbury community, where fire destroyed an apartment building Monday and left 26 people homeless. The smoke clouds had barely cleared when neighbors pointed out the silver lining: The blaze destroyed what they referred to as a “hooker hotel,” home to prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers and users.

This is where government leaders should enter the picture and encourage community involvement. Through town hall meetings in each Parish Council district, residents could provide feedback on problem areas such as the “hooker hotel.” Armed with that information, the parish and sheriff’s office can pursue negligent property owners, landlords and others who contribute to a criminal climate.

Such meetings would allow community leaders to step forward, and the sheriff’s office could establish effective community liaisons to keep tabs on problem areas.

Also on the parish end, additional resources should be devoted to providing more recreational opportunities for teens and young adults, the population most influenced by the criminal element. A full audit of Jefferson’s recreational offerings should be made to see whether the community’s needs are being met beyond youth sports and adult recreation.

We understand the exasperation of the sheriff and parish leaders when it comes to quelling crime in Jefferson Parish.

But that doesn’t mean we endorse a lower standard of protection. Now is the time a true leader’s mettle is tested.•

New trash cans could be waste of police officers’ time

By Deon Roberts, Social Media Editor

What an exciting time to be a police officer in New Orleans!

Today, the city began delivering new trash carts for residents and small business owners.

The cans are equiped with barcodes that are supposed to allow them to be tracked should someone steal them.

But, according to the city’s Web site, the city requires the can’s owner to get a police report before the barcode is used to track down the can.

With crime on the rise in New Orleans and a shortage of officers, can we afford to have officers preoccupied with writing police reports about stolen garbage? Why not take the police out of the equation and let them battle more serious problems, like the murder rate? The barcode should be used first by the city’s garbage contractor to find the can. Perhaps if the cart can’t be tracked, then a police report could be filed.

Imagine the conversation the officer and the disgruntled victim would have:

Officer: So, when did you last see your trash can?

Victim: Last night after Leno. Did you hear that joke he did about Paris Hilton? He cracks me up. He’s so much better than Carson was, you know, rest his soul.

Officer: Right. Um. Do you have any idea who might have taken your can?

Victim: You know, I don’t. But I bet it was one of them FEMA contractors.

Officer: Why do you say that?

Victim: I don’t know. Isn’t FEMA responsible for everything gone wrong around here?

Officer: I don’t know. Now, where was the can?

Victim: HELLO! By the side of the road. Where do you put a trash can? Seriously, what kinds of questions are these? Isn’t there a barcode on the thing or something? Can’t you look it up in the computer?

A conversation like this could take 40 minutes. Of course, most conversations won’t be this silly. But explain to me how taking up even 10 minutes of a police officer’s time is good for overall crime prevention?

Time to throw away old ways of battling litter

Mark Singletary, Publisher

We can’t credit Katrina for all our new ideas.

Long before the storm, I was thinking that twice-weekly trash collection in the city of New Orleans was a bad idea. Now, it makes no sense at all.

Why can’t we re-allocate the money that goes to the trash collectors and have the crews that pick up the trash spend some time taking care of our common areas? I don’t think homeowners would object to the reduced service, if they thought it might do some good for the whole town.

For the past year we’ve managed just fine with once-a-week trash pickups and, all the while, our streets are just getting dirtier and more covered with litter.

There isn’t a street, avenue or alley in New Orleans that’s not filthy. There isn’t one single street that can’t benefit from a cleanup effort, and I’d like to see that change.

Mississippi uses county prisoners to police their roadways; other states use state prisoners. Goodness knows we’ve got plenty of people in jail, most of them able-bodied young men capable of doing a little honest work.

Whether we use the new contractors that the city has for residential trash collection or we conscript parish prisoners for work details, it’s high time we addressed the city’s litter problem.

A clean city would signal to the world that we’ve got some pride. It seems like such an easy thing to do.

How can this be a bad thing?

Cox, WWL-TV battle is a hard plot to follow

By Deon Roberts, Social Media Editor

I consider myself a fairly intelligent guy.

But for the past month or so, I have had no idea what Cox Communications and Belo Corp., the Dallas company that controls WWL-TV, have been fighting over.

What makes me feel even dumber is that the two companies have been lashing out at each other quite publicly for weeks, with no shortage of advertisements and press releases. So, with all the info they were spewing out, why was I not understanding this?

I know I am not alone. Since writing a story yesterday explaining the root of the debate, I’ve received e-mails and comments from people thanking me for clarifying the reason for the fighting. The story was also updated today.

The bottom line: Cox and Belo have been too vague with the public about what they really are fighting about. That’s a shame, because many people have become terribly confused, unsure of whether they should invest in satellites or digital cable to avoid missing their favorite shows. Many educated people don’t even know what is going on with these companies.

I understand certain information cannot be disclosed while negotiations are ongoing. Still, for companies in the broadcast and communications industries, clearer communication would have been nice.

Get your rabbit ears ready … just in case.

By Deon Roberts, Social Media Editor

Midnight is the deadline for Cox Communications and Belo Corp. to reach an agreement that would keep WWL-TV ─ Channels 4 and 15 ─ on Cox.

If the two don’t reach an agreement, we’ll all be using A/B switches and rabbit-ear antennae to watch the Super Bowl Sunday.

Good thing the Saints aren’t playing, huh? Could you imagine frenzied Saints fans digging in their garages for rabbit-ear antennae with black and gold paint on their faces?

“CSI” fans should be on alert, too.

When I spoke to company officials from both sides this afternoon, they had no good news to report.

Negotiations, it seems, had reached no resolution as of this afternoon.

“If we don’t have an agreement after midnight tonight, then we would have to drop the signal from our lineup. We continue to try to work with them today to try to reach an agreement,” said Cox spokesman David Grabert.

“We’re continuing to negotiate and we’re hopeful for a positive outcome,” said Belo spokesman Carey Hendrickson.

The two are bickering over high-definition programming. Belo wants to be adequately compensated by Cox if Cox uses Belo’s high-def. programming.

Cox says Belo is making requests that would result in higher fees per subscriber, but Cox is not disclosing exact fee increases during negotiations.

Come to think of it, do I even have rabbit ears at the house?