Progress For New Orleans

The full extent of the disastrous ‘Master Plan’ vote from 2008 is finally coming into focus. The latest poison pill to growth in New Orleans is the ‘Neighborhood Participation Plan’, which was inserted into the authorizing ‘Master Plan’ amendment. This will come as little surprise to anyone who has followed land use and planning issues, as the chief proponent and architect of the dubious notion of a ‘master plan with the force of law’ has been against EVERY new development and any change in this city for decades.

But now we are faced with a so-called “Neighborhood Participation Plan” which threatens to derail any and every new development requiring any sort of variance or zoning change. It adds time and expense and more uncertainty to almost every application to the City Planning Commission.

You can check it out here (this should pop open a PDF)

All of the yellow boxes are new hoops for getting a conditional use through the process if the NPP gets adopted as is.

The draft of the “Neighborhood Participation Plan” includes:

- A “pre-application” process which extends the timeline for consideration indefinitely.

- A requirement that most zoning changes and some basic variances go through their own specific ill-defined “Neighborhood Participation Plan” that the applicant is expected to pay for and administrate.

- A requirement that the applicant must present, as part of their application, once it finally gets out of the ‘pre-application period, all of opposition and concerns to their application.

- Once the  application  is submitted it can be subject to endless public hearing requirements.

- It writes in special treatment for neighborhood associations which, traditionally, have been more opposed to new development and zoning changes than the public at large.

What it excludes is any protections against groups or individuals attempting to extort concessions that don’t touch specifically on the parcel in the application.

This new method of delaying zoning change requests indefinitely  will politicize to an even greater extent an already opaque, convoluted and onerous process. It will lead to needing your neighbor’s permission to use your property as you see fit. It will add an infinite amount of new rings to kiss. Watch for established businesses to manipulate the process to keep out competition.

All of this is against a background of a wholly inadequate zoning code that doesn’t provide flexibility for property owners and makes conditional uses and zoning changes necessary by failing to plan for the obvious notion that narrowly written criteria will exclude the great bulk of what people actually want to do with their property. But it is naturally New Orleans that the rules are put in place so that we can have the privilege of paying to have them relaxed.

So how we fix this, short of doing the smart thing and throwing the whole thing out and starting all over again?

- Remove the pre-application process and requirement.

- If there is a Project Neighborhood Participation Plan to be required, and why would there be, but if there is, it should be paid for and administered by the Planning Commission Office, using the District Planners. And it should be done within the application timetable.

-There should be no increase in fees associated with this Plan, instead it should come from the city’s general fund. It is not the fault of the applicant that the code didn’t take into account their plans.

- If neighborhood associations want special access to the process there should be fees for that special access.

- Remove the provision in the flow chart where an application can be subject to endless public hearings.

We have done enough in New Orleans to empower the endless opposition to growth and development. We are struggling as a city because of it. If we can’t remove this “Neighborhood Participation Plan” at least we can find ways to make it less destructive to the future of New Orleans.

The New Orleans “Master Plan” http://nolamasterplan.com/ was passed by a slim margin of voters to much ballyhoo by its supporters and a good deal of suspicion and skepticism by those of us who questioned the wisdom of giving a plan the force of law prior to any plan being drafted. When proponents trumpeted its ability to ensure “neighborhood input” in stopping development many of us just saw it has a way to empower the perpetual opposition that crops up with EVERY proposal. The bone they threw to people who want much needed development to come to New Orleans is that, for a project that met all the myriad of criteria, it would add more “certainty” to being able to develop.

That was a lie.

We were told it was going to bring a set of rules “unaffected by politics”. What we got was the empowerment of NIMBYs to stop everything anybody wants to build.

The latest case is Tulane’s new proposed stadium. You can read about it here.

The optimism about the new Tulane Stadium meets destructive force of NIMBY empowerment.

The short story is: Tulane wants to build a stadium they can build under the current zoning rules. A dozen NIMBYs get up in arms. They appeal to a councilwoman, who made her ‘bona fides’ as a NIMBY, who is convinced that issues that can be handled simply with municipal code enforcement need to be handled with land use regulation. The councilwoman proposes an “interim Zoning District”(IZD) to throw sand in the works of Tulane developing a stadium despite overwhelming support for the stadium, protesting all the time that she doesn’t want to “impede progress”. Three other pandering councilwomen join in and the IZD passes.

And they use the “master plan”, which they tell us is supposed to add “certainty” to the land use process, to justify it.

What is clear is that the only way the “master plan” will be used is to guarantee the “certainty” that nothing can ever be built without either kissing the rings of self appointed neighborhood poo-bahs or paying off council people to ignore the perpetual opposition to change.

The post “master plan” world is one in which a project that wasn’t envisioned by the people putting together the plan, who made no secret they were under the influence of preservationists and other anti-development groups, will require a year of meetings, hearings and thousands of dollars in fees. But a handful of NIMBYs can stop a project that is ALLOWED by the plan just by whining to a sympathetic pandering councilwoman. A post “master plan” New Orleans is one in which NOTHING ever gets built again unless there is NO ONE who objects.  This is an impossible standard in a city where a debate on an issue between 3 people can bring 5 different opinions.

What we have now is a system where the opposition, the forces of NO, are always given deference and that will lead to a New Orleans where nothing can ever grow again.

One of the most beloved aspects of the “New Orleans Culture” is its embrace of music. Unfortunately for decades New Orleans zoning code was hostile to live music in the city. The only place that live music was a “Permitted” use under the zoning code was Bourbon Street, initially, and then Frenchman Street additionally. Outside of these two entertainment zones, live music was either “conditional” or not allowed.

The City of New Orleans is now rewriting its zoning code and we have the opportunity to expand & protect live music and the venues that host it.

Well, this a moment of opportunity. If you want to see Live Music thrive and grow in New Orleans you need to send in a note to the City Planning Commission.

A couple of key points to hit in your comments would be.

- A desire that live music be a “permitted” use in Commercial, Mixed Use & Neighborhood Business zoning categories provided the venue can operate within the municipal code’s sound ordinance.

- That live music is an integral part of the New Orleans economy as expressed through the “cultural economy” sections of the Master Plan.  And that not allowing live music to play a larger role in neighborhood economies is contrary to  the ‘spirit’ of the City’s master plan.

Public comments may be emailed to the CPC office at cpcinfo@nola.gov. Please type “CZO Draft” into the subject line.

The folks looking to shut down live music venues are already organized. New Orleans if full of NIMBYs looking to shut down anything they can’t specifically control or doesn’t specifically meet their needs. We have an opportunity to get live music as a permitted use enshrined in the zoning code if we act now.

In industrial accidents such as the Deepwater Horizon and subsequent oil leak, there is a usual but unfortunate pattern to civil litigation and victim compensation.

It seems to me that the person who’s on the lease would bear full responsibility for everything that happens on that lease, but generally the way these things shake out is that the partner with the least to lose, and therefore pay out, will get thrown under the bus and the victims will get screwed.

There is another method for ensuring that all victims are compensated and all costs associated with the oil spill are paid.

Place a lien on BP’s existing gulf leases.

Place a lien on BP’s Gulf leases until such time as the full cost of the clean up is paid for, personal losses of Gulf coast residents are covered and the states recover the lost tax revenue they miss collecting because economic activity along the coast is disrupted or curtailed.

The state legislatures of Gulf coast states need to place liens on BPs Gulf Coast leases equal to about half of the production from their active wells and future exploration. We don’t want to undercut all incentive to produce but we need to ensure that all financial costs for this spill are paid for by the responsible parties.

We need to do this and do it now.

Lien on BP until they pay for everything they need to.

It is kind of harsh to start with such an emphatic title. Particularly when I know that all of the volunteer’s hearts are in the right place and it’s kind of like the little old lady telling you she doesn’t need your damn help crossing the street.

But seriously, there should be NO volunteers working on oil spill recovery work on the Gulf Coast. NONE.

BP, Transocean, Halliburton and who ever else is involved in this massive catastrophe needs to pay the full costs of the clean up.  They took a calculated risk for what would have been, and may yet still be fabulous rewards. But sometimes the dice come up snake-eyes and things go spectacularly wrong. This is the cost of being involved in the petro-chemical industry. They need to write the checks.  

The state of Louisiana and the Federal government should not be in the business of wrangling free labor for what should be well compensated positions doing hot, messy and dangerous work. Working in the marshes along the Louisiana coast isn’t a day at the beach.

This oil spill threatens to impact the Gulf Coast economy for years to come. A billion dollar impact on the seafood industry and the ways that the money that won’t be coming in will ripple through the rest of the economy in lost taxes. The visitors that won’t be coming to Gulf Coast beaches. This is going to add economic dislocation to environmental disaster.

So BP (which I am using as shorthand for the consortium of contractors responsible) needs to hire people. They need to replace the money that would have flowed through the economy via the ways in which it has in the past, and free labor via volunteers just undercuts these workers and in a sense lets’ BP off the hook for the full cost of the clean up.

Everyone who is cleaning off a bird, everyone who is scooping oil out of the marsh, everyone who is grading the crude off the sand, needs to be paid for their effort.

If non-governmental agencies are called in for their expertise, and they should be, they need to document the man-hours involved and present BP with a bill and send checks to those working.

If this oil spill is going to suck 100 of millions, or even billions of dollars out of the Gulf Coast economy then it is up to BP to replace that by paying EVERYONE involved in anyway with Oil Spill Recovery.

And if they won’t pay? Then they need to have an assessment placed on their existing offshore leases which will have them forfeiting a significant portion of the money from their production from producing fields until everyone is paid.

So, I’m making a plea against the use of volunteers in the oil spill recovery. If you are coming to the Gulf Coast to work to clean up BP’s mess then you should be paid by BP.

This is just a set, in concise form, of many of the themes, backgrounds, motifs and issues that are going to be central to this forum going forward. I expect that these will change over the course of writing in more detail. And who knows, my mind may change on some of these in the future. But now, just now, these are some of the more important points I’ll be working on with posts here.

- The River. The reason New Orleans is here, the reason our city was built here, and the reason we are still important to the rest of the country is due, primarily, to the river. Forget this and you will suffer for it.

- International Trade. We built a lot of things and grew when trade was central to our life in New Orleans. We began to ignore it and we began our decline.

- Tradition may or may not be a problem. Insularity almost always is.

- Romanticizing New Orleans and thinking that it is so “unique” that it doesn’t need to participate in the U.S. or world economy is one of the most damaging things you can do to the city. The people of New Orleans make it unique and if the people can’t sustain themselves then New Orleans dies as they leave for economic opportunity elsewhere.

- If you think national retail chains and large scale business are somehow incompatible with New Orleans, you haven’t been here long enough.

- Those who complain that they don’t want New Orleans to be like “Houston or Atlanta”  don’t seem to realize 1) Both those cities started out trying to be like New Orleans (in terms of economic primacy) and 2) that a lack of opportunity for our citizens will have them moving to places like Houston or Atlanta.

- Historic preservation is fine in small doses and when completely voluntary. When it becomes compulsory and preservationists become strident it becomes stifling.

- The combination of strident preservationists and an insular ruling class combine to be like a bad jealous lover for the city of New Orleans. They don’t want you to change and they don’t want you to meet anyone new.

- I will struggle to remember that you can get into a lot of trouble speaking in metaphors and similes in New Orleans.

- Neighborhood Organizations can be a double edged sword in a community, providing a method for disseminating crucial information and being a catalyst for positive neighborhood projects but oftentimes being resistant to change, a self appointed cadre of the NIMBY-minded with a reflexive NO towards most new development.

- Basic code enforcement, or rather the lack of it, is impacting economic development.

- In New Orleans, oftentimes, something is restricted so that you can have the privilege of paying to do it or have it done. More regulations generally just mean more opportunity for corruption.

- Almost every new development that has been built in the city in the past 50 years has had a positive impact on the areas around them. In the cases where you think they haven’t you need to perhaps look closer at what is causing the decline.

- Concentrating poverty has failed miserably.

- And to paraphrase Ernie K-Doe. “When you got your money in your pocket, that’s your money.”  That pretty well underscores how important individual economic opportunity is and why we should do the things we need to do to make sure that we build a prosperous city.

So… these are it… mostly, in a couple of bullet points what we will be talking about here.

New Orleans is a city that needs to regain a spirit of progress. Here we will examine, discuss, brainstorm and promote ways to move our city boldly into the future.

We will discuss policies and strategies for creating a prosperous and exciting city.

This is the start.