It all started with that tarp.
The tarp falls, we're told the building is too unstable to replace it. But hours later, it's replaced, and people start asking questions. Protesters march on City Hall, pressuring officials to provide more information. The City Council feels it has a fiduciary obligation to respond based on the authority that they have. They say they'll set up a process to be more open and transparent with their constituents. The Mayor takes issue with that, and says initially that the Council has no role in the process. The Council holds fast and say they'll have that hearing.
The Mayor writes a sternly-worded letter, and says the decision to move forward with a special hearing and provide a forum for the public to air its frustration is ill-advised and puts the timely demolition and ongoing investigations of the site at risk. She says her staff won’t be present at the meeting, and goes on to say that a public examination of sensitive private contracts between the owner, its insurance company, the demolition company and the like may cause some parties to not participate. In fact, one insurer may have already withdrawn after comments from a Councilmember last week.I would remind the voters of the City of New Orleans to think back. Think back prior to the Council’s conducting of hearings and setting up a committee structure with regard to how much information you actually had about the internal machinations of the Sewerage and Water Board. Might I be so bold as to suggest - it was nada. Nothing. It wasn’t until there was a parting of the sea, with special committee hearings to bring forth data from the bowels of City Hall in conjunction with investigating agencies - only then did we begin to see the light and understand the breadth and depth of problems with SWBNO.
So why aren’t we treating this the same way? There were investigations there. There were concerns and potential liabilities there. I find it very curious that the Hard Rock collapse would be any different. The Mayor obviously wasn’t made aware of what the developers own attorney said - he talked about the insurances available, the representations made by the builder’s risk insurance company. He talked about the challenges of all of that. He shared that information with you through WWL Radio. Is the Mayor critical of him doing that as well?
Mayor Cantrell makes a point to try to connect the dots between that one insurer who may have withdrawn and what a Councilmember might have said last week, and then has the audacity to say that the Council is trying to politicize this issue?
I look at juvenile crime, as the Councilmembers show up and face angry crowds of 1,000 people, and the Mayor chooses to go instead to Washington DC and not send a representative from her Administration to the crime summit, and she talks about politicization by the council?
If what the Mayor fears is politicization of this issue, and politicizing the issue is what the Council did with the Sewerage and Water Board, juvenile crime and so forth, by all means, politicize this issue too, because that’s what got real results in the past!Amazingly, at the end of her short-sighted letter, she says “regardless of the stated intent of the meeting, or the willingness of some of the Councilmembers to try to limit discussion, a special hearing specific to the Hard Rock collapse could lead to public displays in Council chambers that are outside of the Council’s ability to control.”I guess the public is just too stupid, wild and crazy to control themselves and just articulate some of their concerns. I remember when the Mayor said she represents the little guy, the average man or woman. But now all of a sudden we should fear them because they’re going to open their mouth?
