The New Orleans City Services Coalition believes it has the blue print to make city government more efficient, especially as it relates to five basic services the city provides. One of those basic services is drainage and water management, and members of the coalition say it'll take a massive overhaul in city hall to make the city more efficient in that area.
"(There are) a lot of inefficiencies in the services that we need," coalition member Lambert Boissiere said. "I had a pothole one time that had to be filled in, and I called the streets department. They said they came out and said they had a water leak and they had to get Sewerage and Water Board. Sewerage and Water Board came out and said they had to get (the Parks and) Parkways (Department) because the oak tree root was wrapped around the pipe. So I had to get all three of them together to fill one pothole."
According to Boissiere, the first step to getting rid of those inefficiencies is changing state and local laws removing state influence on the Sewerage and Water Board and bringing the agency fully under local control.
"You've got people from all over the state giving their point of view of how the Sewerage and Water Board ought to be run in New Orleans, so we've got to clean that up," Boissiere said. "We've first got to clear that up. Not that they mean any harm, it's just that they're not familiar with the operation and what's going on. So we have to separate ourselves from the old legislation."
Boissier, who currently serves as a constable and who served on the city council from 1981 to 1994, says the next step would be setting up a task force to figure out how to consolidate the Sewerage and Water Board with other city departments, such as the street repair and parkways departments.
"Think about something brand new: If you had to start all over, how would you give it some kind of autonomy separate from the politics of the government, and that's the challenge that we would be faced with," Boissiere said.
Before any of this can happen, Boissiere says city leaders, the coalition, and residents need to work together to figure out how they want to SWB to function.
"We have to develop the road map first and then ask to be separate for what we have," Boissiere said. "I think we have to show people where we want to go and how we want to do that.
"Over 90 percent of the people are saying something has to change," he added. "Part of what the coalition is doing is looking at how to have that occur."