The New Orleans City Council has ordered the French Market Corporation to evict Mayor LaToya Cantrell from the city-owned apartment at the Upper Pontalba Building. The question remains: will the French Market Corporation follow the council's directive and kick the mayor out of the unit just off Jackson Square?
City council vice president J. P. Morrell says the answer to that question should be obvious.
"This is where the onus goes back on the French Market Corporation and their board," Morrell said to WWL's Newell Normand. "They have all of the authority necessary to take control of the apartment and rent it.
"By the 21st, if they don't have keys, they treat it like a tenant who has been evicted or who has abandoned premises, and they seize control of the premises, and they do that either through an agreement with the former tenant or through an eviction."
However, Morrell admitted that what should happen might not be what actually happens.
"I can't predict. I don't know if the French Market Board would try to stop them from doing that," Morrell said. "If the people on the board are good fiduciaries, regardless of the fact that they are currently appointed by the mayor, they will just let things just play out because the law passed on August 10 over the mayor's veto--the law we passed last year--leaves no wiggle room. This unit is to be put on the market (and) rented at fair market rate to the next person on the list, just like the the rest of the Pontalba (units)."
Morrell says if the French Quarter Corporation board would be making a huge mistake if it didn't follow the council's ordinance and allows the mayor to remain in the Pontalba unit.
"If anything less happens, whether the board intervenes or not, they're all breaking the law at that point," Morrell said. "There isn't any other option unless the law is changed."