“I had all horrible options and tried to pick the least horrible," says Helena Moreno on the New Orleans 2026 budget, which she will present for council approval on Dec. 1st.
If accepted, it'll come like a bulk spoonful of bitter herbal medicine.
Moreno joined WWL to explain her proposed budget. As expected, most city departments will see severe cuts. Additionally, city employees can expect routine furloughs, hiring freezes, unessential employee layoffs, strict overtime monitoring, extreme travel budget reductions, and more.
Moreno describes her process as “strategic and surgical.”
“The budget the Cantrell admin put forward had predominantly 30% cuts across the board,” Moreno explains. “I said that's like taking a bulldozer to the city budget."
Which departments will remain fully funded?
Moreno explains, “I instructed the team to ensure public safety and essential city services like sanitation were fully funded, or as much as possible fully funded.”
The list of departments that fall under this category includes: NOPD, Fire, EMS, Juvenile Justice, Orleans Communications District 911, Public Works, Sanitation, Code Enforcement, Safety & Permits, Recreation Development Commission, and the Council on Aging.
Three departments even received budget increases: Safety & Permits, EMS, and the Department of Finance.
“Department of Safety & Permits was getting a bit of a reduction in the Cantrell budget,” explains Moreno. “But as we all know, Safety & Permits can't receive cuts. It's already struggling… If anything, every recommendation we've seen from every good government study on Safety & Permits is that they are underfunded. So we actually bumped them up higher than they were in 2025.”
For EMS, Moreno explains how they're a revenue-generating department. "That was actually helpful to add another crew. That's where you see the bump for EMS."
The Departments of Finance bump comes due to the enhanced needs following the bond commissions approval of a $120 million payday loan for the city to keep paying it's employees through the end of the year.
“Department of Finance, we have the legislative auditor in the city, and we now have the weekly council meetings and weekly drawdowns for personnel because of the revenue anticipation note that we were able to get with approval of the bond commission. So, finance has a lot more work and a lot more to do, and I can't risk them not getting it done because they didn't have the resources. So that's why they received a bump.”
Moreno also explaisn that a few departments were set to get a cut under Cantrell's proposed budget, but she decided against it.
"NORD was receiving a haircut in the Cantrell administration. And we hear so often that our youth and people across the city don't have enough opportunities for recreation. So we kept them whole."
Similarly, Moreno decided not to cut the Council on Aging.
"Council on Aging was receiving a big haircut under the Cantrell proposed budget. So we kept the Council on Aging whole at $1.2 million... Right now, people are struggling, and sometimes the programs and even different services that the Council on Aging performs are some of the only opportunities that some of our seniors have to actually be with other people or sometimes even get a meal. So we didn't wanna cut those services."
Whose recieving the most cuts?
When averaged out, each department is receiving between an 8-9% reduction. However, certain departments are losing more than others.
“The departments that are getting kind of the biggest cuts are the Mayor's Office, the CAO's office, and City Council,” Moreno states. “So once again, the non-essential departments are the ones where you're seeing the largest cuts… roughly 10 to 15 percent probably.”
A large chunk of these savings comes from periodical furloughs, Moreno explains:
“I did all things possible to try to mitigate the impact on our personnel. And the best that I could do here was furloughing a little bit over 700 employees. So once again, those who are in public safety, those who are in essential services, they're not being furloughed. They will continue working all their days. This is for the non-essential folks… All the elected officials, that means me, I'm furloughed, but I'm still coming to work. Council members, they'll be furloughed… My leadership team, they'll be furloughed, but I will still be expecting them to come to work. And that's just where we're at right now.”
The mayor also explains that there will be layoffs, including "A reduction of 35 unclassified positions that are under mayoral control: I have not decided what these positions will be, but that will be what I will review when we adopt the budget."
"Also, 75 percent of probationary employees (will be cut): these are employees who have not been with the city for a year or more. That's roughly 62 people,” Moreno continues. “We also have a hiring freeze of 75 percent of the vacant positions."
Travel is another area where Moreno plans drastic cuts. “There was a major budget for travel again for next year," she explains. "And so that cut by 75% and the remaining 25% for travel is only for essential travel and must receive the approval of the CAO.
Generating revenue wherever and whenever possible
While Moreno and her team have worked at crafting a budget, Joe Giarrusso has been playing the role of revenue hound.
“I told him to go look under couch seats, everywhere, to find additional revenue, even if its one time revenue,” Moreno explains. “There is additional revenue we’ve identified, roughly $75.9 million. But this is one time.”
Giarrusso explains that they’ve identified three main areas to quickly intake a few million as the city works to build a long-term strategy.
Giarruso says they've identified around $16 million they can collect from Sewerage and Water Board over the next few months.
Then, from FEMA, the city expects to receive $5 million.
“That is being expedited right now, too,” says Giarrusso. “Expect to get that in in 2026."
Additionally, while the city litigates full ownership of the WIsner Trust, Giarrusso explains, “A result of our council settlement with LSU and Tulane, we're gonna have about $7.5 million for this year. So there's already seven and a half sitting in the bank.”
Finally, Giarrusso states that the city must plan to call in tens of millions in unpaid traffic tickets.
“I have had this conversation countless times about making sure that money's coming in from whatever source, whether it's sales tax revenue, whether it's traffic camera, whether it's parking tickets. One of the things that they're going to have to do is have a person in finance who is the collections officer," says Giarrusso. "And if we're looking again conservatively at parking tickets that are overdue, there are tens of millions of dollars that are owed.”
Moreno adds that her administration is attempting to identify creative areas for generating revenue to cover expenses like NOPD overtime for Mardi Gras parades, expenses that may fall on krewe members.
“One of the things that Council Member Giarrusso will introduce next week includes a fee that'll help cover some of the overtime costs for Mardi Gras," says Moreno. "It's a $20 per-rider fee for the different Mardi Gras krewes. So I figure you're gonna pay a couple thousand dollars for all your beads and throws and everything else, have an additional $20 to be able to capture about half a million dollars to cover overtime costs during Mardi-Gras.”
To crack down on NOPD OT abuse, Moreno explains that Kirkaptrick has tossed out the honor system approach and reimplemented the old, biometric system.
"When you actually show up at work, and you put your thumbprint or your eye scan or whatever it is, now, the clock starts running as to when you're actually accruing time," says the Mayor-elect. "And so she's gotten back to that, and she's doing better projections around her OT. And so that piece is going to have to be managed very carefully. OT across all departments will have to be managed very carefully, but that's where we're at, you know?"
Related
Leasing and selling city property is also on the table.
“I'm having New Orleans Building Corporation assess our potential top 30 properties that we could either renegotiate leases or look at potentially selling properties that we're not using,” explains Moreno. “We could look at long-term 90-100-year leases on some of our properties, but putting our properties back into commerce so that we can generate more revenue."
How long will it take to get back on track
Moreno states that it's her hope to get the city back on track in under two years.
"This is not a good budget. I had all horrible options and just tried to pick the least horrible to get us to where we are. But just because this is a grim budget, I don't want people to think that big things are not possible in New Orleans because so many of the changes that are necessary in the city don't have anything to do with money; they have to do with leadership," explains Moreno. "They deal with leadership and the right people being part of city government, and city government working at a different pace, working with urgency, coordination, and collaboration."
The mayor says that with the right work-ethic, New Orleans can get back on track even sooner than the legislative auditor projects.
"Mike Waguespack says he thinks that we can fully rebuild our fund balance and have enough recurring revenue...and get out of this in three to four years. I told him I'm gonna do it sooner... Hopefully, in 1-2 years, we can get out of this. But I will move very urgently. And I hate to use the word aggressively, but that's how I have to almost move in this. I will aggressively identify new ways to bring more revenue into the city."