It’s heating up out there. And coincidentally, so is New Orleans politics.
The mayoral election filing deadline is July 11th, with the primary election occurring exactly three months later. At this point, it’s almost certain to say all the heavyweights have announced.
It’d be difficult to dispute the fact that the race, though still young, has a leader: City Councilwoman Helena Moreno, who holds a commanding cash lead over opponents, with a war chest of $1.5 million as of April 4th. (In contrast, candidate and fellow City Council representative Oliver Thomas reported $225,000 on the same date.)
Moreno joined WWL’s Dave Cohen to speak about her platform and vision and proposed solutions for a handful of hot-button issues.
Moreno ties population crisis to poor services and lack of opportunity
“The reason why I'm running for mayor,” Moreno says, “is I've been sitting in the legislative branch of government here in the city of New Orleans, and the legislative branch, as we all know, does not run operations of the city. We appropriate budgets, we pass different laws, we deal with land use issues.”
Moreno expresses frustration with the executive branch and how it routinely drags its feet to implement and maintain basic operational processes, whether it be keeping lights on, improving NOPD response times, or paying vendors.
According to Moreno, it's the city’s failure to uphold the basics that’s causing residents to leave.
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“The initiatives I've pushed forward—sometimes even through ordinance—have either been slow-walked or not implemented at all,” Moreno says. “And so, as I started to see, my friends and even members of my own family here left New Orleans because they were fed up and frustrated with the quality of life. They were fed up and frustrated with the lack of opportunity.”
In a city with many problems, Moreno says New Orleans requires 'coordination and working with urgency'
“I plan on being a twenty-four-seven mayor,” Moreno says. “To be a good mayor of New Orleans, the people of New Orleans have to be your number one priority. That's why I’m pledging to ensure that the people in New Orleans are my number one priority.”
However, as Moreno meets with constituents, she says she feels a tangible lack of morale.
“I talked to a mother the other day, and she was telling me about how in the city, morale is so low because as she takes her kids to school and gets on Claiborne, and then notices that the streetlights are out, and then notices there's patchwork on the road, and she's late because of the conditions on the street. Already her day is off to a bad start, not because of anything that she did but because of how the city of New Orleans is being run.”
When putting forth solutions, the candidate cites evidence of a working model: Super Bowl LIX.
“We have a model to fix our long-standing issues, and that is working with urgency through coordination and collaboration,” Moreno says. “We saw it work during the Super Bowl at the directive of the mayor. She said all city departments have to meet every single week with our outside stakeholders, with energy, with the state. DOTD, State Police, GNO Inc. …because of this level of coordination and working with urgency, we got the city in shape for the Super Bowl. But we shouldn't just wait for a Super Bowl for that level of service for the people of New Orleans.”
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One of the main areas of concern for Moreno lies in the Safety and Permits Department.
“You need a mayor who needs to say that we want New Orleans to be open for business right now,” Moreno says. “The Safety and Permits Department is a disaster, and everyone in this administration knows that you have done nothing to try to fix it. It takes months to get an occupational license in the city of New Orleans.”
“On safety and permits, revamping that office is going to be top for me,” she continues. “Making sure we do a national search for a CAO. The chief administrative officer is the person who is supposed to be running the operations of the city, making sure that all departments are coordinated and working efficiently together. And doing a national search, in my opinion, is important.
“Then also making sure that I have top-notch department heads and top people working on the mayor's team, not friends and family," Moreno says. "But subject experts, and making sure that these people are as dedicated as I am to prioritizing the people of New Orleans and making sure that they get the services that they deserve.
Addressing the lack of NOPD recruits
When asked if it’s her plan, if elected, to stick with Anne Kirkpatrick as NOPD Chief, Moreno says, “If we keep seeing this level of results… I can't turn my back on that.”
However, Moreno acknowledged the troubling lack of police recruits.
“I have told Kirkpatrick that this is the area that she isn’t doing well in,” says Moreno. “We're roughly stuck around 940. So we've been stuck there for the past couple of years…. We also have the least number of applicants now than we've seen in many years, so even our applicant pool is down.”
The solution? Moreno says it might be time to hire a outside help. to turn recruitment around.
Moreno says, “If we don't start seeing results soon, when I come in as mayor, I plan on bringing on a third party, head-hunting type of group to come in and help us on the recruiting side, because this is what other cities have now started to do.”