“One thing that all New Orleanians can agree on is that they're dissatisfied with the level of city services.”
That’s what Peter Reichart, Policy Advisor to the City Services Coalition, said at the opening of our third installment of the City Services Coalition show.
And while it's a big sentence, and true, it's one that can so easily come up empty because, without specifics, it’s really meaningless.
Yes, we know New Orleans has problems. But as we see with our politics today, it’s easy to express frustration. It’s easy to express despair, dissatisfaction, and division.
What's hard is to express and implement constructive, incremental, noticeable change. It’s hard, yes. But as we know, with the right leaders, it’s not impossible.
Thankfully, folks like Peter Reichart and Sharonda Williams know how to make big statements like “Hey! Our city isn’t working,” and instead of letting them breed frustration and resentment, breathe meaning and insight into them.
That’s why I continue to have these City Services Coalition shows. They serve as an excellent example of those who know how to say, “To hell with political grandstanding, let's put together a plan to address our city's needs.”
And they’ve done just that. You can (and should) read it.
The best thing about their work is that it doesn’t take a post-grad degree in urban planning to understand what they’re talking about. They're precise, outlining five categories about things we need to do to get this city back on track: retaining residents, attracting businesses, and delivering on its promises.
If you want to hear the first two installments, you can find those below, but half of this week’s episode focused on the dilapidated structure of our Civil Service Department.
Reichart puts it well when he says it’s a “Cure that’s worse than the disease.”
Sharonda Williams, General Counsel and Director of Government Affairs for Loyola University, explains exactly why the coalition has chosen to focus on the department.
“There were some cross-cutting themes in our five pillars that we looked at," Williams tells me. "A number of those concerns were things like hiring qualified people to run projects and do project management, for instance, for DPW or sewage and water board, existing vacancies in important departments where city services need to be done quickly. And so, because of those issues being raised a number of times throughout the process, we decided we'd want to look at civil service in addition to the five pillars.”
“And what we came up with is a recommended hybrid model,” Williams continues. “That means civil service would be maintained in terms of disciplinary actions and terminations and that kind of thing, but there would be a shift to department-level focus on hiring... Discipline, firing, writing employees up, such that there's more control at the department level and with department heads in managing their workforce.”
I urge everyone to listen to our full discussion. It's a thorough analysis of an issue that directly correlates to the success of our city.
Especially now that early voting has begun, remember, a mayor is only as good as the people they choose to surround them. We must elect someone who understands the need for competent, pragmatic department heads who are able to assess our needs and envision how to best handle these glaring issues.