Thursday, September 17, 2009

Bonding with Ray

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "MAS/MSF recapitulation....cont.":

Zombie, the paper has two stories about city bond issues, one to help "saint" Benson buy a building near the Superdome, the other supposedly to fix streets, which does badly need to be done.

One nola.com commenter makes the good point that the sewer lines and water pipes also need a redo, so are they going to fix the streets only to tear them up to fix the pipes early in the next Mayoral administration?

I'm concerned that our old friends at HSOA and Picke Construction and the other connected contractors and odd little subs who lost out when the Chevron building deal did not go through are now getting another kick at the can.

The city bond granting body is a largely unexplored part of the scandal-plagued Reconstruction of New Orleans.

Can we get some light shed on what's going down right now?

Can any AZ readers bring us up to speed?

I don't trust that any of this is going to be done in responsible or open way.

I am pissed that these weasels are still weaseling even though everyone knows they are bad news.

I wish there was some way to make them stop touching the city until the damage they have already done has been determined.

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

HSOA/Picke looks to be washed up. the address listed is some old flex space in kenner. the heavy hitters, scott sewell and frank fradella appear to be gone. HSOA cant pay bills anymore, i think they are basically defunct. i dont think HSOA ever did any street or sub-surface work anyhow.

Jason Brad Berry said...

Picke still has contracts in the city. But the fact that they didn't do something never stopped them from getting contracts in the past.

Anonymous said...

The Corps is doing some kind of tree removal and replanting on the neutral ground of Napoleon Ave right now.

However, they also have a plan to do major drainage work, similar to the Napoleon to Fontainebleau project a few years ago. This will take place on Napoleon, Louisiana, Jefferson and some others major streets.

And also they don't seem to want to do any remidiation if they damage the houses along the way.

So they are planting trees that will be dug up again in a year or two. And they don't plan to pay if they wreck the houses, many historic, when they do the big digging.

Anonymous said...

They got the FQ contract work, and the word I heard was that "they" and I don't know which subsidiary was meant by that "they", only that it was the usual Fradella/Bennett and city staff friends club, were going to get Chevron building contracts/sub contracts.

Another question: who paid for or 'organized' Mary Pettingill's hardwood floor? She deals with money at City Hall.

Anonymous said...

What Anon told us about the Corps work is believable, and incredibly, unbelievably stupid.

AAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!

I'm not the first, nor will I be the last, to ask you to run for Mayor, AZ, on a platform of opening all the books and disclosing all the information.

Anonymous said...

This blog (and comments) USUALLY reflects very accurate information..
So I hate to see wild speculation in anonymous comments that is inacurate.

The STATE bond commision approved the Benson financing deal NOT the city. Nagoon did mention something about issuing bonds to fix the streets.
To say that they would fix streets and leave broken S&WB pipes underneath is pure speculation.
Most street projects that I have seen do coordinate S&WB repairs with the street repair.

I don't know ANYTHING about the particulars of the Napoleon Ave project.. but what the hell would the Corps. have to do with anything to do with sub surface drainage (or TREE PLATING) inside the city. This has nothing to do with their mission of flood protection. The drainage work done below the streets is the S&WB.

Again.. I hate to see wild unsubstantiated and flat out WRONG information being posted on this blog, because normally it is a very well respected source.

Jason Brad Berry said...

Anon,

This is part of the process. If the information is inaccurate, then please let us know. I don't think anyone was inferring that the city was issuing the Benson Bond...it was just mentioned as a sidebar.

As for the corps doing the work....that didn't make sense to me either. Would like to know if there's any truth to this.

Anonymous said...

From the original blog post (witch I realize is a repost of an anonymous comment..

Zombie, the paper has two stories about city bond issues, one to help "saint" Benson buy a building near the Superdome, the other supposedly to fix streets, which does badly need to be done.

IT says CITY bond issues

Jason Brad Berry said...

I stand corrected. I thought Benson was a state bond.

Anonymous said...

Ok. .now it is getting kinda comical...

Sorry I really didn't mean to confuse anyone..
The Benson deal IS a state bond..
the anonymous poster who made the original comment was incorrect when they tried to say it was a CITY bond issue..

Sorry for confusing the blog.. I'll shut up now :-)

Jason Brad Berry said...

Who's on first?

Anonymous said...

Ok, to recap: Anon commentor got anxious that he was seeing the city ripped off again, and posted AZ to ask someone to explain.

Good News! People wrote in to explain! They said:

HSOA/Picke looks to be washed up. (Yay!)

Benson's project is a state bond.

City bonds for street repair do co-ordinate to make sure the sewers get done at the same time. (Good news, but one can be forgiven for asking given how much has been messed up.)

Ok, so that's all good.

And no one knows what the Anon poster who posted about the Corps really knows, but all can probably agree that planting trees to dig them up again is foolish.

Whew! It seems to be working. The knowledgable but slightly grumpy poster was helpful, but he can rest easy: the wheat is getting seperated from the chaff as it should.

Thanks, Zombie.

jeffrey said...

Maybe I can help a bit regarding the trees. Work is scheduled to begin soon on Phase II widening the Napoleon Ave drainage canal which is part of the ongoing SELA project. In order to do this work, they have to uproot the crepe myrtle trees on the Nap Ave neutral ground. I understand that some but not all of these trees are being "relocated" to... um... a park nearby. Sorry I don't remember exactly where. But that's the deal. I'm sorry to see the trees go but I don't see what else could have been done there.

Anonymous said...

Can anyone give some details on why Boh Brothers is tearing up St Charles and making it as bumpy and rutted as an Uptown side street?

The patches of black asphalt look horrible, are not flush with the existing road, and aren't even smooth.

The new corners are crumbly and shoddy work.

There is a total lack of detail and care being given to our grand avenue.

What the heck are they doing????

Anonymous said...

You made heros out of Southern and Active, but now the truth is coming out.

http://www.wwltv.com/topstories/stories/wwl091709cbcrimecam.18da92a55.html

“There are e-mails acknowledging that our clients were the wireless experts in connection with this project. You notice when Camsoft left, they weren't making sure that the cameras communicate with the system. That's when the cameras stopped working."

Active and Southern screwed the city while trying to portray that they were concerned about the crime problem and just trying to do the right thing. Bullshit.

I am not defending Meffert or St. Pierre or any of them...but no one should pretend that Southern and Active were any better.

Jason Brad Berry said...

You've got to be joking

Jason Brad Berry said...

I made heroes out of southern And active? What kind of shit are you smoking man? Pass the dutchie on the left hand side.

Anonymous said...

I think there's something obvious that been missed here. Conducting a bond sale is more about politics than it is patronage although the both go hand-in-hand in this case. Nagin is pulling a Marc Morial 3 Peat move. He's selling bonds now so he can have some influence in the next Mayor's race. It's a fund raising move. Anyone wanting a contract will contribute to either Nagin's political organization (CHANGE) or the candidate of choice. He could raise a substantial amount of money for any candidate. With this influence, Nagin can cut a deal for any business venture that he is directly (after 2 years of leaving CH) or indirectly involved in. This bond sale just like most in the past is about power and influence in the next administration. Marc M. used the bond sale to build funding for 3-peat. Once he failed the bonds were available to the Nagin admin. Careful what cronies Nagin will be trying to protect or promote in the next administration.

Anonymous said...

The company who originally got this multi-million dollar contract as an RFP was a local company called Active Solutions. They designed and delivered the entire package for the city from scratch. They know the system inside and out and all the technical issues surrounding it, and by most accounts they delivered and delivered well.

The system works....it's producing arrests...great!

Anonymous said...

Hello, this is the ignorant but anxious first poster again. Thank you to everyone who explained what they knew.

This thread really helped me to understand what might be going on. I was gratified to learn that I didn't need to be worried about some of the things that concerned me, and I am especially grateful to the person who explained how this bond issue is useful to Nagin politically.

That post was great. Thanks.