Thursday, March 25, 2010

of course he does

Nagin rejects banning felons from winning contracts

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Exactly what does "exluded" mean on the WWL home page?

Superdeformed said...

Hey, when you're mayor of an underground government waging a war against the shadow government, you have to hire outside of the box, I mean jail.. inside the jail. um you know!?

Anonymous said...

Tell me this will be handed to Landrieu and Landrieu will sign it.

Please.

or is this a veto override?

Anonymous said...

Something going down with Methodist Hospital in NO East. A few years ago, Methodist could not give the property away. Now it seems they have an eager buyer - the Nagin Administration. $40,000,000 for three flooded buildings. Sherman Copelin and the Black Faced DEKE are partners. So, Nagin, Georges and Copelin. Nice.

Maybe Ray's veto is the best way he can keep doing business with the City after he is convicted.

Anonymous said...

Hey, last anon, where is Ceasar Burgos in all that?

Anonymous said...

{Different anon here}:

On Burgos:

He - a plaintiff attorney with no prior development or transportation experience yet turned into the private development arm of the Nagin administration and made head of the RTA - bought the City Annex and boom there is a hospital going up driving his property up.

Burgos gets handed the Lake Plaza area and boom the methodist hospital plans take off likely driving up Burgos' nearby property.

Can't believe this whole thing doesn't get more attention.

Anonymous said...

If Couhig is indeed silent partner with Burgos in some of his deals, and there is a tie-in between the Lake Plaza/methodist hospital land deals, was that Couhig smackdown of The Noose Tying Goat F*cker just a party trick to fool the peasants?

Everyone watches the street magicians while their pickpocket friends rob at will, is that it?

And are we allowed to say "Mafia" and ask Georges to convincingly deny it?

Or is everything so dirty that "political system" and "Mafia" are synonyms now?

Anonymous said...

more nagin & boyd contract fun!

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2010/03/mayor_ray_nagin_raises_cap_on.html

since when is the top tech-dude in charge of recovery too!? isnt he already, you know, busy? n stuff?

Anonymous said...

According to a March 16th T-P article by David Hammer,
"...It wasn't until April 2007 that the Regional Planning Commission, a board that Burgos sat on as RTA chairman, offered the VA the historic neighborhood between Galvez and Rocheblave streets and between Canal Street and Tulane Avenue. That RPC offer lists Burgos' building as an "amenity" in the surrounding area, even though it also seems to clearly be within the offered footprint...."

Caitlin Cain, Development Director for the RPC manages the nolamedzone website which the RPC hosts, on its own servers, as a public service to apprise the public of the VA Hospital and associated projects.

Anonymous said...

Regardless of how anyone feels about the comunity about to be obliterated for the VA project, questions remain as to why the Mayor gave such obvious preference to the RPC option, agreeing more than a year before official VA site selection to present that specific site to the VA in a construction-ready state. Why did the City Council follow right along with the December '07 building permit ban that hogtied residents but exempted the former City Hall Annex?

Why does the HUD-based Orleans-Jefferson Renewal Community show a purple-coded Renewal Community overlapping both hospital footprints but beginning at Banks Street rather than Tulane?

Anonymous said...

Those are good questions.

Anonymous said...

Caitlin Cain is also the contact person for information about developer incentives within the Renewal Community.

How much of the hospital footprint is planned for dedicated medical use exclusively related to the treatment of ill and injured people? How much is shlated for landscaping and how much will be retail or non-medical commercial use?

How many NORAs have been involved in property transactions both inside the hospital fooptprints, on the periphery, and within GNOBEDD's footprint? There's NORA, NORA One, NORA Two, NORA Three, and The NORA Group, etc.

Anonymous said...

"State officials have already initiated land acquisition for the targeted downtown site using state general funds and have assured me that the site will be ready for construction before the end of that design process. I am confident that there is no unique delay in the timeline for opening the VA hospital downtown."
Kim Boyle, August 2007 testimony before the US House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation

The question is not whether the RPC site received a legally-adequate review. The question is why it appears that no other option received such focused consideration and why land assembly within that particular footprint was commenced prior to official site selection in late 2008.

Meanwhile, LSU continues its expropriation end run within the VA portion of the RPC footprint.

Anonymous said...

If the VA, with help from LSU and the City, razes a neighborhood and erects its hospital next to a spot that the financially-troubled LSU/Charity system does not yet have the money to develop, the city may once again be left with an isolated medical facility amidst urban desolation, as it was when the current interim hospital was built to replace the old Hotel Dieu.

Is Charity/LSU/VA the real "synergy" behind selection and clearing of what could be a potentially isolated VA footprint? How can we be certain that "synergy" among the RPC, the DDD, and City Hall didn't play a major role in selection of the "RPC" site option and in the expemption of key commercial parcels from the building permit ban which affects the balance of the hospital footprints?

Anonymous said...

Yes. How about the "synergy" surrounding 2330 Canal?

Purchased by an LLC in late 2007, it is in the VA footprint. In 2008, Stacey Head (who introduced the building permit moratorium in the first place) moved to exempt 2330 Canal from the ban that prevented residents in the neighboring 2300 blocks of Cleveland, Palmyra and Banks from pursuing their own rebuilding plans. Do only the connected few enjoy representative government in post-K New Orleans?

Why is Job1 housed at 2330 Canal rather than in a city-owned buildng?

Before the finals acts of the Nagin administration deal a death-blow to a neighborhood it actively prevented from recovering, are the Federal watchdogs dead or sleeping?

It is not too late to demand answers about site selction, RPC footprint timeline and a process that included only limited and censored public input.
It is not too late to question the
selective mayoral and councilmanic representation that taints this project.

Anonymous said...

See City Council agenda for May 1st, 2008 for mention of a City Planning Commission report recommending exemption of 2330 Canal from the moratorum. The actual exemption seems to occurred through Concilwoman Head's motion M-08-219. The moratoium itself was in 22,944 m.c.s (published in local newspaper May 22, 2008).