New Orleans Mayor Landrieu Addresses Committee Members at NLC Policy Forum
September 19, 2011
by Stacey Levitt
At the NLC Policy Forum held last week in New Orleans, city leaders were honored to have the host city’s mayor join the organization’s leadership, policy and advocacy steering committee members and other guests as they gathered to discuss key federal policy issues affecting cities and towns and to develop policy positions to be considered at the Congress of Cities this November in Phoenix.
Speaking to a crowd of more than 120 attendees from NLC’s policy and advocacy committees (see story, page 3), Mayor Mitch Landrieu echoed many of the frustrations felt by NLC members who continue to face layoffs and cuts to essential services and offered examples of the steps his administration has taken to become more efficient but still deliver high-quality services.
“Across the country, in nearly every city, big or small, budgets are being slashed and government is being forced to adjust to a new reality—business as usual is simply fiscally unsustainable,” the mayor said. “The previously unthinkable is happening…Teachers are being laid off, police and fire is being cut back and still more needs to be done to fill immense budget shortfalls. Here in New Orleans, we face these same challenges.”
Mayor Landrieu stressed that while Washington maintains a “slash and cut” ideology — reducing investments in key areas such as public safety, infrastructure, community development and education — the citizens of our hometowns still expect and deserve an outstanding government that represents and fights for the growing needs of the country’s communities. So while New Orleans has not been immune to the same fiscal difficulties that plague other cities, its mantra has been to “cut smart, reorganize and invest in the future.”
“Our approach is not mired in ideology,” Mayor Landrieu said. “It’s not about politics or egos. It’s based on flexibility and efficiency. It’s about producing results for the people of New Orleans… Our goal is not just to do more with less, but to be smarter with less, better with less.”
According to Landrieu, the city has decreased wasteful spending on ineffective programs and has invested heavily in public safety, transit and rail and blight reduction.
In an effort to create jobs, the mayor’s administration created the city’s first public-private partnership for economic development, the NOLA Business Alliance, to leverage public dollars with private investment.
The mayor also highlighted the many strides the city has made in the years since Hurricane Katrina, fostering entrepreneurship, cultivating small businesses and reinvigorating the city’s struggling public education system. Such strides were made possible because of disaster relief assistance from the federal government, funding that remains at risk of being cut at a time when several cities and states are literally drowning.
He argued that it is the responsibility of the federal government to protect and restore lives after natural disasters of the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina and more recent events like the tornadoes in Joplin, Mo., or Hurricane Irene, which battered the East Coast.
“We have neglected to prepare for the worst, and in cities across this great country disaster is just one storm, one earthquake, one tornado, one fire away. Congress must get serious about appropriating enough money for the Disaster Relief Fund because disasters are non-partisan. They do not care about numbers and ideology. This is about people.”
In addition to considering policy positions and hearing from the mayor, city officials attending the meeting saw firsthand some of the innovative projects launched in New Orleans post-Katrina on a mobile tour guided by Council Member Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, Deborah Langhoff, chief of staff for Council Member Susan Guidry and various senior city staff.
The tour included visits to the Columbia Parc Residential Development, the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music and the G. Joseph Sullivan Drainage Pumping Station.
NLC First Vice President Ted Ellis, mayor of Bluffton, Ind., said: “The mayor’s speech and New Orleans tour provided a wonderful backdrop to the policy work of each of the NLC policy and advocacy committees and offered real solutions for committee members to bring back to their home communities.”
Details: Visit this NLC committee webpage to view photos from the event as well as details on each tour stop.