So Far to Go; So Blessed

How not to take a poll.

The East Jefferson neighborhood section of Thursday’s Times-Picayune posts a question each week and gives out a phone number to register your answer. Last week, the question was whether Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee’s proposal to install surveillance cameras in high crime areas is a good idea. Only 7 callers said ‘no,’ and 363 said ‘yes.’

The question Thursday was based on something we reported here last week, that a University of New Orleans survey found that one-third of the residents say they are “likely” or “somewhat likely” to move away from this area in the next couple of years. So the question is: “What is the likelihood of your leaving?” The phone number is listed, and then these instructions: “Likely–Press 1.” “Somewhat likely–Press 2.” And that’s it.

There is no way for one to register that you have no desire to leave. The assumption is that you are planning to leave, and the only question is how eager you are to vamoose. Not a good way to take a poll, unless one figures into his computations that every resident who does not phone that number is planning to stay. In that case, you might end up with numbers such as: “Likely: 263,” “Somewhat Likely: 472,” and “Planning to stay: 134,547.”

Whatever numbers their little poll produces will be meaningless.

The ubiquitous FEMA trailers…240 life-saving square feet of cramped misery…must leave Jefferson Parish before April 1, according to the Parish Council. They will allow appeals for exemptions to this ordinance, but otherwise homeowners must have them gone by the last of March.

From the beginning, my understanding is that FEMA has said the 60,000 or more trailers in the metro area were meant to stay for 18 months and no longer. If they insist on holding to that deadline, expect howls and protests like nothing you’ve ever heard. Sunday while driving through St. Bernard Parish on the way downriver to Poydras, I found myself in the world’s largest trailer park. Block after block, trailers in every driveway. Lots of activity, as people were working on houses and in yards and hauling building materials up and down streets. But there is no way Orleans, St. Bernard, and Plaquemine parishes will be finished with FEMA trailers for another five years.

Dr. Edward Blakely, the city’s new recovery chief, is confident New Orleans can emerge from this crisis as a transformed city. “It’s my business,” he said. “It’s what cities around the world pay me to do.” Fine, professor. That’s what we want. Tell us what to do.


Blakely said, “I was too young to help resurrect Dresden or Berlin after the war. But that’s what we’re talking about here.” In our case, he told the Times-Picayune, we should not try simply to restore what was lost. Instead of “resurrecting the city’s low-skill, low-wage, tourism-based economy,” we should build the New Orleans economy on the city’s natural advantages. As an example, that might include trade with Latin America, and that would involve the residents learning Spanish. We would want to make Spanish mandatory in all our schools, he said.

Experts on urban planning around the country are singing Blakely’s praises, saying we could not have made a better choice. Great. Let the transforming begin.

For reasons no one is quite sure of, the State of Louisiana has made a big profit this year and is running a surplus in the treasury. Governor Kathleen Blanco has called a special session of the legislature–against the wishes of its leaders who say they aren’t being given enough time to do the job right–to deal with her recommendations involving tax cuts, insurance rebates, and new spending bills. The special session begins today, Friday.

Tonight will see the only debate in the runoff for the congressional seat presently occupied by William Jefferson, he who stowed away $90,000 in his freezer and is the subject of an FBI investigation. His opponent, Karen Carter, was runner-up in last month’s primary. Both African-American, he is 59 and she is 37 and a state representative. Earlier this year, the Democratic leadership in Congress stripped Jefferson of his membership on some powerful committees, which has basically neutered any effectiveness he has in Washington. But that’s not the way you hear it from his campaign headquarters. The choice is to go for experience and effectiveness or the ignorance of a green kid (Carter).

Carter’s campaign says the choice is between integrity and a crook (Jefferson). Interestingly, among the heavy contributors to Carter’s campaign are local Republican leaders who say they are just pulling for the one best for this area. Jefferson’s people throw that in Carter’s face, saying it proves she’s not a true Democrat. Then they turn around and accuse her of being too liberal, pointing to her support of gay and abortion rights.

Muddying all this rancor–and there has been plenty of it; there’s no love lost between these folks–has been the role of Sheriff Harry Lee, our enigmatic veteran Chinese law-enforcement officer who enrages the public with some things he says and thrills them with others. To my knowledge, no one has ever successfully predicted what Harry will do on anything.

Spike Lee’s recent movie on Hurricane Katrina and its effect on the New Orleans area showed Karen Carter sounding off about the police of Gretna–in Jefferson Parish–who blocked the access of New Orleanians trying to flee the city across the downtown bridge, the Crescent City Connection. A lawsuit is pending on that action presently, and everyone has chosen up sides. A few days ago, Sheriff Lee mailed a letter to voters castigating Karen Carter for those intemperate remarks, calling her unfriendly to the people of Jefferson Parish, and urging voters to reject her.

“I’m not supporting William Jefferson,” the sheriff insisted. “Just anybody but Carter.” Well, duh, that would be William Jefferson.

The sheriff has drawn some sharp rebukes in the letters to the editors, particularly for his comment that Karen Carter was “running off her fat mouth.”

My only contribution to this discussion–I live in Congressman Bobby Jindal’s district, so this is not my election–is to point out that in 16 years in this city, I have never known a single person whom Sheriff Lee has endorsed to win anything. He himself keeps getting re-elected, but his popularity has no coattails, as the saying goes.

The election is tomorrow, Saturday. Freddie Arnold is remaining in town all weekend, living in his FEMA trailer behind our associational offices, since our Baptist Center is a polling place for a dozen or so precincts and he feels someone ought to be handy in case a problem arises.

We’ve paid tribute to Freddie Arnold before on these pages. He’s everyone’s hero down here. Yesterday, I walked into the meeting room of the Center and he was waxing the floors.

We have mentioned here the tragic account of Vince Marinello, popular local sportscaster, who was charged with murdering his wife while in the midst of rancorous divorce proceedings. He alledgedly donned the disguise of a bum on a bicycle and shot her several times as she emerged from her counselor’s office. Thursday, he was back in court and the judge raised his bail from $250,000 to $750,000. Vince protested that coming up even with the smaller amount was almost impossible, that he’s living on his Social Security checks and has to provide for his elderly mother. His attorney has quit and the judge will be appointing a new one.

On the subject of trials, the case of the Poydras nursing home operators who abandoned their elderly residents as the hurricane approached, only to have 35 of them drown, will be moved to another venue. The judge agreed that the negligent-homicide trial has been tainted by all the publicity, and will announce soon where the trial will be conducted.

Jefferson Parish (remember, this includes Metairie, Harvey, Marrero, etc., and not New Orleans proper) is receiving bids from companies to go into neighborhoods and force homeowners to clean up their hurricane-ravaged properties. Times-Picayune writer Kate Moran waxes eloquent: “The blight remedial contract has uncorked the entrepreneurial juices of several politically connected companies….”

Each company bidding on this work includes a lawyer, a title searcher, and a consulting engineer with experience in code enforcement. Sounds like a major headache in the making. The actions are necessary and overdue, but figure to be messy.

Mayor C. Ray Nagin, New Orleans’ traveling celebrity and absentee leader, addressed the National Press Club in Washington Thursday. He held up artists’ renderings of possible New Orleans cityscapes of the future, talked of the need for corporations to invest down here, and urged his C-Span audience to “buy some dirt in New Orleans.” His point being that property values are low now, but sure to escalate in the future. The major problem, he said, is the government red tape interfering with the disbursements of the $100 billion in government assistance voted for the area. “The dollars are not getting to the citizens and local governments trying to recover.”

Nagin pointed out that a high employee turnover rate at FEMA is turning its effectiveness into “a cycle of futility.” He lambasted the state’s Road Home program, charged with administering the rebuilding grants to our homeowners. Of the 85,256 applicants, only 56 have received their money, the average check coming to $51,452.

“We’re ready to go,” Nagin insisted. “Let the money flow.”

I spoke Thursday night to perhaps 150 pastors, other ministers, and their spouses at the Bedico Baptist Church on the Northshore, for their annual Christmas party. DOM Lonnie Wascom, my counterpart in that part of our state, is so beloved by those folks and holds an understandable paternalistic attitude toward all his ministers and their families. He is their advocate, their intercessor, their best friend, if I’m any judge of anything. These good people took the full brunt of Hurricane Katrina and have had their lives and their churches transformed forever as a result. “Many New Orleanians have moved to the Northshore,” Lonnie told them, “and they are just as lost here as they were down there. Our job is to reach them with the gospel.”

My 25-minute message was an amalgam of humorous stories (no jokes as such, just experiences from nearly 45 years of ministry), an inspirational Christmas tale or two, and a plea for everyone to “pray big” for New Orleans. It was not much different from what we have shared in other cities, such as Natchitoches last week, but the audience was vastly different. These people came through the storm. They were there; they know. Toward the end, they were ‘amen-ing’ and nodding, and I was stunned by their standing ovation at the end.

The most touching thing that has happened to me in a long time came next. Lonnie asked me to stand at the altar of this church, and called for pastors to step up and gather around and lay hands on me while one of their number led in a prayer. “We want someone who will ‘pray big,'” Lonnie said, and one of the men did just that.

So blessed.