“LaToya, I love New Orleans,” a young man said from the back of a community meeting, on the campaign trail in 2017. “But it doesn’t feel like New Orleans loves me back.”
I’ll never forget his words. I hear echoes of them from residents everywhere. It’s the pothole that sets you back a car tire. The water main break that fills your street. The boil water advisory that disrupts your evening plans. And then, there's the discrimination felt by too many of our residents.
Next month we can take a leap forward. Four measures will appear on the November 16 ballot, three of them infrastructure and maintenance specific. I summarize each below, but I want you to know they’re a package deal, a “Ballot of Yes.” I’m asking you to vote yes on all.
Why a package? Because these measures grow from the same idea: the time has come to deal with long-delayed problems. Nearly half of New Orleans’ water mains are 80 years old, and one-third are more than 100 years old. A water main’s life span is 75-100 years. We can't keep kicking the can down the road. It’s time to give our people the world-class city they deserve.
Infrastructure Bonds: Investing for the Present and the Future
A bond is a legal borrowing agreement. Bonds between cities and investors are common – cities everywhere use them to build and repair infrastructure projects like roads, bridges, and airports.
That’s exactly what we intend with our infrastructure bond ballot measure, which would allow the city to borrow $500 million over 5 years. Of that total, $250 million would be invested in drainage and street repairs, $225 million in maintenance, and $25 million in affordable housing.
The bond measure is important for two reasons, one immediate, one long-term. The immediate benefit: we make New Orleans more livable now without costing taxpayers a dime. The long-term benefit: we save money. Modest investments in our infrastructure today help ensure a future mayor isn’t scrambling to fix water mains after they’ve already failed.
Maintenance Fund: Preventive Care for our City
The federal government has put New Orleans on notice. If we don’t do a better job maintaining our infrastructure, FEMA will be less likely to support us in the aftermath of a future disaster.
This is the backdrop for a ballot measure that would create a maintenance fund in New Orleans – the first in our city’s history. We’d use the fund to maintain critical assets, including city-owned buildings, fire trucks and ambulances.
The federal pressure is important, but there’s a bigger story. The maintenance fund gives our people the responsible government they deserve. Think about it like an oil change: you pay $40 twice a year because you if you don’t, you’ll have to replace your engine in a few years. We need to do more preventive investing for New Orleans.
We’re asking for three mills to create the maintenance fund. Coupling that three-mill increase with the proposed partial roll-forward of existing property taxes for the 2020 budget, many New Orleanians won’t see any increase between 2019 and 2020 at all.
Short-Term Rentals: A Level Playing Field for Visitors
The ballot measure to make taxes on short-term rental visitors more even with hotel taxes is part of the fair share agreement we struck with the Governor and tourism industry this spring. That deal includes $50 million upfront and more than $25 million per year going forward for infrastructure.
The thinking behind the ballot measure is simple: since visitors use our infrastructure, they should help maintain it, whether they stay in a Canal Street hotel or a neighborhood AirBnB.
Human Rights Commission: Getting it Right
Our current Human Relations Commission is not in the City Charter. This may sound like a minor detail, but it means the city doesn’t have the tools we need to take action against acts of discrimination. We can only provide information and referrals. People who are being discriminated against have just two daunting options: to file an EEOC complaint or a lawsuit.
This ballot measure would correct that, granting the City the power to investigate and resolve discrimination complaints. Doing so would re-affirm that we are a welcoming, inclusive city that protect all its people.
I’ll be straight with you in closing. We’re dealing with generations of neglect – we can’t fix these problems overnight. But I promise you this: these measures would change the direction of our city, for the better. These measures would put us on a path to giving our people – and that means you – the world class city we deserve. I hope you’ll join me in voting yes on all.
