Shutting this down is the best thing Ray Nagin has ever done for New Orleans. This was all the usual suspects,the business and economic elite, working for the most part to maintain and continue the status-quo of poverty, low wages and inequality that has plagued the city for so long. They just had a different rap this time around, employing a more contemporary lexicon and such phrases as 'best practices, but there was nothing best practices about any of it. The process was seriously flawed and exclusive from the get-go. The joint effort between the Horizon Initiative and the City, (primarily Councilman Fielkow), can only be described as abysmal and if it was any indication of the future of this new economic development council and agency - then we all, as a city, were in deep dodo....
This public private partnership's initial efforts were pathetic and in no way could they be considered best practices - stakeholder identification and outreach beyond the elite business class was wholly inadequate, as was any effort toward making the development of this new agency inclusive and citizen driven. Attendance at required public meetings in December '08 was practically nil, because the groups involved failed to adequately inform the public. Very few of New Orleans' citizens were aware of what was happening here and it all looked as if a fast one was being pulled. The entire effort seemed driven by monied private interests and all-in-all it looked to be an impending raid on the public coffers by these private interests, more than anything else - there was nothing public about it.
Councilman Fielkow is now claiming the suspension of this development is retaliation for the Council's veto to move City Hall to the Chevron Building..... but he is just playing politics in the usual way too.... no different.....
I remember Councilman Fielkow warning folks at a Horizon Initiative membership meeting in January of the 'nay-sayers' in the community, of which CulturePAC, a group I am with that works for economic equity, was one.
Similarly, when a few of us questioned certain tactics and inadequacies at December's public meeting we were also quickly branded 'negative' and 'nay-sayers', also. Our legitimate concerns that there were no mechanisms to deal with the problems and social ills of poverty and rising economic inequality or no mechanisms for building wider community wealth were simply dismissed as negative. "Say something positive ... we want to hear something positive", said the company women in their do's, power-suits and spike heels. Geez, it was more like a high school pep rally than a public meeting. We knew then that this effort, despite the Rand report that said the problem with economic development in New Orleans was its historically EXCLUSIVE nature, would all, never-the-less, remain that way. I was personally concerned that this was a group that had long ago deemed themselves smarter than everyone else in the city, and therefore they should continue to be the exclusive decision-makers on all things economic - despite more than 150 years of poverty-making by these cats and their forebears.
It is truly the time for change, but this is not the way, this is no change at all - no innovation, new ideas, alternatives, just the same old, same old.... so kudos for Nagin for doing the right thing and preventing this raid on the public coffers.
I and CulturePAC will continue to work to ensure that economic development processes in New Orleans are inclusive, equitable and citizen-driven, allowing for new voices, new ideas and new pathways toward wider community benefit than in the past.
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