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This was my first State of the City Address. After 100
days we had some nastiness to report. We had an obligation to tell our citizens exactly
where we were starting from, which was behind the starting line. There was much work to be
undone before rebuilding could begin. From a rat-infested City Hall to the misuse of
public funds. We had inherited the largest blighted home in the state. But underneath all
those coats of paint and decay, New Orleans would be beautiful again. -Mayor Marc H. Morial First State of the City
Address Ladies and gentleman, members of the City Council, my fellow citizens of our great city of New Orleans, before we begin tonight I want to ask you to join me in a moment of silence for the five victims of yesterday's fire. Thank you. Thank you for joining us tonight at the Mahalia Jackson Theater for the Performing Arts. I also want to thank WWL-TV, WWL radio, and WQUE radio for broadcasting this State of the City Report. This is my first. It is also a report on our administration's first 100 days in office. In my presentation tonight, I will tell you what we found upon taking office, what we have done to date and why we did it, and what we propose to do in the following months of our first year in office. First, I want to tell you that we believe in clarity of goals. However enormous the task, it is achievable if the goals can be clearly stated and easily understood. Let me say very simply and clearly, we propose to continue to make our city a united, safer, more prosperous and cleaner city than it has ever been before. That's it ladies and gentleman, no big words, no complex formulas, no qualifications, no equivocation. We are going to get the job done. We have already seen significant drops in the violent crime rate. We have already seen work beginning that will create thousands of new jobs with still more on the way. We have already seen thousands of volunteers begin the task of cleaning up our community. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, we cannot yet say that this is the beginning of the end, but we are on our way. When I announced for mayor, I said I had a new and different vision for our city. I said that I believed we could regain our pride; that we could rebuild our city; that we could make our streets safe and clean; that we could put more of our citizens to work than ever before; and that we could once again become our region's major hub for Latin American. Some scoffed at that. They said we needed to be realistic. They said we had been bypassed by other cities, and we simply needed to accept our status as a secondary American city. We did not accept that then and we do not accept it now. We believed during the campaign, and I believe now, that we have within us as a city, as a people and as a community the capacity for greatness. I believe passionately that those who have passion and the energy to work tirelessly can achieve unity, and we can do anything. It is not the size of our city. It is not our geographic location. No, those things have not held us back. We have just needed to understand that it takes all of us working together. I was reminded of that recently during our tense negotiations with the owners of the land-based casino. We were contending that the agreement between the casino and the city had to be improved or there could be no deal. To be honest, our position was somewhat fragile. It could have only succeeded if all of the elements of our community were united behind a single goal: insuring that additional costs undertaken by our city in support of the casino were fully reimbursed. Did you notice there was not a single dissenting voice from any New Orleanian during the negotiations? The City Council was unanimous in its support, the news media was unanimous in their support, the business community, the labor community, the civic community, and the men and women on the street were united behind us. We shared an important goal. Yes, we took risks, but we took them together and justice was done. As we talk about the future of our city tonight, I hope that you will reflect on that. When we are united, nothing is beyond our grasp. I believe that we, this administration and this new council, have accomplished more in our first 96 days than other administrations have in 96 months in office. With great pride, I want to introduce you to some of those individuals who have made it possible. We have especially benefitted from the cooperation and hard work of our new City Council. They are a wonderful departure from the recent past. Their positive attitudes, their hard work, their willingness to discuss issues without politicizing them, and their devotion to the city have truly been heart warming. While we do not and we will not always agree on every point, they have given us strong unanimous support on every key issue. They are our friends. They are my colleagues. This new City Council is talented, diverse, committed and independent. I am going to ask you to join me in asking them to stand for a well-deserved ovation. We have also brought to City Hall a wonderful team of appointees. They are educated, hard working and tenacious, and they are a diverse team. We have lengthened the workday at City Hall, but this group comes in earlier than 8:00 and goes home after 6:00. They work weekends. They work hard. They set an example of excellence for all of us. Ladies and gentleman, I want our appointees, our team that has gotten into the trenches and started shoveling, to stand. I ask you to joint me in applauding them. In our administration, we like to be able to say that we run a no huddle offense. There are so many problems to confront that we do not have the luxury of calling for a one-year study whenever a decision needs to be made. We make decisions based on the best information we have, and we move on. I am proud to say that we have scored some points. I was pleased to note that in a recent UNO poll on the quality of life, 54 percent of the people of this city thought things were about to get better. We need to applaud that 54 percent. They are right. Things are getting better, and they are going to keep getting better. Professor Tim Ryan says we have experienced more economic growth since April than in any quarter since the early 1980s. Our economy is coming back, that means jobs for everyone. I have to tell you that we make mistakes, and I have no illusions of perfection or infallibility. I am not a patient person. But as one who is renovating an old house, I have learned that if you are painting a wall that has been painted many times before, some patience is needed. First, you have to remove all the old paint that has been laid on over the years. Then, you need to smooth the surface and apply many coats of fresh paint. It is not easy to repaint an old city, but we have many arms and many paint brushes. And we have a well spring of enthusiasm and many friends who keep urging us, saying 'we are with you, let's keep working together.' When you have that unity of spirit and work, then you can see the progress. In all candor, there is one part of this speech that I was somewhat reluctant to deliver tonight. I had some hesitation about reporting to you what we found upon taking office. I feel that when New Orleanians spend too much time looking backward to fix blame for whatever has gone wrong, those who oppose change use it as a reason for doing nothing. In that context, I feel an obligation to report about some things we found upon taking office in May. Simply put my friends, we found a government in chaos, a police department in shambles, weak leadership, terrible morale, a complete breakdown of ethics and morality, and runaway crime. In other areas, we found the misuse of public funds, last minute deals made that were unconscionable in my opinion, and we found rats - actual rats - running around City Hall. There was no capital program to repair our city's infrastructure, no teamwork, no optimism. Many of our city employees had simply given up hope. There was a lethargic approach to the work of the Legislature, a cold contempt for citizen involvement, and a massive federal audit of alleged irregularities underway at HANO. When I was elected, I told you there was a new sheriff in town, and I promised we would drive the thugs, the murderers, the armed robbers and the dope dealers from our streets. What I did not fully realize then was that the new sheriff was also going to have to rid the police department of some brutal cops. Since we took office, we've fired 12 police officers. We have suspended 35. And, there have been 18 reprimands. I want to tell you that the good news is that as we have gotten rid of those officers, and we have seen hundreds and hundreds of good men and women step forward. They are decent, hard working, sincere policemen and policewomen who were as appalled as I at what had happened to the once proud department. We are working with them to restore that work ethic, that integrity, that sense of oneness with the community. When I ran for mayor I promised we would reduce the crime rate and return the pride to the NOPD. We are doing it and the results are measurable. Not only was there scandal at the police department but also at the Housing Authority of New Orleans. To see how conditions have deteriorated in our public housing is enough to make anyone cry. Through ineptitude and failure we have turned public housing into punishment. That is wrong. Most of the residents there are good people who work hard and dream of owning their own home some day. They want to raise families. They deserve safe, clean and well-maintained housing. They deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. It is an insult to them, and it is a blemish to everyone in this community when rats run through public housing, when repairs are promised and never made, and when criminals seem to have a free run of the place. Your new sheriff does not like that either. For the first time in our history, we have named a majority of public housing residents to the HANO Board. We have a new chairman who is a former resident of public housing, and changes are already underway. We have a historic compact with the Department of Housing and Urban Development to build a new spirit of public housing in New Orleans. We will not tolerate and we cannot tolerate a situation that makes our public housing the worst managed in the nation. We must have the best in America, and I say to you tonight that we are going to have it before I leave office. We found, my friends, that the New Orleans International Airport had been turned into a patronage trough. Can you believe that the attorneys appointed to their jobs at the airport were charging the aviation board for phone calls to each other? I will tell you this, in this administration we are going to hang up on anyone who thinks that working at the airport is a license to get rich. Those days are over. Those days are history. We have responded to this chaos and the utter loss of faith in government by the voters with a series of direct initiatives. We moved 100 police officers from desk jobs to the streets. We have begun a new class at the police academy. We have established a 24-hour curfew hotline. We have reinstituted "Taxis on Patrol" with the help of our cab drivers and cab companies. And we have revived and strengthened the Neighborhood Watch Program. We have, with the solid and unanimous approval of the City Council, created the toughest curfew in America to protect the children of New Orleans, and it has contributed to the drop in crime and a marked drop in juvenile crime. We are indebted to the criminal sheriff of this city whose deputies have worked closely with us to operate the curfew center. And we have had some surprises. Among those picked up in the first days of the curfew were a four-year old walking the street by himself, a ten-year old driving an automobile, and of the first 1,000 juveniles stopped by the police just over 100 were wanted by the juvenile courts. I must tell you that as a life-long member of the ACLU, I am deeply disappointed by the statements of some who intend to challenge our curfew in the courts. As a civil rights lawyer, I say to you that the ultimate civil right and civil liberty is the right to be secure in our own homes, to have confidence that our children can go to school or out to play safely. We will defend that right with every ounce of energy and spirit that we possess. We have taken every precaution to protect the legal, individual and constitutional rights of every citizen affected by the curfew regardless of his or her age. There has not been a single reported incident of unlawful conduct by the police in carrying out the curfew. If a suit is filed against the curfew, those who file it will be going against the best wishes and intent of the vast majority of our citizens. We will fight for the curfew all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if that is what it takes. I can tell you that as someone with experience in constitutional law, I think the courts will agree that a curfew is legal, timely, appropriate and called for under the existing conditions in our city. When I ran I said we would not tolerate run away crime and we would restore discipline and direction to the NOPD. Much remains to be done, but we have already made some changes which have yielded some measurable results. With the cooperation of our legislative delegation we have completed the most successful legislative session for New Orleans in a generation. We secured $150 million in capital outlay projects, including $25 million in priority-one commitments. These funds will help pay for the needed expansion of the convention center which will stimulate our economy, for the development of our new downtown regional medical center, for the Canal Street streetcar and for improvements to Milney Boys' Home. Equally important, we convinced the legislature to allow a debt-limit equalization, which means New Orleans is now on the same footing as other municipalities in regard to a ceiling on bonded indebtedness. In the past, the city was discriminated against and held to a more burdensome standard than other cities in our state. That means we will have more funds to invest in our own city and our infrastructure. We have provided swimming pool facilities for 10,000 kids this summer and summer jobs for another 1,500 kids. We have created the "Friends of NORD" program, and we are going reopen and renovate every playground in this city. When I ran for mayor, I said that we would restore the NORD program to the status of national leadership. We began the task this summer and the results are noticeable. And it is only the beginning. With the help of Tom Benson and the Dryades Street Y, we have created a city-wide midnight basketball program. We have created the Mayor's Clean Team, and we recently held our first district-wide cleanup in District E. We will be in District D on August 27 and invite your participation. We are going to touch every neighborhood in our community. We have created a speaker's bureau called "Talking Trash", which will go into the schools in September. We are going to tell the children that we do not litter in New Orleans and we pick up litter wherever we find it, even if we were not the ones who dropped it. We have created the "Friends of City Hall" with the help of Sheriff Foti and Sheriff Valteau. I love it when people tell me that City Hall has never been cleaner. There is no excuse for our City Hall to be a public disgrace. It will not be anymore. We are sandblasting the dirt off the building's exterior. We repaired the sign on City Hall and changed its look. We are renovating our departments - cleaning up, adding new lights and painting the walls. We find that when people work in dreary surroundings they act dreary. All of us - the mayor, the council, the civil service employees - we work for you. We work for you. This speech would not be complete if I did not express my gratitude to All Congregations Together. They are truly a Godsend to our community. They remind us of what needs to be done. They bring us together. Yes, they fuss at us when we need it, and they encourage us when our burdens seem too heavy. Also, after a delay of five long years, we have gotten the Tchoupitoulas Corridor project back on track. It aids traffic flow on our riverfront, it will help the Port of New Orleans operate more efficiently, and it will help us create jobs. Working with the business community and the congressional delegation, we convinced Commerce Secretary Ron Brown to include New Orleans as one of 11 cities to be a site for a federal regional export assistance center. We had originally been left out, and it would have been a blow to our plans to restore our city as the Gateway to the Americas if we did not have a federal one-stop shop export center here. With the help of Jim Monroe, the president of the Chamber, we put together a last minute unified charge on the city's behalf. Secretary Brown agreed to help us. It is just amazing. It is amazing what we can do when everyone works together. In the same way, and in record time, we completed the first class application for the federal government's $100 million Empowerment Zone Program. I do not know if we are going to win, but I promise you that our proposal was top flight, high quality and competitive. It is going to raise some eyebrows in Washington D.C. We have also begun City Hall's first ever recycling program. We are not only going to be the cleanest that New Orleans has ever been, but we will be more environmentally aware than New Orleans has ever been. I also want to report to you tonight, ladies and gentleman, on a decision I have not yet made. One of my priorities from the beginning has been the selection of a new superintendent of police. An able citizen's committee headed by Rev. Harold Mayberry did an excellent job of screening the 60-plus applicants for this position and reducing the list to a group of finalists. To be honest, it has been a very difficult choice. I am fully aware, and we must be fully aware, that no police superintendent by himself or herself offers a panacea to all the problems within NOPD or our serious crime problems. I have been hesitant to make a final decision in this matter until I am certain that we are prepared to select the best person available. And I am not at that point yet. I want you to know, ladies and gentleman, I would rather be right than quick. I want you to know that new leadership for the NOPD and rebuilding the NOPD remains one of our highest priorities. We will continue with other police and crime initiatives, which will continue to lower the crime rate. We will keep working to provide more equipment for our police and improve the quality of our policing while I consider the list of applicants. I come now to what I consider the three centerpieces of our report on the state of the city. We have talked about what we have found and what we have done. Now, I would like to tell you what we propose to do in the coming months. First, we have been terribly negligent in New Orleans about reinvesting in our city. Our streets, our overpasses, our public buildings have all deteriorated. According to every reliable estimate, my friends, we have one billion dollars in unmet capital needs. If you do not reinvest in your business or in your home, it gradually falls apart. We have not reinvested in New Orleans sufficiently, and I propose to reverse that trend. The UNO poll says that more than 60 percent of our citizens rated our streets poor. I also agree. Therefore, tonight I am proud to announce that we have identified $56 million to be spent within the next 12 months on a public works initiative that we are calling "Rebuild New Orleans Now!" Better yet, "Rebuild New Orleans Now!", read my lips, will require no new taxes. This $56 million in projects will be completed within 12 months; $42 million will be spent on our streets, and $14 million will be devoted to improving our public buildings. The $56 million will come from $10 million in unspent bond money that we located, $13.6 million in planned projects we will expedite, $12 million in state capital outlay funds we have secured and $20 million in expedited street projects. This undertaking will quickly create over 1,000 new construction jobs. Even more importantly, it is the first installment in our long-range program to rebuild New Orleans. We must invest in our streets, our sidewalks, our libraries and our playgrounds. It is folly if we fail to rebuild our city. If we allow our infrastructure to crumble, who will want to invest in New Orleans? A reinvestment in our own community is a vote of confidence in our future. And if we do not have faith, if we do not have pride, then how can we expect others to believe in us? I promise you that in years to come, "Rebuild New Orleans Now!" will change the look of our city. Each re-paved street, each rebuilt overpass, each restored and renovated public building will not only put our people to work, but it will remind us of our pride and determination to constantly improve. In the second of our centerpieces, I will by executive order reinvigorate the city charter process. As you know, our city charter was drafted in 1954 and no longer meets the needs of our government. Other efforts to revise the charter have failed. We will not fail this time. In the same way that we must be prepared to invest in our streets, overpasses and public buildings, we must be willing to invest in the effort to rebuild a charter that governs us. A street that goes unrepaired for 40 years buckles and becomes useless. A charter that goes unrevised for 40 years becomes obsolete and a hindrance to progress. This charter revision committee will expect, and we will expect from it, a report within 90 days. No delay. We want to move on this. Finally, we will set in motion a new comprehensive land-use study for New Orleans. We seek a complete overhaul of our existing zoning regulations that too often are out of step with our modern economy, out of step with our neighborhoods and our needs. I do not agree with those who say our economic concerns, environmental concerns, neighborhood concerns and preservation concerns cannot co-exist. Discussing these ideas may be emotional, and feelings may run high at times, but I believe this city perhaps more than any other city in this nation can blend the needs of business and neighborhood interests. It is my intention that this comprehensive land-use study will provide us with a road map for the development and redevelopment of New Orleans in the 21st century. In that same context, I announce to you tonight that on August 25, we will convene the Mayor's Summit on Housing at Gallier Hall. Let's face it, we have both a blessing and a curse in our housing situation in New Orleans. No city in America has a better housing stock that blends the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries so well as our city. But our public housing is a disgrace, and we have more than 30,000 abandoned homes in our community. Thousands more are deteriorating and pose fire, safety and health hazards. Over the years, there have been many committees on housing in New Orleans that have tried and tried, and achieved little or nothing. This time it will be different. It is time to enforce our housing codes or change them. If we say it is the law, let's enforce it. If we don't mean it, let's take these ordinances off the books. One of our objectives is to simplify those codes that relate to housing, to construction and to renovation. We must simplify them for homeowners, for prospective homeowners, for contractors, developers and renovators shaking their heads in dismay or anguish because they could not figure out the intent of the law. Equally important is our crackdown against absentee landlords and slumlords. We want to tell them it is time to clean up your act or we are coming after you. As in the comprehensive land-use study, we want an action plan, we want it now, and we are going to implement it now. I also want you to know that in September, our city will host the first ever regional executive summit which will bring together the mayors and elected parish executives from throughout the region. In our past, our communities too often thought of themselves as rivals. The fact is we share the same problems: landfills, waste disposal, crime, budget shortfall and legislative mandates from both Baton Rouge and Washington. These bind us and deprive us of the flexibility we need to effectively operate. I have already spoken this evening of the need to unite New Orleans, but we must go beyond our boundaries to find allies who share our concerns. I thank you. I thank you for supporting us and for coming here tonight, or who have joined us via TV or radio for this first State of the City Address from this administration. We wanted to be concise, and we have only highlighted a handful of the initiatives that we have undertaken. We are working on many more ideas and projects. It was never our intention that our first 100 days in office would be a sprint followed by a more leisurely pace. When we promised you a high-energy administration, we meant that it would be our style for our entire tenure, not the first 100 days, but each and every day. Our city is on a roll, and we will keep the momentum coming. That is my commitment to you tonight. We are determined to be open, to be accessible, to be responsive and to be user-friendly. We love and appreciate your compliments, but we also learn from your constructive criticisms. We want to engage you in a dialog. This mayor and this new council need your input. We are aware of our imperfections, and we seek consensus. Our destiny is in our own hands. If we can stay together and share the vision, there is no stopping us. If we work together - mayor, council, people, labor, business and civic communities - we will be a great city once again. Let's do it. Thank you and God bless. |
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