Joint Governmental Affairs - Public Works - Budget Committee.

DPW Director

Breaking this down into council district by council district numbers, I know that's very important. District A, we've been able to complete routine maintenance actions on just over 770 lights in District A, almost 1,200 in District B, almost 1,000 in District C, 1,000 in District D, and then 1,200 in District E. The pothole numbers you can see there as well, a relatively even distribution. A few more lights and potholes repaired in District B. And then the sidewalk activities, those are individual locations. And you will probably notice that the numbers sum total at the bottom do not match the sum totals on the previous slide. There is a reason for that, and I will talk about that on the next slide. Where we're developing not only our internal crews but also our data integrity and the ability to track and report issues. And then also we talked about in the last segment about communication, being able to more proactively communicate back to our residents when they call something in when their issue is fixed. So moving on to the next slide, improving our data and reporting is really critical for us. So currently we purchased and started implementing in September of last year an asset management system that's run by Cartograph, otherwise known as OpenGov. Prior to that, everything was tracked in a 311 QuickBase database. So a customer would call into 311. Their complaint would get tracked on, for lack of a better term, an Excel spreadsheet. And then when it was closed, that would then just be closed. So it really wasn't an asset management system or a work order based system. It was a complaint tracking system. And we've gotten to a place now where we have OpenGov Cartograph available to us. And we're starting with the street lights. So the data that we have around street lights, how many lights are out, how many lights we have, when the last time they were maintained, the repair request, that data integrity is very strong. I think streets, potholes, and street conditions are kind of next. Traffic signals is the next area for us to really focus on. You'll notice I did not have data around traffic signals or street signs because our data integrity on that is not where we need to have it right now to be able to report those things, but we have to get there. And by the end of the year, we will have moved away from paper tracking on anything related to street lights, anything related to street signs. I believe we'll also, excuse me, on street repairs, and then traffic signals will all be digitized and we'll be well on our way to getting there with the street signs. I realize street signs in particular are the biggest challenge for us in terms of tracking those numbers. And the average is when we look at our average response times, street signs are clearly a challenge for us. The average has been around 800 days for a name sign. That is way, way, way too long. Again, not happy until we get to 30 days, and this is part of what's going to help us be able to do that, is making sure that each of those different areas that I mentioned are clearly tracked, the timelines are noted, and then we can report that out a lot more cleanly. So, again, district-level reporting, making sure that we've got better visibility, improved data. integrity, and then one other thing that we just purchased just this last month is another module in the Cartograph system. It's the 311 module is what we're calling it, and essentially what that will do for us is even now with street lights, which have the best level of compliance with our rollout on Cartograph OpenGov, a customer calls into 311, a resident calls into 311 and makes a report online. That report is still put into a QuickBase database, and then a person will go in and take that data and move it into Cartograph OpenGov, and then it's in the system for our public works maintenance teams to go address. They go address that work order, close it out, but but but but but but but but but but but wait, there's more: I do get some of these things already with parks and parkways. I get status updates on things when a tree gets taken care of, but for the rest of our work product, whether it's a street light, a pothole, a street sign, et cetera, those processes will be automated, which is really going to help us in terms of tracking productivity and being able to interface with our residents more closely. So moving forward, what are some of our key priorities? We want to look at accelerating our pothole repairs, asphalt patching, developing our milling and overlay, and all of this starts with the first step in recovery is admitting your problem and understanding what it is. Just last week, we had our scoring committee for a citywide pavement assessment. We anticipate having that group under contract here within the next two to three months, and then it's about a 25-week period for this company using technology similar to those Waymo cabs that we see. They're using LIDAR, laser scanning, photographic analysis, and then AI computers and then engineering support to develop a standardized pavement condition index score for every single block of the 1,500 centerline miles of streets within the city of New Orleans. They're going to develop, because right now we have general ideas of what's bad, but a lot of those complaints are driven by folks that call in to your offices, our offices. I want a quantified metric for each block within the city of New Orleans, and then we're not having to rely on our residents to be the inspectors for us. We will have that laid out, and that will make it much easier for us to manage the resources we have, and then it's also going to provide us a cost-loaded capital improvement program. Secondly, for streetlights, this morning, as a matter of fact, we had a scoring committee for a citywide streetlight master plan that's going to go out and do the same thing that we're launching on with the roadway surface conditions.

DPW Director

They're going to look at lighting levels around the city. So right now, we're basing our responses on a complaint from our customer or our internal inspectors. So some of those key hires that we made were electricians and inspectors. Prior to having that capability, we did not have dedicated individuals that were driving around from dusk till dawn. It's generally most effective to look at when a light is on or off after dark. So we have been able to do some full neighborhood canvassing. The Lower Ninth Ward has been fully canvassed. The DDD, Canal Street, and the French Quarter have all been fully canvassed by those inspectors, so we're not relying on our residents and customers to be our inspection arm for us. This citywide streetlight master plan is going to do that, and it's also going to take light level readings at street level so we can see not only are lights on or off, but are they missing? Do we need to add lights in a certain area or, ostensibly, do we need to remove some? Is it too bright? But that's not a complaint I get terribly often. We really want to continue to focus on New Orleans East, the Downtown Development District, Canal Street, Renaissance. There are some really key initiatives there and executive orders that the mayor has laid out that we are focusing on. And getting Interstate 10 fully lit and keeping it fully lit is very, very important for all of us. That stretches across all council districts. Traffic and safety is a key and driving goal. My personal, single most important goal for my job here is zero traffic fatalities. And that may sound a bit counterintuitive in terms of, well, how do you keep streets smooth, lights on, etc., but everything else flows into that. If our streetlights are working and streets are well lit, if they are smooth and we do not have potholes that could create an accident or a hazardous condition, and if our traffic signals are not in flash and they are appropriately maintained, that lowers the odds of folks having a serious injury or, God forbid, a fatality. Thankfully we have seen a significant reduction in fatalities this year. The goal is zero. We want to continue to work until we get there. We should not have unsafe streets. Streets need to be safe. And that is an initiative that is working across the city. Jenna Vegno, myself, and Deputy Mayor Harrison are working actively to ensure that any time there is a fatality, we have a quarterly workshop where we sit down and go through each one of those situations and look at root causes and how can we address those things. One other thing, not on this slide, that I did want to mention is up until this point, we have been addressing work across the city in more or less an ad hoc fashion. So crews are traveling from New Orleans East to the Parish Line, West Bank, etc. Starting here in the next two months, we are going to be rolling out a focused, one-week, neighborhood-scale focused effort. So we are going to be working in specific 10-by-10 block areas within certain neighborhoods. Sometimes that will overlap council districts, but we want to look at where do we have areas that are not ADA compliant. We do have some ADA compliance work that we're working on with ramps and such and again staffing up to the point where we get 65 paving staff to where we can do nine football fields worth of sidewalk in a year and get those requests down from hundreds of days down to 30 days is where we need to end up being. We have also a Morrison Road project—$17.8 million—that is still on schedule for completion in late summer 2027; four out of five bridges are currently receiving work. We'll be planning to resurface and re-open Crowder at Morrison in December 2026. So lots of details, including a February budget conversation, transit, performance, etc. That concludes my presentation, and I will be happy to answer any questions.

Council Members

We're working on exactly that, because now that we have staff, equipment, and materials to be able to do paving, to me there's not a reason for, like, there's a cut on a major street, Sewage and Water Board goes out there, let us know, we've got the capacity right now, we'll just go make the repair within the next 48 hours. Just rather than waiting, we can work together to fix those things. Like, something's broken, send some equipment to fix it. Yeah, appreciate it. That's all that I have. Thank you. Council Member Harris. Thank you. Very quickly, and since we're talking about Jetsons and stop signs, I need one at Toledano and Galvez by the King Mac Fitness Gym. There are kids who work out there all the time, there's school camp there, and so that's been missing for quite a long time, and there are traffic accidents in that area. I do want to give a shout out to Scott Boyle, who I think is a great hire, we worked with him with the state and some of the closures that happened that the state did. He's just a really great guy, and I know he's really smart and wants to work. And kudos on getting a traffic study person in-house as well. On that note, I will bring up two areas that we need to prioritize because people are getting hit and injured. The Chapatulas Corridor. I know we've talked about this before, what is the timing on getting a traffic study there? There are tons of new businesses popping up, there are people crossing the street, and literally we're getting people hit and almost killed. We have, I believe we have some initial safety analysis, and we need to get the striping put down. So, I know Chapatulas can't wait, we need to just make that happen. Next year's budget is going to feature a pretty robust line item, relatively speaking, robust line item for striping in particular, because it is very important from a safety standpoint. It's a freeway. I mean, if you go up and down Chapatulas, it's a freeway. People just drive. There are 18-wheelers that careen down it, and if you hit Barracuda, or you're trying to get to Barracuda, or Franconelli's, you've got to play Frogger to get across the road. So, I think we need some traffic control measures there. The other area is the new Trader Joe's, yay Trader Joe's, on the Ferret Quarter. With Trader Joe's coming up, and the Josephine, I know we talked about this, people really want a traffic study now that school's in to try to figure out the traffic arrangements there. If you are coming down Napoleon, trying to turn on Ferret to go to Trader Joe's, it's like a big traffic jam. So, we need to figure out, now that that's a popular place to go, how we deal with it. And then finally, I just want to confirm that the sidewalk repairs for A.L. Davis Park around the Mardi Gras Indian Den are going to be happening. I know that there is a giant tree, we just talked about live oak trees, that people have to work around, but is that happening this month still? Yes. Tim McConnell mentioned to me just this last week, I was like, hey, we need this big project done at this other location. He was like, I've got to get A.L. Davis done first. Okay, good. And then finally, I just want to make a comment about the 10 by 10 block. We walked out with Ubuntu Village in Central City. I really think it's a good model of how to attack projects in the city. People know you're coming in, you're going to be there for a minute, you're going to fix everything, and then you're going to be out. And so, it lessens the pain point of constant construction, constant trucks everywhere, and you really, especially in the case of Ubuntu Village in Central City, we're cleaning up a lot of things that have been generationally negative for that community, and hopefully getting some street lights in, fixing all the things that need, abandoned cars, that revitalizes that area so the citizens have a safe place to live and kids can actually play in Barber Lace and Keller Park. Yeah, that was another bright idea by somebody, not myself, most of them are generally somebody else's idea. Same. He was like, yeah, we just need to quit this all over the city. Not that I'm upset about it, it's great that we're working hard, but we can work a lot smarter here. And that Ubuntu, it just highlighted for me, Daniel Shanks running quarterback on that. I think there's so much opportunity, like you said, to not just do street repairs or sidewalks or lights, but tow cars, cut lots. We've been hearing a lot of comments around cutting lots at these budget meetings. We can do all of those things together. And like planning it, you can go stage equipment, you can tell everybody, hey, we're going to be here. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. Very excited for that. Well, thank you to you and every person at DPW. This is a bright, shining turnaround story. So thank you, Steve. You're most welcome. Thank you. Council Member Green. I'd like to also applaud your responsive team members for addressing some of the concerns that we have outlined to you. I did want to highlight a couple, because they resulted from our Infrastructure Coordinating Committee meeting. So I do want to thank you and the residents of the Boscoville community. Boscoville community wants to thank you for Mirabu and Allen. That's a leak that had been going on for a very long period of time. Now I'm going to ask you to come back and smooth the little area that's been created by addressing that leak, but that leak has been addressed. That was right outside of where we did the community meeting last. Yes, right. Yeah, I know exactly where that is. I'm sorry, I side barring here. But Tim and I talked about that exact location. I know Steve, and so good job to them. That was an example that I had with Tim, like, let's just go pave the thing. Right. Thank you. The water board's got a whole bunch of stuff. And they're doing a yeoman's effort. The paving team there is keeping up. They're just not quite able to eat the backlog.

Council Members

If we can help them eat, let's go. Right. Look, and I want to point out some issues that are just historic in our city. The reason that the leak existed there was when they exposed the pipe. It was five feet under the ground. It's a cast iron pipe, and it simply had a break in it because of rust. So it took a long time for them to get to it. But I saw the work that was being done. I took some pictures. It's one of the challenges that we have in the city. Our pipes are, basically many of them are set in water. And so it rusted them through at the end of the day. But it was done. I also want to just thank you for the Infrastructure Coordinating Committee work that has resulted in a couple of things being looked at in the Ninth Ward. Louisa Street at North Dershowise Street, work is being done. We could hear the rushing water under the street. A family moved in, a young lady who's a business owner, Brittany Penn, and I'll mention her name. She invested. She lived in the Ninth Ward all of her life. She invested in a new home there, and that was a challenge across the street from her and across the street. from Lockett Field but it's being addressed and that was something that sat out there for a long time and I know that was the result of our meeting because it hadn't gotten a lot of attention and you got involved. Well it was, I gotta give credit where credit's due. It's always the team that's out in the field and for sewage and water board stuff I know Steven and Caitlin are pushing very very hard. That team at sewage and water board is working their tails off and I think we're talking about coordination, 10 by 10 blocks, getting everyone in the room. I really appreciate the shout out on the ICC and would really ask folks nola.gov forward slash ICC. All work orders, all projects are available there in one website so I use it all the time myself to plan and track work and that body, that group that meets every Monday is I think very very helpful and useful. Yes things have been done and I wanted to point those out because they're so important. I could go on to others but I will just tell you that those are two that I want to recognize and I will recognize at our next meeting too. Let me ask you about sidewalk repairs. It gets a little confusing to the public where they hear so many sidewalks have been repaired but I do want you to explain the public to the public the challenge with regards to sidewalks that are in front of residences because of course people have concerns sometimes for them but there are challenges on the city side too with regards to that. Yeah so sidewalks, my understanding is that sidewalks are could be the responsibility of the property owner themselves or the city so within the sidewalks and there are areas that don't have sidewalks and there are areas that have ditches and not subsurface drainage so what we're really working on with like this traffic assessment is figuring out where do we have areas that are not ADA compliant. We do have some ADA compliance work that we're working on with ramps and such and again staffing up to the point where we get 65 paving staff to where we can do nine football fields worth of sidewalk in a year and get those requests down from hundreds of days down to 30 days is where we need to end up being. We have I think I mentioned earlier just over 1500 miles of street and if you figure there's sidewalk on either side of at least two thirds of those streets you can double that number so there's a lot of sidewalk out there that needs to be repaired and maintained. Right and I know that we'll never get to getting all of them done but just as I make a request in the ICC meeting sometimes I'll make a request of you publicly I'm gonna make a request of one thing. Yep. There's a new school being built at Desire and what is Carver Ramsway. It's the Gail Benson and Tom Benson school. The kids who walk from Johnny Jackson Boulevard to Desire Parkway have to walk in the street just the school's not about to open tomorrow but if you could look at that one stretch there's a lot to be done but I want you to look at that and see what we can do. Okay sir. The Almanaster Bridge I'm making a request because the ninth ward the nine times second line goes across that bridge and it's an honor for them to do it and there are rails that are down. I'm going to ask you to either if we can replace the rails put yellow tape or something or do something that involves yellow the caution so that people recognize that it's an area that they should not sit and not even go near to look over. Very specific request. Could you explain to the public about street signs. I'm going to give you a little bit of a leeway into a segue into that. I know that a lot of street signs are stolen. They don't just go away. Could you talk about that issue of why there's so many street signs that are missing and I wanted to say that you can say that too. I've recognized that one day if I go into an area and there's a street sign missing and the street the pole is not down that it has something to do with it being missing for a reason. It's that is we haven't had as big a problem with street sign theft as we have with the theft of some copper wire which again I will say it for the record we are going all aluminum. Do not waste your time. If the thieves are watching now do not waste your time stealing our wire because it's aluminum. You're going to get pennies on the dollar. With street signs I think we have more issues in the French Quarter with some of the more well-known streets being those signs being removed from time to time but a lot of times wind events so if we have a heavy wind event in addition to theft if folks take signs down that can blow signs down and then we do see fading. The sun can do a number on a lot of those street signs that we do see that as well. Getting that that work order tracking so we can really figure out the understanding your problem is the first step for us.

Council Members

Getting that tracking engaged while we work on getting stop signs up making sure our staff is working diligently to replace those name signs. I think we will we will get to where we need to be. It just may take us a little bit of time. And you all have responded well to the request for stop signs because as you said that's a priority. That's a safety issue. We got stop signs at Pullen Avenue and Galvez which make a big difference in that there are fewer accidents because of that. So we understand the importance of stop signs. And the last thing I want to ask you specific request is to take a look at Lake Vista. A lot of street lights out but I understand it's because there's a special bulb that's needed something that isn't on the city that we didn't do a long time ago that we're responsible for and there's it's a beautiful community but there is a concentration of lights that are out and I understand that it has to do with bulbs. Somebody can get back to me and let me know. They don't have to necessarily see it now or just address it in whatever way is possible. I also want you to look at the possibility of establishing a cooperative endeavor agreement with the lakefront management authority because they cut the grass. They do other maintenance in the community. Maybe there might be some relief from the number of lights that we have to install if we can work with the lakefront management authority to address lights that are north of Allen, Tucson. Just an idea. We have so many lights as I saw to repair. I'm not saying that we won't still have a cost because there might be a cost but there might be some efficiencies and involving that agency which provides police protection and also you know grass cutting and maintenance services. All right. Got it. Thank you for the work that you do and I look forward to hearing from you relative to the Almanaster bridge, those street lights in Lake Vista and that one stretch of sidewalk. There will be something from you every month but those are the three for this month. That's the need in the purpose of the ICC and any communication anytime. Please of course reach out whenever it's needed. Alright. Thank you for your work. No. We have one more presentation. Thank you Steve. I'll call up Andrew Tuzolo, Leo John and Chuck Tony for the pumps update. That's a distinguished group of gentlemen coming up here to make these presentations. He lost a colleague. So distinguished that everybody's going. But they're watching you on Granicus. Well we're very excited to be here. My name is Andrew Tuzolo. I serve as special counsel for Mayor Moreno. To my left is Leo John Arnett, our director of policy and research and to my right is Chuck Tony who is our director of intergovernmental affairs. We have a presentation about the an update on the progress we've made on reforming Sujan Water Board. I'll try to speak to both of you even though you're in the corners of my eye. Seeing as how it's been a very long day, I know this is hour three plus on this hearing, I will try to be extremely brief and I will not run through the entire presentation. Try to give you some top lines. If you have any questions, happy to provide those. I want to make sure this is not one of those things that as they say could have been an email. So I'll be quick. So as everybody knows and for the folks watching at home, we have been engaged in a year-long process almost to reform Sujan Water Board both on a governance, on a legal and operational level. We've been very excited to be collaborators with the city council. Of course as you all know, briefly run through it, last spring we were successful in passing state legislation that provided brand new tools to the city council to in essence be greater managers of the Sujan Water Board directly. And as the mayor has said continuously is that her goal is to transform the Sujan Water Board into a city department and she set a goal to do so over the next two years. So what's happened recently, what the updates I want to provide to you and again I'll run through this quickly. On yesterday, we were at Sujan Water Board for the very first Sujan Water Board meeting of the new board that y'all had confirmed last month. Our new board members in an organizational meeting did three important things that I want to share with you all very briefly. At this first meeting, for the first time in decades, they elected a citizen board president of the Sujan Water Board. It was unique, I walked into the building on St. Joseph and on the plaque, Council Member Green, as I walked in it said renovations 1988 of the St. Joseph Street building, president of the Sujan Water Board, Mayor Sidney Barthelemy. And mayors have been president of the Sujan Water Board for decades now and that has been the case despite the board changes. This is the very first time in many years, I don't have the exact date, but decades for sure that we've had a citizen board president. Yesterday, the board, not by law, they were required to and they elected one of their own, Jonathan Stewart. He is now board president of the Sujan Water Board and he will preside over the board. The mayor endorsed this change. She thought, I think rightly, that the people of New Orleans should have a citizen president. It increases accountability and of course, as the board now operates, this board has taken a role that lives underneath the city council. The city council has taken on, as you all know, many of the major functions that the board usually used to perform. That includes operating the budget, the capital expenses, policies, and contract, some contract, major important contract approvals. All those things will happen here at the city council chambers. The other thing that changed yesterday, of course, that Sujan Water Board, for the first time, or for the last time, will be holding a meeting at one of their facilities. Council President Morrell has been clear on this.

Council Members

He wants to see those board meetings occur here in city council chambers where they can be. by the public more easily, although they are live streamed there, and people can attend. We have a lot more seats here than they do at the Sewardian Water Board. Those are important changes for transparency, and I think it's important to note for the public that that will be a new order of business moving forward. So I'm going to go through this presentation, like I said, very quickly. The mayor made a series of comments yesterday, as she said in the past, that her goal is to, again, integrate the Sewjan Water Board as a city department over the next two years, and you'll see up here on your screen a brief timeline. We intend to follow a vision over the next two years. Along with this vision, yesterday the board acted on a resolution put forth by the administration that both stated the mission that we intend to merge the Sewjan Water Board into the city government as if it was a city department, as a city department, but also for the board to help appoint a transformation officer, a person who can help lead those transformative changes we need to make. Of course, there are many things the Sewjan Water Board currently does at an admin level that the city also does. There's communications, there's IT, there's various functions that as a city department they wouldn't need, and so over the next several months we intend to help the Sewjan Water Board in collaboration work to lead that level of merger and transformation. We're going to need to work on the logistics of that, work on the details of that, and that's going to need to be done with the central point of contact. So we've asked the board to help us name a transformation officer, a transition officer that would help the executive director and, of course, the general superintendent who have busy roles to fill to do this transformation work on behalf of all of us, the city council and the administration. Move forward here very quickly. Like I mentioned, we already talked a little bit about the governance shift. We talked a little bit about why we're doing this. I think everybody knows that the trust from the public in the Sewjan Water Board is very low, although, you know, this doesn't indicate, I think, the efforts and hard work of Sewjan Water Board employees, which you see them every day working very hard on our streets. Ultimately, because of a series of issues over the years, the level of trust is very low, and we want to raise that level of trust. That's where this transformation comes into place. We're also very important, I think, importantly, as the city continues to grapple with our own budget issues, the Sewjan Water Board, of course, has funding deficits to fully operate and give full function to the key critical infrastructure that they run, whether it's keeping water off the streets or water through the pipes. We believe that through cost savings, operational efficiencies, we can further focus their resources, their scarce, their resources on those key issues and take away some of the excess admin that would otherwise need to be used if they were a separate entity. Also, of course, I want to mention, and LJ is working very hard on this, along with myself and our team, to enact a parcel fee, which is a new line of revenue that does not impact current payers, current taxpayers, current residents. This is a line of revenue we intend to derive from non-paying parcels here in the city. We're not prepared today to discuss that. That's a longer conversation, but later this fall, we'll be making a presentation to you guys to discuss how we intend to drive that revenue, how to make it equitable, how to make sure that that revenue turns into real results on the street, that we get products that the people want. We want to see, obviously, greater reliability from the sewage and water board, greater operational performance. We want to see to make sure that those catch basins are cleaned and other matters. We're going to make sure that's right in front of your face, and we’re going to make sure we'll make a presentation on that later. I'm going to move through this governance shift. I'm sorry. No, I was just going to say you just created a new area of discussion by mentioning a parcel fee. I'm happy to discuss it. So on Saturday, I'll be going to two community meetings, and it'll be brought up. So be very deliberate about sharing information as soon as you can, knowing that it's coming up. Yeah, no, that's no problem, sir. We've actually been very open and transparent about this is something the mayor is seeking. We intend to seek this on a ballot initiative next spring. Again, the purpose of this is to provide a revenue measure that takes the 40% of properties that are not paying into the drainage nor into our surface-level infrastructure system and provide a revenue stream from those properties because they do use our services. They use drainage services. They use surface-level infrastructure services, but they don't pay. And regular taxpayers, all of our taxpayers who are dealing with affordability crisis, they are further burdened because there are less payers into the system. So we're going to do that growing of the proverbial pie and make sure there are more payers, and that lessens the pressure on our taxpayers. And I'm happy to provide more information on that, but that's basically what it was. What will it pay for? Stormwater improvements and surface improvements, which means streets and associated infrastructure on the streets, both of which are things we do in collaboration with the Sewage and Water Board. All I was trying to do was to bring out exactly what you just said so that people understand that there's a lot of discussion going into it. It might be on the ballot for next year. Those are the considerations that are being brought up. That's all.

Council Members

And be prepared that we will be coming later this fall and into the winter with some clear proposals about that and doing a large public rollout to explain to our public exactly what's going on and why it's important. Moving on, I think we've talked a little about the operational efficiencies. One of the key elements that we're going to put forward and we're hoping to bring to the board for its consideration at the next meeting, which is next week on September 16th, to identify some of these more concrete steps that we could be taking to get us there to that roadmap. Andrew mentioned the transition officer. There's also a report. We're hoping that report would be something that is a bit more of implementable actions. Updating the bylaws to reflect the differences now in the board's authority versus the council's authority. Adopting a contract extension for the parcel fee development, which is a critical funding priority between the two. Confirming this global CEA that Andrew discussed. Continuing to just share information and collaborate. A lot of this has been done just by... meeting set between, you know, your staffs, our staffs, and the Sewage and Water Board staff. So making this a bit more just formal partnership. And then endorsing and requesting updates pursuant to the motions that you all as a council adopted on August 6th. And those are related to the bylaws update, the LLA audit, as well as the Civil Service Commission review. All right. So I'm going to skip ahead, LJ, to this priorities and months ahead because I know we're tight on time. Let's lay it out here. We're going to be continuing to be obviously reporting to you all as often as we can through our public works meetings and whatever other committees that you require. We will still run our task force regarding the pumps group. Council Member Karen and Council Member Hughes serve on. We will have the Sewage and Water Board full regular meeting on the 16th. We will also at that time, there's a number of issues that LJ brought up will need to be advanced at the board. And then, of course, there will be a budget process for the first time. It will be abbreviated, but the Sewage and Water Board will present a budget to you all for your review. Again, next year, when we have an entire year to do this with the capital on the budget, planning processes will be a little bit more, I think, have a little bit more room and space for you all to dig in. But for now, we're going to have that presentation. The Sewage and Water Board will make and then we'll continue to work as we have been on changing some of the funding streams that we discussed earlier. So for now, I'm going to leave it that the mayor is continually committed to making these reforms happen and making this merger happen. We're very well aware that even a two-year timeline is aggressive, but we do think that despite our small team here working on it, we think we are, you know, very much committed to making this the reality because ultimately this is, I think, the method by which we finally break free of the cycle where there's continued, if you had a hearing today, where there are continuous issues, lack of response, whatever the issues might be, that people in New Orleans aren't getting what they want and we aren't getting the level of service nor the level of security that we would like to see from the Sewage and Water Board. And I know they're working very hard at it, but without the funding, we know there can't be much more done. So we are working on that issue as well. So with that, I'm going to pause here for any questions. Otherwise, I'm certainly happy to adjourn that. You want to go ahead? And then I'll just have one question. Go ahead. I know, like you said, this is a very aggressive timeline, obviously, but I know we all want to work with urgency for this. Can you talk a little bit about some of the more complicated things that we have to work through as far as charter changes or state law changes to make this happen? Sure. I'm going to defer to Chuck on the state law changes. He'll briefly run through what we did last time and why. There probably aren't a lot more. There aren't many more things we need to address in Baton Rouge at this juncture. But I'm going to let Chuck run through that briefly. On the other question about the charter change, the one that the mayor has identified and that we are going to pursue is a charter change to the composition of the board. Ultimately, when the Sewage and Water Board becomes akin to, in fact, a city department, there isn't a necessity to have a board at that juncture. Of course, in the interim, we do believe that the board serves a role and we need to have some day-to-day operations managed by the board, while there still is a structure around that previously put the board in the primary position. But as we continue to transition this into a city department, the board probably doesn't need to have the same function or necessarily the same number of appointees. So what the mayor has identified is that we will seek a ballot measure to amend the board composition to probably change it so that it reflects a future where it needs an advisory function but not an active function to manage the board. That's the major charter change. I'm going to let Chuck talk just briefly about what we've done to the state and how broadly this law allows us to proceed without further changes. Yes, council members. I appreciate the time. I appreciate you all staying here all day with us. And thank you for the work that you all have done with us as being good partners. I want to thank our state delegation and also Amber Russ, who couldn't be here, who was very instrumental in getting this passed. Like Andrew said, like LJ kind of intimated, this is about local control. This is about giving the council the ability to make some of the rapid changes that need to be made at the sewage and water board level.

Council Members

We still have things in state law that require some retooling, but it won't be the heavy lift that we've had. We'll definitely be coming back to you all to have that conversation. We've kind of started talking about certain things that we may see, but that's something that we can kind of wait for this next legislative session to kind of discuss. And this is a fiscal session next year, so there's some limited activities. We had promised our legislators, and I think we can probably stick to this promise, that we've done the big state law changes that we need. What we need to do now is work here in New Orleans to make all these reforms that all of us agree that we need to move forward. So we put ourselves in a good position with this first year. We've kind of done all the paperwork. Now comes sort of the hard work of kind of putting our nose to the grindstone and making these changes operationally and structurally. Great. Council Member Green. Yes, I just want to thank you all for the work that you're doing. This is an important endeavor that the administration is undertaking, and it's a big change in the way that we have looked at certain functions of city government. We as a city government have created so many entities and have spun off so much under the assumption that we couldn't get it done if they were consolidated, if they were working together. It used to be a long time ago that the city had a Department of Sanitation which had employees that went out and picked up the garbage. We used to have an nopsy under our purview, for example. And then some time ago it was decided that, and this is not the specific example, that it's best to decentralize, get everything out there. But the issue that you mentioned, Andrew, for example, just a simple vehicle use, is an example of the fact that sometimes that decentralization doesn't make sense. Why should there be any discussion as to who is the rightful owner of a vacuum truck and who can use it? If it's something that is being done in the public interest and something that can be centralized such that we can get the things done, the most important thing is to get it done. So you all are playing an important role in my opinion. I've observed a lot over the last four years as a council member, and I know that we created entities and agencies under the assumption over the years, over decades, that it couldn't be handled best in a central manner. So when this works, because I'm very confident that it's going to work, that the residents of our city are going to get an enhanced level of services and that our city is going to be safer and also more strong in terms of infrastructure, when it works, it will be a message, I think, that says that maybe in some respects centralization works better for the city. And so I hope that this will be the test case, if you will, in some respects, for the city taking back or assuming again some of the responsibilities that it historically had when the city was growing. That's right. I think to your point, Council Member, I know that Council Member Cairn, she's often talked about building the workforce here, and in a similar capacity the mayor's been very focused on building what we call public capacity, our capacity to achieve things on our own, whether it's hiring electricians, getting a new traffic engineer, having people of the city that are able to do the work as opposed to asking someone else to do it at a higher cost, and centralizing all this work and putting this all under the same, you know, so we're not two cities, but we're one, right? I've heard this said recently that it's like as if we have two different cities. We have the city, and we have the Sojourn Water Board, and all of this should be done. It's all in the public interest, as you noted, sir, and ultimately in other parishes, other places, it makes sense that we can all work as one because in a world of limited resources, we need to be able to focus our attention on these issues and not fight ourselves over these governance issues or structural issues. Sure. We had Mr. Nelson describe today how we're hiring employees, and we're training them to do overlay work, building overlay work. Sign shop, that's right. The paving teams that Steve is putting together is amazing. It's stuff that we could do and we should do, and we're hiring New Orleanians to do. And they're getting retirement benefits if they want to stay in the system, and they're getting health benefits, and we've decided that you can't get paid less than $15 to $16 an hour for that work. Another plug and another important note about the living wage. I know you participated in voting on in your previous years, but having a living wage ordinance both for city employees and contractors puts our people in the position to be more successful and to fight all these affordability issues that we see every day. Yeah, and that's one of the things that sometimes you can't measure. People say, oh, trash contracts are more expensive than in our surrounding communities. Well, maybe the living wage that we're paying to our employees and the commitment that they're having to the city because of that and staying around for a while is helping to deliver a higher level of services. And it is. Which some people say that's exactly what they see with regards to the sanitation that's going on right now. So this takes it to another level, but I like this move, and I like the deliberate nature that the administration, that you all are putting forth to the public to share with them why this is important and what the potential benefits are once we get to the point where we are centralized. So thank you for your work that you do. That's all I'm saying in a whole lot of words. Thank you for what you're doing. I think it's important, and it's a good ability to have us to evaluate where we might do this again and elsewhere in our city. Yes, sir. Thank you very much. Never too many words, Councilman.

Council Members

I will also say thank you to you all and your team. We work very closely together on this as a member of PUMPS, and this is obviously one of the more challenging things that I think the administration and the Council has taken on, but I think that should show the public that we are willing to take on and do hard things, and I know that when we work together, including with Sewage and Water Board, that we can improve the services for our residents, and that's what they've asked for. That's what they've elected us to do, and I'm confident that even with this aggressive timeline that we will get it done. So I appreciate all your work on this and look forward to continued progress. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Alright. So with that, we are adjourned. Thank you.