City Council on 2026-09-03 10:00 AM.

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Amendment Discussion for Ordinance 35384 (Sanitation Fees)

Public Comment – Bob Murray on sanitation fee increase

Public Comment – Emma Sheehan on impact of sanitation fees

Public Comment – Lamar Newman on sanitation fee proposal

Public Comment – Chris Lang on contracts and waste management

Council Remarks – Harris on sanitation fee, transparency, and recycling

Hazard Mitigation Plan Update – Adoption

Consent Agenda Adoption

City Council

First up, I want to move for consideration of the amendment to put the bill in the appropriate posture to hear public comment. The amendment has been read. Are there any comments on the amendment? Hearing none, I will move on the amendment, seconded by Council Vice President Willard. All in favor? Any opposed? Hearing none. To the amendment? Yes. Alright. That is 6-1 on the amendment.

Bob Murray

Good morning to the Honorable Council. My name is Bob Murray. My address is 5650 Clements Drive, New Orleans, 70126. I am here today the Honorable Council to object to what this city council is calling an increase in garbage collection. And the reason I'm here is because we have taxed the people of this city far too long and far too much. The service has been terrible for the past few years. We have even went to a one-day pickup that we all know that two, three years ago, that was a two-day pickup. My question is very simple to the council. Where is the savings that was made for the one-day pickup every week, and we have not saw those savings in the audit? I was able to research the audit, and nowhere in the audit does it say the millions and millions of dollars that this city council and this administration is wasting on garbage collection fees, and I'm here to say to you that the public, as a community activist, I am totally against it, and I suggest to you to be brave, vote against it, let's table it, and let's find another way, that even if we have to come to one-day-a-week collection, which we're accustomed to now, that we do not violate the citizens of this city to pull this city out of bankruptcy when we should not have to. I want to thank you guys for listening. Thank you so much, and I appreciate your time. I say no to the fee increase, and to the citizens of this city to pull this city out of bankruptcy when this Thank you.

Emma Sheehan

Good morning. My name is Emma Sheehan, 1410 Port Street. For eight years at the Lower Ninth Ward Home Ownership Association I worked with people struggling to pay their real property taxes, but instead falling further and further behind. For some people in this room, $8.50 won't change your lives. You might not even have noticed that your water bill already has almost $60 in sanitation and flat fees before you use a single drop. So this is really $68.50 that people are paying before they use their water. Other people in this room can't afford this. The skyrocketing price of gas is already eating into their budgets. The Trump administration just cut the SNAP benefits. 18% of people in the New Orleans area just lost their SNAP benefits. So they turn to the food banks, but the food banks are running out of money. They go to total community action to pay their utility bills. It's not theoretical. These are the people who can't pay $8.50 a month. Meanwhile, for many of them, their incomes are depressed because they're black. For their entire lives, they were earning less than white workers and therefore their Social Security is less than white workers. If they were domestic or farm workers, they didn't even qualify for Social Security. If they're women, they were making $0.59 on the dollar compared to men, so their Social Security is $0.59 on the dollar. And if they're black women, double the trouble. These are the people for whom $8 an hour may be the last straw between them and losing their home, them and being unable to feed themselves, or maybe not having water. The bill explicitly states that if you can't pay your sanitation fee, your water is cut off. Also, a 15% penalty will be added every month to the outstanding balance. There are alternatives to this approach. Maybe people more able to afford it could pay for their recycling services. Take the time to consider other approaches rather than rushing this through when people are already in financial crisis. You don't want to add to the... Thank you.

Lamar Newman

Good morning. I stand before you as a conscientious objector to the price increase. And the price increase is based on not just one element, but two. First of all, you have increased our sanitation pickup for the last two or three years. Now you want to charge a 33% increase in sanitation price. People of this city, citizens who live here, all of them don't have an income compatible to yours. You don't feel what the people feel because your salary is sufficient and you're fine with what goes on in this city as far as sanitation increase is concerned. Our garbage is only picked up once a week. Some of us, like myself, my can goes out once a month because I don't generate a lot of garbage. But you have the Bourbon Street area. They pick up thousands of pounds of garbage every day. And now you're talking about only charging them $16. Garbage is picked up once a week and you want to increase it by $8 and some change. That is not right for the citizens of New Orleans. You all need to start taking in consideration us, senior citizens who have fixed income, who don't generate the amount of garbage that you are talking about that's generated. You fight for the Bourbon Street, for the Garden District, but you don't care about the other communities. We are citizens of this city. We support this city. We put you in office and when you get in office, you forget about who we are. It's time for a change. And I want to thank you for listening to my complaints because it is legitimate and it's not right what you do. Thank you.

Chris Lang

Good morning, Council. My name is Chris Lang and I live at 2500 Dauphine Street. This comment goes specifically to you, JP Murrell. My question is why are these contracts seemingly untouchable until 2029 or 2031? Do you, Council, not have the power to interrogate and amend our waste contracts? The waste contractors are being paid 100% of the value for recycling despite only 42% of residents opting into recycling. If recycling costs $10.5 million per year and we are only receiving 42% of that value, that means 6.1 million are going straight to our contractors as unearned profits, keyword being unearned. Why are contractors being paid for work they are not doing? Why can't we amend the waste contracts so our contractors are only being paid for the amount of work that they do do, let's say 42% and not 100%, and pay them a rate that accords to the amount of collection that they actually perform? Additionally, I may be mistaken on my math, but it seems from the LLA meeting last week that we are overpaying an additional roughly $6 million per year due to the 21,000 service location discrepancy that pays our waste contractors for, once again, unearned work. They are not performing work for houses that are not in the system. When you combine the recycling inefficiency and the service location discrepancy, that equals roughly $12 million per year in unearned profits to our waste contractors due to poorly written contracts that favor their bottom lines over our needs as residents. If we incurred a sanitation deficit of $68.9 million since 2023, then $42 million of those dollars or 61% of that is attributed to unearned profits from services paid for by us but not received straight to our waste contractors. Why then should we, as residents, be fully expected to fix that deficit while you, as the city, are not doing what's in your power to ensure our contractors are not fleecing us? I would like a response to the contract portion. Can we amend the contracts? Well, under the charter, the city council does not have the ability to negotiate or amend contracts. That is a fact. So to answer your question, no, the New Orleans City Council cannot renegotiate or amend contracts. There's your answer.

Council Member Harris

I am reluctant to vote for this today. But I know that we need to do so in order to collect the proper amount of money for our sanitation fee that we pay in excess as a city. I do want to say that I'm happy that this preserves recycling. And I look forward to working with this administration to expand glass recycling, which is one of the easiest things to do throughout the city. So again, with the promise of the preservation of our current recycling and expansion of our glass recycling program, I am going to vote for this today. I do want to encourage the administration to have a comms program on proper recycling and how to do it. Because I don't think that our citizens understand how to properly recycle. And I think that that's something that we need to do. If you don't have a recycling can, you can request one. And if you need a second garbage can, you can do so as well. Thank you.

Council and Staff

Ms. Liz Feldbaum: We are due for our required five-year update of the city's Hazard Mitigation Plan. It's the document that catalogs the natural hazard risks that we face and updates our five-year strategy of projects and programs and actions that we are going to take to make the city more resilient. Beginning about a year and a half ago, we convened our stakeholder committee, which includes HANO and NORA, Tulane, Loyola, the Sewage and Water Board, and city agencies, held a series of public meetings last summer. And then throughout the remaining time, I've been working with FEMA and our partners on review and final approvals. As you know, the last step in finalizing the plan update is to have the city council formally adopt the plan, which recognizes it as the city's five-year strategy. It's not a static document. We keep this updated annually through our annual reports. And we work regularly with our partners to include new mitigation projects, new strategies as they arise. Thank you for that information. Council Member Morrell: Thank you. This is a resolution adopting the Hazard Mitigation Plan update. All in favor? Aye. Seven yays. No nays. Thank you. Council Members, we could go to suspend the rules for ordinance on first reading. So moved. Seconded. All in favor? Aye. Ordinance on first reading. Ordinance 35,544 by Council Member Harris, et al. And a list of related ordinances and matters. Thank you.

City Council / Clerk

This is all matters on consent. Monique Blossom with the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center on consent agenda item number seven. Monique. Okay, she waves. And then we have Dan Feliciano on consent agenda item number seventeen. Dan Feliciano. Oh, there you are. Just want to say thank you very much. Kids riding the buses for free is a big thing, especially with all the spare change, and it's also just a good thing for the state to do. So, thank you. Have a wonderful day. Thank you, Dan. Morgan Clevenger on consent agenda item seventeen. Consent agenda item number seventeen. Thank you. The presentation that Ry Nola and everybody did last week was amazing and definitely made the case of why the opportunity pass is important to our children and families. And a lot of the data and the support information for that definitely showed the burden on our citizens and our families that are extremely cost burdened. And many of the councilpersons did address that as well and thought that it was important to do something to help our people. So, I support this. I'm happy to support it, but I would also ask that that same reasoning of how we need to work with our people and recognize the cost burden of our population and our families and our children is also affected by things like a sanitation fee. Thank you. Morgan. Councilmember Green: Thank you, Councilmember Willard. I appreciate the comments, and I want to also thank Ry. You didn't take out a card, but I mean, I appreciate the fact that you're here and that this is passing. As the chair of the Transportation Committee and as a member of the previous council, I do want to take an opportunity to thank Mayor Moreno, who was, as a councilmember at large, a strong proponent. And I've been the chair of transportation for a while. I was so glad this opportunity came before us. But this is an example of a successful program. It is something that the city has done well, that supports our youth. I could spend 10 minutes telling you about some of the things that the youth have said to me just about how pleased they are to be able to go around the city and see our city and enjoy it, especially those whose families' incomes are challenged. So, I hope that we will work with the members of the council and even maybe with the state and other funders to continue the provision of the funding that keeps this program going. But I do appreciate the work of all who have made this a successful program. Thank you, Councilmember Green. Any other comments? All right. It's been moved and seconded by Councilmember McCarron. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Seven yays, zero nays. The consent agenda has been adopted. We have a communication on the suspension from Joseph I. Jerusale III. We need the vote to receive. Moved. Seconded by Councilmember Harris. All in favor? Aye. 7 yays, 0 nays. We need the vote to add. Moved. Seconded by Councilmember Harris. All in favor? Aye. 7 yays, 0 nays. Aye. We have a motion under suspension. We have motion M26198 by Councilmember Harris, Willard, Morrell, McCarran, and King, submitting for council approval the following amendments to the Classified Pay Plan, Health, EMS, Hiring Rates, Emergency Medical Technician, Emergency Medical Technician Advanced, Emergency Medical Technician Paramedic, Emergency Medical Coordinator Assistant, Emergency Medical Coordinator, as adopted by the Civil Service Commission at its meeting on May 8, 2026, in accordance with Article 10, Section 10 of the Constitution of Louisiana, that the amendment of the Classified Pay Plan is approved to be effective September 3, 2026. We need the vote to receive. I'll move. Seconded by Councilmember Willard. All in favor? Aye. 7 yays. We need the vote to add. I'll move to add. Seconded by Councilmember McCarran. All in favor? Aye. 7 yays. And you could discuss a vote. All right. Councilmembers, we talked about this in budget. This just approves some additional EMS workers so that we can get off of using Acadian Ambulance and actually staff up our own EMS. This should increase the budget in the general fund. I'll move. Can I get a second? Seconded by Council President Morrell. All in favor? Aye. 7 yays. Thank you.

City Council on 2026-09-03 10:00 AM.

Summary

City Council meeting on 2026-09-03 — Context and flow

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Unresolved issues and notable open questions in this excerpt

Notes

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