Joint Climate Change and Sustainability Committee and Public Works, Sanitation and Environment Committee.

Chairwoman McCarran; Council Members Green, Hughes, Morrell, Willard, McCarran; Director Spears

I also want to be extraordinarily clear that this is not an indictment of the hardworking men and women who are public servants, who do the difficult work to keep our systems running, and are water safe to drink. We see you, we thank you, and we are still going to need you. Lastly, I want to be clear that this is not a magic button we press when this legislation is enacted. Things did not get this way overnight and won't be fixed overnight. This will take hard work and dedication from this council, this administration, and the real partnership with sewage and water board to ensure that we get this right. And I know we are all up for the challenge. I want to thank Councilmember Hughes for his partnership with me on pumps and our fellow colleagues for trusting in us to lead and advise on this important work. I want to thank Mayor Moreno and her team, especially Leo John and Andrew for leading us through this process, as well as Steve Nelson with DPW, who is taking on additional challenges with this work. To the rest of our pumps working group, including Aaron Spears, our Director of Council Utilities, and of course, Sewage and Water Board, thank you for your continued input and advice. And we are not done yet. Last but not least, I want to thank our staff working diligently behind the scenes to make all of this happen. So with that, I know that we have a presentation. If anybody else from the dais would like to make comments now or after, let me know. I would just like to have my name added to the resolution. Will do. All right, so with that, I'll ask Andrew and Leo John to come up and make their presentation and they will go through what we're voting on today. Council Member Green, for the record, would like his name added as well. Council Members, because this ordinance has already been introduced, actions to add names will have to be done during next week's council meeting, but noted. Floor is yours. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, Chairman McCarran, Chairman Hughes. Thank you for having us today. I appreciate the members of the council and their patience. My name is Andrew Tizzolo. I serve as special counsel to Mayor Helena Moreno. To my left is LJ Arnett, who is our Director of Policy and Research. Since June 2nd, and certainly since the spring, the mayor's team, in collaboration with the council, has been working to build a toolbox of tools to reform the sewage and water board, starting with the mayor's call during the legislative session to help pass Rep. Hilfredi's bill that created the opportunity to do this type of reform. Upon successful passage of that, the mayor put an executive order out there to create the PUMPS subgroup, the name created by Adam Swensak for the record, so for all those who like comedy and acronyms. The PUMPS subgroup is a group of community, city staff, and of course, as Council Member McCarran noted, two council members who have worked together since June 2nd to build a framework for regulation and reform of sewage and water board, a framework to put the community back in charge of sewage and water board, and to smooth out some of the rough parts we've had for years and years in operating and managing and maintaining our critical infrastructure, including drainage and water. Thanks to the work of this group, which has some wonderful people on there. I'm not going to name them all, but I want to thank certainly the community members, Dr. Chalk, Bo Jones from the Water Institute, a group of folks that came from all different walks of life to advise and input, and we put together, I think, a really helpful, I hope, framework for the Council to work from. I especially want to thank the Council's Utility Regulation Office and an excellent public servant, Erin Spears, who helped draft this and put this together. She put the pen to paper, and that's what makes it work. So I want to thank Erin, and of course, our Executive Council, Adam Swensak as well. So let me go through it. I'm going to try to move as quickly as possible to preserve your time, but if anybody has any questions during the way, I'm happy to take any questions along the way. So once again, the mayor created the PUMP subgroup. It's a subgroup of the ICC, another group that she created to help coordinate infrastructure construction in the city of New Orleans. One of the things she said when she was running for office was that the people of New Orleans simply weren't getting the services they deserved because of how discombobulated everything can be, and she needed greater coordination and urgency. That's what the ICC was meant to create, and I think it's done great work there, bringing what she called Super Bowl-level services to the city of New Orleans. We're still working on that, but I think we've made a lot of progress. What we did was we created a subgroup of that called PUMPS, and the intention here, of course, as we mentioned, was to build a regulatory and reform framework for the City Council to take over most of the key direction and operational choices of the Sewage Water Board. That group is made up of community members and staffers, and, of course, the City Council members, the Climate Chair, Council Member Caron, and Council Member Hughes, the Chair of Public Works. I'm going to go through the ordinance now. The ordinance, of course, is the key piece of legislation that will create that framework for the council to work from. It addresses some of the major challenges we've faced, which is having a volunteer and elected board manage the Sewage and Water Board with unclear levels of authority and lines of communication. We've seen numerous examples going back years and years of the Sewage and Water Board attempting but not quite making it for the community, making things work for the community. We have too many crises that emanate from that, and I think all of us want to see this work efficiently, effectively. Again, these are critical infrastructure operations.

Chairwoman McCarran; Council Members Green, Hughes, Morrell, Willard, McCarran; Director Spears

We don't pump the city out of water. We don't keep the clean water coming through the pipes. We can't have a city. So these are some of the most important things that happen in the city. We need to have clear communication, clear authority, and that's what this ordinance intends to do. So under this ordinance, the City Council is granted, through the power of the state law we passed, the City Council is granted the oversight and the approval of various pieces of the Sewage Water Board's operations. Most importantly, those regarding the budget and regarding its capital improvement plan. Of course, rate setting is already in the city charter. That doesn't change. But we also moved some of the contracting pieces into the City Council's oversight. These are not all the contracts of the Sewage and Water Board, but key contracts that include those regarding professional services, government relations, communications, of course, lobbying. Things that the City Council might want to have a look at and that the public should have further transparency around. It's important to note that also the Executive Director of the Sewage and Water Board, by state law, is chosen by the Board. The Board chooses the Executive Director. This new law creates an opportunity for the City Council to have a public opportunity to vet Executive Directors and General Superintendents. Also for their contract extensions, you'll see in the amendments that we are proposing as well. This is important for transparency and aligns with the City Council's move to bring all of our 13 Directors under the charter into the confirmation process. Very similarly, we'll bring the Director of the Sewage and Water Board, the key Executive Director of the Sewage and Water Board, to the City Council for public transparency and exposition about their role. Why is it important to put the City Council in charge of the Sewage and Water Board? I think pretty much everybody in this room and people across this city have read the innumerous reports about reforming the Sewage and Water Board. The fun part is that we've tried to reform the Sewage and Water Board through state action for dozens of years now. The Board of the Sewage and Water Board has changed probably about three to four times since I've been working in government for the last 20 years and each one of those changes has been met with another report saying that those changes didn't quite work and we should make more changes. So what we've done is we've created the most direct line of authority between the people and the Sewage and Water Board by putting their elected representatives in charge of the major elements of the Sewage and Water Board. And those elected representatives, of course, are seated in front of me and, of course, in collaboration with the mayor. I'm going to quickly go through this, but as I mentioned before, the Sewage and Water Board operating capital budgets, the improvement plans, the rates fees, the debt issuance, professional service contracts, executive leadership, confirmation and employment contracts, all will be subject to council oversight, amendment, review and approval. As the city charter continues to have the members of the Sewage and Water Board within its text, we are not changing the composition of the Sewage and Water Board, but we are retasking the Sewage and Water Board's board to deal with day-to-day operations, also creating a direct line of authority to the mayor, with the mayor appointing seven citizen representatives. Two of the Board LIC members will still be appointed by the Board of LIC and, of course, the mayor or designee, the mayor will not serve as the chair of the Sewage and Water Board anymore. It will elect its own chair. The board will still maintain some operational control at the day-to-day level. The city council is a very busy body. You guys have lots to do. It's not going to be a day-to-day, the city council sitting at the Sewage and Water Board, rather, that the board will make day-to-day minor decisions, but the major decisions, the strategic decisions, the decisions that affect people's days and their ways of life will be made right here in the city council chamber in public. I mentioned the board composition. It is the mayor's intention to seek within the next year a vote of the people to change the composition of the Sewage and Water Board, which requires a change to the city charter, which is an election by the people. That's for the future. For now, the mayor will appoint the seven citizens that serve and, of course, as I mentioned, the Board LIC members and the mayor or designee. Of course, the public works chair also still has an appointment on the Sewage and Water Board. All of those appointments will be made next week. Council President Morrell will be holding a government affairs committee to introduce new Sewage and Water Board members. Those will be public next week. The mayor is making appointments. There is some continuity in those membership, but there are also some new people, and so we're proud to announce those people next week. Moving on, I want to move quickly through the board of directors piece because I think we've all spoken about this. Another great area of concern, we've had multiple council meetings about this, is the Sewage and Water Board's ability to communicate emergencies effectively and to the right parties. There's been a long-term issue with information coming out of the Sewage and Water Board and getting to the public effectively and accurately. It's not any one person's fault, but we're trying to streamline that communication. One of the ways in which we believe that the city government can act most effectively here is to integrate emergency communications with the city's effective NOLA-ready operations and cease having two separate lines of communication. I think that would help everybody.

Chairwoman McCarran; Council Members Green, Hughes, Morrell, Willard, McCarran; Director Spears

We've also put in the law, and I know the council is interested in this, to make sure that council members are apprised of critical information at the earliest possible moment. I know each of you have probably dealt with a situation, and certainly in this chamber, dealt with a situation where pieces of information about your district or potentially about the whole city were not provided to you timely, and it created confusion, and often residents were not sure what was going on, and later explanations were necessary. With this law, we're creating clear lines of communications and protocols so that you are informed about the important issues that you need so that you can get your information out to your constituents. Again, another piece of standardization of protocol would be that the city council receive an emergency operations plan on an annual basis from the Sewage and Water Board. Typically the city presents an emergency hurricane season presentation here at the city council every May or June. Entrogy does the same. Delta does the same. Now Sewage and Water Board will be required to present their emergency plan each year so that the city council and the public know what should be happening in an emergency, what information should be shared, and how to get it. Another key issue that has been a long-term issue with the Sewage and Water Board is there's no clear repository of information about the Sewage and Water Board. Reports that are required are not easy to find. There are no clear databases where you would find reports about storms, about pumping. There are certain websites on Sewage and Water Board that provide some of this information, but there's no historical or categorical place. We're hoping that through this new ordinance and framework, there will be a single repository for this information and that clear reporting protocols are created so that the council can expect certain information at certain times so that can all be cataloged and database so that all of you have an opportunity to look contextually at the work of the Sewage and Water Board so that there isn't a, everything is a critical or urgent incident. Often we forget, history forgets pretty quickly about what just happened a year or two years ago and with that context, we can be more effective in managing this organization. Another great piece that I think this ordinance creates and aligns with the city's existing operations is a public budget presentation. Because we're on constrained timeline this year, we're going to ask that that presentation be done on an expedited fashion with those submissions being done in November and by December. That aligns with Sewage and Water Board's current operational budget plan. In the future, we intend to back that up just as we do with the city's budget and start that process earlier so there is a public exposition so that the public community groups can come here, learn about Sewage and Water Board's operational budgets and capital budgets and priorities and that the city's council can oversee and amend and provide community input on all of those issues. Every one of those pieces is critical and it's important that we note that the Sewage and Water is obviously grossly underfunded and that when we have a capital plan that creates an entire set of projects that are all urgent, none of which are funded, it makes the public confused about what the plan is and what the strategy is. One of the challenges we have is because it's so opaque, we have no idea what is really going on and what's part of the plan and what's not. The other issue that we've also faced and the city council previously has worked on this is that because Sewage and Water Board has not been able to receive enough funding from state, federal and local resources, they've been unable to execute on key projects including, of course, the power complex thanks to the city council. City council helped step in and fund the power complex when they were unable to find money for that. This was done on an expedited basis and almost on an emergency case and that shouldn't be the way we plan strategically for capital improvements. This process will create greater strategy and vision around those capital improvements and allow the city's representatives to have input about their neighborhood of projects, what projects are working, what construction isn't getting done, why certain projects are taking too long and we can get greater insight, oversight and accountability on those issues. Mentioned the capital improvement plan, I think it is good to note that we intend to have a short and medium term forecast from the Sewage and Water Board so you can plan not just on an annual basis but many of Sewage and Water Board's biggest projects take many years to come to fruition. We know that that is typical of most of these large critical infrastructure projects and we need to have vision on that and strategy that doesn't just last on an annual basis but on a multiyear basis. I will mention that the city of New Orleans has a capital improvement plan process which works pretty well as well as the coastal authority here in Louisiana has a long term capital project. All of these are models that the Sewage and Water Board should be emulating and we intend to help emulate through the city council process. I'm reaching the end here so I'm going to pause for a moment to see if there are any questions. I went kind of quickly trying to make sure you all had time to speak. If there are any questions, I'm happy to take them. Again, LJ and I have served as staff on the PUMS group. We've been happy to work with council members McCarran and Hughes on this and of course this is a product of the city council. We do have an amendment that we're requesting just to make some clarifications that is sponsored by four council members. Other than that, I'm happy to take questions on issues and details and certainly for the public. Thank you.

Chairwoman McCarran; Council Members Green, Hughes, Morrell, Willard, McCarran; Director Spears

I have one question, Madam Chair. Just for the public's benefit, did Sewage and Water Board have representation on the PUMS committee? Yes, sir. It's a great question. So one of the members of the PUMS group was Caitlin Timarack who is the general superintendent of the Sewage and Water Board and as well we also had former board members serving on the PUMS working group as well. So we were blessed to have a group of folks who had great knowledge and direct insight. Caitlin was a wonderful member and collaborator on this process. So just in full transparency to the public, this PUMS working group as created by the mayor's executive order, this was not just a committee of the administration or elected bureaucrats. We had Sewage and Water Board at the table. We had everyday citizens at the table, had the business community at the table. So we had a large representation of the users of the system and the city of New Orleans. Would that be a fair assessment? Absolutely, sir. Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair. Once again, Granicus does not work so I'd like to make some comments, though I can't press the button to say that. Go ahead. Andrew, it's been years and Granicus never seems to work. That's amazing. A couple of questions. First up, I appreciate your slide that you had on emergency notifications. I will tell you that a complaint we commonly get from constituents is that the existing efforts to provide emergency notifications that Sewage and Water Board does independent of the city are confusing, not clear, and often duplicative of the city's existing efforts. I know you mentioned how the city will essentially fold them into NOLA Ready, but I want to be very clear that the goal is for the public to receive appropriate notifications in the vehicles they're accustomed to and to streamline Sewage and Water Board communication. I think that from our perspective as a council, talking to my colleagues, and I know you've heard this repeatedly and I know the Mayor has expressed it as well, the goal is really to view Sewage and Water Board as a way to make sure that the city receives the necessary notifications. as a city department. That's right. And since we have centralized communication that people have already signed up to, like Noel already, is it your intention, is the intention of this ordinance to not suggest but mandate that Sewage and Water Board use our existing channels rather than, A, duplicate them badly and, B, waste money on duplicating them badly? I think that's exactly right, sir. And I think you've seen there are many opportunities for operational efficiencies. The number one most important one is to create a sole trusted source for communication. These are critical notifications. And having confusing notifications out there about flooding possibilities, about water equality, about water being out, it's being done in a haphazard way at this juncture. And we believe to streamline that is critical. The mayor's been very clear that she'd like to see one sort of conveyance for all that communication. And that has been very effective. I think residents, I think they trust it, they should. It does a really good job. It's run here at the city. There's no reason to have two different sort of communications. It's both confusing and in some cases it can be worse than confusing. So I think it's a critical piece of this reform effort is to streamline that and put it in one lane. Yes, sir. Yeah, and regarding your slide regarding emergency preparedness, I will tell you that a complaint that we've gotten particularly during the storm season is that it appears that when we have these catastrophic events at Sewage and Water Board, whether it was the power tripping repeatedly, whether it was human error with the pumps and operations, the question we get from constituents repeatedly is, do they do dry runs before hurricane season to make sure all this equipment actually is operating properly, the people manning it are trained properly? And the suggestion I would make, it's not codified yet, but I think we can do it through the board, is you need to publicize proactive efforts. Like if you've noticed across the world, when you have these kind of annual incidents, like we have hurricane season in the city of New Orleans, everyone knows it, that is the time we expect Sewage and Water Board to be, I'd say a game, that's when the football season starts, whatever analogy you want to use. It would make sense that we create an annual process where Sewage and Water Board publicizes before hurricane season, we're testing the pumps, we're testing the station, we're going to do load bearance on the pumps to make, on the power station to make sure that everything's working properly. Hey, public, you may notice a drop in water pressure here, we're testing the pumps before hurricane season because I think in order, part of having this ordinance, part of us rebuilding public confidence, is showing intentionality and proactive efforts to solve problems rather than react to them. That's right. Restoring confidence, as you said, is one of the most critical pieces, not just in emergency preparedness, but across Sewage and Water Board's operations. But to that point, as you all know, NOSEM runs tabletop operations prior to hurricane season. Sewage and Water Board participates in that, but playing a larger role and an integrated role with our existing tabletops is incredibly important. I hope that that is the case, I intend for that to be the case so that we see the public understanding of some of the preparations being done prior to these hurricane seasons. Yes? And my last question with CIP. I heard just now from your presentation, what you're trying to do is to have them mirror our CIP process. I would encourage you to just fold them into our CIP process.

Chairwoman McCarran; Council Members Green, Hughes, Morrell, Willard, McCarran; Director Spears

And I say that because a lot of what we've seen, in my estimation as to why the organization has gotten so bloated, is that we have too many duplicative processes. If we have people already inside city government, people who have years of experience in creating capital improvement prams that are transparent, that the public can follow, that the council can understand as we do our consideration as to how we're going to do capital funding, it doesn't make sense to teach Sewage and Water Board how to do it, it makes sense to have us just do it and then provide the information and follow our CIP process. Just because I don't, I really do not want to, in the process of doing all these changes, create more bureaucracy. I want to streamline it and, like I said, my goal has been unabashedly throughout this to make, to treat Sewage and Water Board as a department, as such. And I'm not saying that it's superfluous, I really would prefer that we kind of ax out in this process. I think that's exactly right. I think one of the things that you mentioned in terms of integrations fits in the overall package of making Sewage and Water Board act more like a city department. And that is exactly right. We need to have us, because LJ and I discuss all the time, there are many infrastructure projects, green infrastructure projects that Sewage and Water Board is a participant in, so is the City of New Orleans. And so we're already participating and aligned on some of these projects, but they're coming from completely different processes. And we need to make that a single process, I agree with you, sir. Councilmember, I just want to draw your attention, thanks to Leo, John, and Adam, the process that is outlined in this ordinance largely reflects what the city does in its capital improvement plan process. Additionally, it requires coordination between the departments, as Andrew mentioned, to ensure that there is alignment across the board. And you'll see that beginning next year with the public engagement process and the coordination between the city departments as well. I understand that, but I kind of want to go a step further. I don't want them to mirror it. I want them to provide the information and the city just do it. Because whenever we say mirror a process, there's kind of the idea that there'll be two parallel groups that are trying to communicate and copy each other. My preference is that there's one group doing it for both parties so that it is exactly the same. Because at the end of the day, I guess as a utility regulator, looking at Delta, looking at energy, every time they want to do something, we look at how is this going to impact cost rate payers. As we tried to look at sewage and water board as this hybrid department SAS utility, every cost sewage and water board has is less money. Any cost for C-suite or individuals, especially in that C-suite executive level, that's money not going towards the system because it's the same pot of money. So anything we can do to streamline, to Amy's earlier point, we're not talking about the guys who are literally drilling holes to fix pipes. We're talking about looking throughout the system from the top all the way to the bottom to see where there's duplication. We can take existing money within sewage and water board and repurpose it for sewage and water board. So that was simply my point. I think we're on the same page. I just want to make sure we're going as far as possible to streamline sewage and water board. Yes, sir. And Council President, on the presentation, we also mentioned that there are going to be new revenues that we're working on, such as the parcel fee proposal. I think that your comment is really important in this time where there's going to be revenues where we have to share for projects. And so if the process is one and we're focusing on that, it's a public and accountable strategy where we can show where those monies are going to be deployed. And so I just wanted to underscore that that comment you made is exactly right, especially as this provides a framework for some of those new revenues as well. Council Vice President Miller. Thank you, Chairlady. Andrew LJ, I want to thank you for your work on the pump subgroup. Your back and forth with Council President Morrell brought up a question. Are you guys looking at, or is it part of the plan to look at, different softwares, you know, case management platforms, to see, you know, communication, working with Department of Public Works in sewage and water board? I'm wondering, I would assume there may be some cost savings if they fold into some of our processes, and also I would imagine it would make it more difficult if we're using different systems. Yes. So one of the things I mentioned was operational efficiencies, and we can see from their operating budgets already that there are things that the city and sewage and water board both do. They have a $1.6, $1.7 million communications budget across the three aspects. We're going to look very carefully, and the pump subgroup's future is to look very carefully about all of those things that they already do and we do, and how we can bring those things together. Software, IT, communications. We already share a contract, a government affairs contract with them, but some of that might be duplicative. Do we need that? So there's a ton of things that they have and we have, and that by integrating, we know that we can make efficiencies and then return funds to the key operational pieces, right? Keeping the city from flooding, keeping the clean water pumping, things of that nature. That's what the sewage and water needs to be focused on. The other stuff we can start taking on a greater role, but that's exactly right. So we're going to do a process by which we find out what places are areas of synergy and where we can integrate. Okay.

Chairwoman McCarran; Council Members Green, Hughes, Morrell, Willard, McCarran; Director Spears

And I think the work order management process would be big as well because obviously sewage and water board and DPW have to work together and if they're using the same process, the same user interface, I mean, I think it just makes more sense. Yeah. I'll note we do have a secret weapon there is that we have a former general superintendent, Steve Nelson, who works around us. And so he's quite knowledgeable about sewage and water board operations and happens to be sort of a key cog in the machine to bring these things together. He's very knowledgeable and he has a great working relationship with Caitlin, with general superintendent. And so I think we're going to have a strong partnership to build those efficiencies. All right. Perfect. Thanks, guys. Yes, sir. Council Member Green. Good morning. Good morning. I'd like to thank you for the work that you've done. And I'd like to commend Mayor Moreno, with whom I served for the last four years and with whom we worked out some issues that were important relative to sewage and water board. I know that three and a half years, three years ago, we were talking about billing issues. Yes, sir. And we saw just an incredible impediment to doing business. And we went to the legislature and got the ability to have some input in that area. And it worked out very well. Yes, to those who still have billing issues, there may be some, but at the end of the day, I think that we all agree that there's a lot less talk about billing issues. This council also came to the rescue, if you will, or to provide money for the power station. That's right. The previous council. And so I just want to say that in the hands of the mayor and in the hands of our CAO, who was a member of the city council, I'm pleased to be able to be in a position where we have this enhanced authority. We have a Council Utilities Regulatory Office that works very hard, that has helped the ratepayers of our city and also has helped us to move forward in many areas that are important. So my general statement is that to members of the public, the City Council has in the past proven itself and it's got two former members who are in a position that we'll be hearing budget and capital concerns and the like. So I'm just looking forward to this and I just want to say in a couple of words thank you and to Mayor Moreno for the work that has been done and also to the legislators. It took a little bit of time to get us to this level and there was some opposition, but the legislators who did vote to support the City Council having an enhanced role, I think that you'll find that your vote was well taken. Thank you sir. I do want to point out that because the Mayor set this out as a key priority of hers, although she didn't intend it when she was running, it became a key priority, since that time when we put together the work at the legislature, we've been working very hard in a collaborative fashion and I want to thank the Council's help in helping pass that state legislation. Council President Morrell, Council Member Hughes, Council Member Willard, former members, helped us get along. Council Member McCarran was there too. So I think it's really critical that we've had this collaborative partnership and it shows how much we can accomplish when we are working in alignment. So I appreciate that. Thank you and I want the members of the public to know that there was a lot of work that was involved with that. We did a resolution as a Council and I talked to individual legislators saying that yes, based on the successes that we had addressing billing issues and getting the power station built, the City Council is in a position that we can enhance the operations through involvement. So I'm looking forward to working with you and with the administration and with my fellow Council members because that's such an important agency relative to the delivery of services for our citizens. Thank you Council Member. Council President Morrell. I just wanted to highlight something you said earlier because I think it's really important and I think it's kind of indicative of why the repeated recent legislation and why pumps is necessary. You highlighted two particular areas of expenditures that I think as a rate payer, rate payers as a whole should find particularly offensive. The fact that the Sewage and Water Board repeatedly and voraciously fought to have its own governmental representation to lobby against things the Council and the City was doing. It's really breathtaking in just how disconnected it is from what rate payers want. Like I'll give you an example and you know this because you were on the Council and this happened. The Sewage and Water Board hired lobbyists to fight us fixing billing. That's right. So as residents were getting bills that were thousands of dollars off, as people were being threatened with their water being cut off, the Sewage and Water Board were using rate payer dollars to fight the Council getting control of billing to fix the billing. Just this last session when we were doing the existing legislation to create what would be pumps in this whole process, Sewage and Water Board was complaining that they didn't have lobbyists paid for by rate payers to protect them from us doing this. The PR piece, the amount of money that is being spent on PR is just beyond ridiculous to me. On one level, on a very basic level, just as someone who interacts with the public on a frequent basis, hiring a PR team to try and rehabilitate the Sewage and Water Board's image rather than using that money to fix problems to make the public view you better, it just speaks to such a fundamental disconnect. So the fact that the Moreno administration has already identified those as two areas that pumps is going to target, any money not spent on stupid things is more money spent on fixing problems.

Chairwoman McCarran; Council Members Green, Hughes, Morrell, Willard, McCarran; Director Spears

And the fact that we're still having this conversation, the fact that money is still being allocated in that way before we step in as a Council, before pump steps in to say you can't spend money on independent lobbyists and PR anymore, tells you fundamentally why this ordinance is necessary and why the Council and the Mayor need to make this extraordinary step because I will tell you that many of us know us doing this, the Council and Mayor working together with the Governor at the time and the Legislature to have this situation take place, this is done at tremendous political risk because the easiest thing for politicians to do is not have control over something and blame it on other people. The Council and the Mayor choosing to deal with Sewage and Water Board heads on means that come after August 1st, we can no longer complain that this is not our circus, not our monkeys. At this point, we own the circus and we're going to own what happens after that and we do that because we cannot do anything less at this point. Flooding and the viability of the Sewage and Water Board is an existential threat to the future of the City of New Orleans. So we do this, we do this tremendous thing, we take control of an organization that has poll numbers as low as 14% because we don't have a choice at this point. It's not something we do with great joy or zeal, taking on another responsibility with all the existing responsibilities, but at the end of the day, this is a direct response to the residents that we serve in the City of New Orleans. So I thank you for your comments. I thank you for being here today. But I want to reiterate to the hard-working women and men of Sewage and Water Board, we thank them for their hard work and for their public service to this city. And we look forward to working in partnership to create a much stronger public utility. Thank you, Mr. President.