New Orleans residents express anger at rebuilding ideas

New Orleans ? Angry residents expressed frustration Wednesday at the debut of rebuilding proposals for this devastated city, taking aim at a suggested four-month moratorium on new building permits in areas heavily flooded by Hurricane Katrina.

“Our neighborhood is ready to come home,” said property owner Jeb Bruneau of Lakeview, which borders Lake Pontchartrain. “Don’t get in our way and prevent us from doing that. Help us cut the red tape.”

The Bring New Orleans Back Commission, appointed by Mayor Ray Nagin, released its initial recommendations to a packed crowd of local residents.

The commission’s plans could become part of a blueprint for rebuilding New Orleans – a task unparalleled in American history.

The idea behind the moratorium is to ensure that enough people would move back to a neighborhood to avoid large expanses with isolated houses.

New Orleans East resident Harvey Bender speaks at the Bring New Orleans Back Commission meeting. Angry residents vented frustration Wednesday at the debut of rebuilding proposals for this devastated city. Some vowed to defend their land from possible government buyouts, and others said the city needs to get out of their way and let them rebuild.

But that didn’t sit well with residents from the hard-hit Ninth Ward, Lakeview and east New Orleans. Several lashed out at commission members such as prominent New Orleans developer Joseph Canizaro.

“I don’t know you, but Mr. Canizaro, I hate you,” Harvey Bender of the Lower Ninth Ward said as he pointed his finger. “You’ve been in the background scheming to take our land.”

After the meeting, Canizaro met with Bender and promised to explain the commission’s recommendations in greater detail.

Citywide plans

Besides rebuilding neighborhoods and shoring up the city’s defenses against flooding, proposals unveiled earlier this week include:
¢ Efforts to make New Orleans more green and modern.
Some of those ideas include building commuter rail lines to nearby cities and across the Mississippi River, encouraging the use of energy-efficient building practices, creating more parks and building more bicycle paths.
¢ Using tax credits to re-create Storyville, the city-backed red-light district that operated for 20 years until it was shut down in 1917.
The idea, of course, is not to bring back the sex trade, but rather reclaim its musical legacy. Many jazz pioneers – Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver and Manuel Perez among them – played in the district’s bordellos.
Storyville, which was next to the French Quarter, was razed after it fell into disrepair.

“I told him I want to do everything I can to help this city. I’m not going to make a dime off this,” Canizaro said. Commission members have pledged not to profit from their positions on the panel.

Another resident, Caroline Parker, said: “I don’t think it’s right that you take our properties. Over my dead body.”

Others vowing to fight the plan include City Council members, the New Orleans chapter of the NAACP and former Mayor and National Urban League President Marc Morial.

The NAACP said it would be unfair not to allow residents to rebuild and questioned suggestions that some areas of the city should not be rebuilt because they are not “sustainable.”

The commission will unveil more rebuilding plans in the coming days, and it hopes to form a clearer picture of what areas would be rebuilt by the end of the year. Besides home and neighborhood reconstruction, the proposals will cover schools, transportation, entertainment and other topics.

Nagin is expected to have all proposals in hand on Jan. 20. He then can approve or reject the recommendations. The plan is expected, though, to be presented to President Bush, who asked early on that Orleanians come up with a vision for rebuilding the city.

The commission offered a phased-in approach for rebuilding. It said each of the city’s 13 neighborhood development districts should come up with a rebuilding plan by May 20, and that a citywide picture should be formed by June 20.

Nagin sought to assuage residents’ fears that the recommendations are the final word on rebuilding.

“This is a process,” he said. “This is a journey.”