Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space

"A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic." [Katz, EPA] This blog focuses on place and placemaking and all that makes it work--historic preservation, urban design, transportation, asset-based community development, arts & cultural development, commercial district revitalization, tourism & destination development, and quality of life advocacy--along with doses of civic engagement and good governance watchdogging.

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Mayor: New Orleans must lay off 3,000 workers

1.130329352_F_tnFrom www.cafepress.com. All proceeds go to disaster relief.

Ryan Velasco alerts us to this Associated Press story via MSNBC -- "Mayor: New Orleans must lay off 3,000 workers: City can't afford employees following Katrina, Nagin says."

From the article:

I wish I didn't have to do this. I wish we had the money, the resources to keep these people,” Nagin said. “The problem we have is we have no revenue streams.” Nagin described the layoffs as “pretty permanent” and said that the city will work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to contact municipal employees who fled the city in the aftermath of Katrina, which struck about a month ago. The mayor said the move will save about $5 million to $8 million of the city's monthly payroll of $20 million. The layoffs will take place over the next two weeks. [This is a total of $60 million to $96 million/year.]

In Louisiana's Looters, the Washington Post editorialized against what its editorial board saw as unseemly greed in seeking upwards of $250 billion for reconstruction, in addition to monies already earmarked. (cf. Senator Mary Landrieu's response, Why Louisiana Matters)

In any event, it seems like some of this great amount of money going to the Gulf Coast could be programmed to assist municipalities in retaining employees.

1.051004_trolley_hmed_2p.hmediumAre transit or planning department employees deemed essential? (with nods to Dan Malouf and Ryan Velasco...) AP photo by Kevork Djansezian.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home