Eddie J In Court

T-P:

Jordan, along with his live-in girlfriend Cherylynn Robinson, is due in court Monday for the armed robbery trial of Elton Phillips, who prosecutors say wound up at Jordan's Algiers home Oct. 11, 2007, moments after he robbed a man at gunpoint. Because Jordan was still DA at the time of the incident, the state attorney general's office has taken over prosecution duties.

Jordan and Robinson are on both the state's and the defense's witness list, because they admittedly crossed paths with Phillips the day he was booked with the robbery.

Phillips' trial is set to open in Section F of Criminal District Court, where Judge Dennis Waldron is known for running a tight docket. But trial dates are subject to change.

Road Home Program

This editorial excerpt, about the Road Home Program, says it best:

A program that lacks follow-up, is slow in processing appeals and can't resolve thousands of cases that are more than a year old has systemic problems. When legislators say they keep getting phone calls from frustrated applicants with the same complaints about the program, that reflects a systemic problem.

Unfortunately, one of those systemic problems has been the Office of Community Development, and it's surprising that Gov. Bobby Jindal has not yet made changes in leadership at OCD.

Ms. Elkins' office negotiated a weak contract with ICF that lacked benchmarks and penalties and then had to be browbeaten to add even mild penalties. Even now, the office has yet to negotiate ICF's benchmarks for the first quarter of the year or to determine whether the contractor met all of last year's requirements.

Ms. Elkins also has been a constant apologist for ICF's mishaps and has resisted some efforts to improve the program's performance and transparency. Legislative auditors began citing systemic problems last year -- from data and policy discrepancies to grants that were too low or too high. Ms. Elkins was always quick to dismiss problems or claim that they had been corrected -- even as applicants and sometimes auditors kept exposing more examples of the same issues.

Mardi Gras In The Big Easy

Today is Mardi Gras, in the Big Easy, so come on out and celebrate. You will experience nothing like this before:

Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, is the often raucous end to the pre-Lenten Carnival season. Characterized by family-friendly parades uptown and in the suburbs — and by heavy drinking and lots of near-nudity in the French Quarter — the celebration is highlighted by 12 days of parades and parties.

New Orleans' Fat Tuesday events include Pete Fountain's Half-Fast Walking Club, which starts the day, followed by the Zulu and Rex parades and the meeting of the courts of Rex and Comus Tuesday night.

Party with the revelers and spend lots of money here.

Edwards To Visit New Orleans

John Edwards returns to New Orleans today where he will deliver what the campaign bills as a "major address on poverty."

The return to the city where Edwards launched his campaign in late December 2006 is an attempt to inject his voice back into the national scene following disappointing third place finishes in New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina.

While Louisiana is not a Super Tuesday state, Edwards said that today's speech will prove his devotion to New Orleans' recovery following Hurricane Katrina and to the issue of poverty at large.

Following the speech, Edwards will volunteer with Habitat for Humanity to construct homes at the Musicians' Village, an area of the city most devastated by the hurricane in 2005.

Agency to build on lots

Kicking off what amounts to a scrimmage before a long, tough season, the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority has drafted four developers to build single- and two-family homes on 27 of the thousands of abandoned and flood-damaged lots that blanket the city's post-Katrina landscape.

NORA officials say the chief goal of their modest pilot program is to give hope to a frustrated, recovery-weary citizenry by demonstrating that the agency is up to the task of moving blighted homes and vacant lots back into commerce. |Read on|

Harris Corp. Donates to NO Habitat for Humanity

Harris Corporation, an international communications and information technology company, has donated $10,000 to the New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity to assist with the rebuilding of homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. The check was presented during a reception sponsored by Harris during the annual American Meteorological Society (AMS) conference being held January 20 through 24 in New Orleans.

Guests at the Harris reception also made voluntary donations to the effort. Harris is a leading supplier of weather systems to the Federal Aviation Administration and other customers. The company provided communications equipment and personnel to recovery efforts in the Gulf Coast Region in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina's destruction.

Happy New Year, New Orleans

I hope this year provide the city with hope and optimism. I believe the City will recover and become a great place to live. I would like to thank all of those who have not turned their backs on New Orleans. I am grateful for people like Brad Pitt who has devoted his time and money to help New Orleans rebuild.

I am also grateful for the U.S. Attorney's office who have worked diligently in cleaning out political corruption in our great city. Yes, we can rebuild; but we do need to attract businesses to the City. I believe we first must make corporations feel that they can do business, in our City, on an equal playing field if we are to succeed. Keep up the good work, Jim Letten, and I hope this is the year when more corrupt individuals are brought to justice.

New Orleans' Old Houses In The Spotlight

Rashida Ferdinand sits in front of her house in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans on Monday. The television program, "This Old House" will cover in great detail the rebuilding of her 1892 Creole shotgun-style home. The show's 10-episode series featuring New Orleans area homes is scheduled to begin airing nationally next month on PBS.
Alex Brandon: AP
------
Audiences will follow homeowner Rashida Ferdinand, 32, a fourth-generation resident of the neighborhood, as she rebuilds the home she purchased in 2004, about a year before Katrina smashed levees and inundated her home with floodwater.

As cameras rolled, her home was buzzing with construction workers hanging drywall and installing French doors.

A ceramic artist by trade, Ferdinand called finding the home "a blessing" because of its lot size, art studio out back and location near the Mississippi River. But it was the history of the neighborhood she cherished most.

"The 9th Ward was a place of pioneers, a place where people found land, built on the land and started communities, especially right here along the river," she said.

Though it's taken more than two years to rebuild her dream, Ferdinand expects to be in the house by February. She's "on the forefront of the rebuild" in the Lower 9th Ward, said This Old House host Kevin O'Connor.

New Orleans' Population Increases

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Despite slow progress in rebuilding some neighborhoods, New Orleans' population is nearing 300,000, or about 65 percent of its pre-Hurricane Katrina size, according to a new report.

The report, compiled by urban planning consultancy GCR & Associates and based on utility hookups, estimates the population at 295,450 and predicts it will surpass the 300,000 mark soon. That will put it on par with cities like Tampa, Fla., and Pittsburgh and provide a "significant indication of New Orleans' sustained viability as a major city and as an anchor for a large metropolitan area," the report says.

Housing Information as reported by the T-P

The Times Picayune reported today that the Federal Emergency Management Agency will craft a process allowing reimbursements to Road Home applicants who have already elevated their homes -- but warned that such requests face rigorous scrutiny and could be denied.

The FEMA announcement reversed the agency's earlier refusal to consider retroactive elevation payments to "pioneers" who raised their homes to limit or prevent future flood damage, even as state and federal officials haggled over whether such owners should be compensated.

State and federal officials refused to say what percentage of at least 25,000 applicants for Road Home rebuilding grants who began elevation work early might qualify for up to $30,000 in reimbursements. And there was only a vague signal as to how long it might take FEMA to iron out procedures for dispensing the money.

On another note, the Housing Authority of New Orleans agreed Wednesday to apply for $40 million in federal HOPE VI grant money to help transform two public housing developments abandoned since Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005.

HANO will have to compete with cities across the country for the sought-after grants, which were instrumental a decade ago in doing away with two of the city's most deplorably neglected public housing complexes, Desire in the 9th Ward and St. Thomas in the Lower Garden District, and replacing them with homes that resemble mixed-income neighborhoods instead of isolated barracks of poverty.

At its regular board meeting Wednesday, HANO's one-man board of commissioners, Donald Babers, approved the applications for two $20 million grants to defray the costs of turning the vacant C.J. Peete complex in Central City and St. Bernard in the 7th Ward into brand new communities.

Meanwhile, the City Council is poised today to reduce the assessments of about two-thirds of the roughly 5,300 New Orleans property owners who contested new and often drastically higher valuations unveiled by the city's seven assessors this summer.

Frilot LLC, the law firm hired by the council to handle the unprecedented volume of appeals, will recommend that the contested properties be reduced in value by an average of about 23 percent, according to records provided by the company.

The council is expected to take up the appeals in a single motion today. Individual cases will not be heard by the council, whose members said there is no reason for curious property owners to attend the meeting, scheduled for 10 a.m.

Blanco, Nagin Lobby for Louisiana Aid

From: Times Picayune

By: Bill Walsh

Gov. Kathleen Blanco is getting lots of empathy on Capitol Hill, but no firm commitments yet about whether Congress will come through with the billions of dollars needed to bail out Louisiana's "Road Home" rebuilding program.

On the first day of a two-day blitz through the nation's capital, Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said lawmakers have expressed willingness to help, but are vague on critical details such as how much Congress will spend and when the money might materialize.

Congress allocated $7.6 billion to Road Home for grants to help owners of hurricane-damaged homes repair and rebuild. But the need has turned out to be greater than expected and the money is projected to run out early next year. Blanco is seeking between $3 billion and $4 billion to cover the shortfall and permission to use $1.2 billion in hazard mitigation money for Road Home grants instead. The state also is urging Congress to waive the local share of some $7 billion in New Orleans area levee improvements.

"We've been very well-received," Blanco said after making a presentation to the House Democratic Caucus. "We're asking both parties to branch out and embrace our needs. These are critical moments for Louisiana."

Plans in flux

One reason that House leaders have been unable to give definitive answers is that their own plans are uncertain. The Democratic majority is debating whether to take up a controversial $190 billion Iraq war spending request immediately or wait until next year to consider it. The war spending bill is seen as an ideal vehicle to attach additional hurricane-recovery assistance, but a six-month delay could mean interruptions in Road Home payouts.

Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., the majority whip and designated Democratic vote counter in the House, was encouraging about the state's chances of getting some bailout, but provided few details about how or when it would happen.

"If you look at what (the Democratic leadership has) done with this, I think that's a good indication of what we'll do in the future," Clyburn said.

The Louisiana group, which also includes New Orleans Recovery Chief Ed Blakely, is expected to go to the White House today to meet with President Bush's Recovery Coordinator Donald Powell and Al Hubbard, the domestic economic policy adviser, as well as with Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. The Bush administration has been close-mouthed about the state's request.

Through Oct. 8, Road Home had paid out grants averaging $69,887 to about 60,000 applicants. However, nearly 185,000 had sought financing by the July 30 deadline.

f the war spending bill gets delayed, Congress could attach Louisiana's request to any number of routine government spending bills that are still pending in Congress and expected to pass by year's end. If Congress isn't willing to allocate the full amount, Louisiana officials estimate that $2 billion in "bridge financing" would probably be enough to carry the Road Home program through March.

"The challenge is the timing of the funding and what (legislative) instrument they will use," Nagin said.

Seeking a united front

Blanco and Nagin stressed the need for presenting a united front as Louisiana makes its pitch for more money to Congress. But, there were signs of tension Tuesday in the delegation.

Shortly after a morning meeting with Rep. Charles Boustany, R-Lafayette, the second-term congressman urged Blanco to give Congress "an honest and fair assessment" of the needs of the state. Boustany also noted that this was the first time Blanco had met privately with him since the 2005 hurricanes.

"We need to make this a team effort," Boustany said in a brief interview.

Boustany said Blanco must figure out precisely how much the state needs. With applications still being processed, Blanco estimated Tuesday that it will be between $3.3 billion and "no more than $3.7 billion" and Nagin said it would be between $3.2 billion and $3.9 billion.

"It's getting harder and harder to get members to coalesce around something like this. They need to come up with a figure and make a case for how they derived that figure," Boustany said.

Blanco said she was surprised at the criticism. "We had a very positive meeting with him," Blanco said.

There has been some bad blood between the two since Blanco pointedly criticized Boustany several weeks ago for his vote against a $35 billion expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Boustany said he supports more money for SCHIP but wants regulations tightened so that it only covers children, not adults.

Signs of Recovery in New Orleans

The Times Picayune reported, this morning, the following signs of recovery in New Orleans. I did find it refreshing to read this article since there is usually a lot of negative press regarding the city.

Evidence of recovery can be seen all over the metro New Orleans area. Those signs brighten our mood and show that we are on the mend. We'll be watching for these harbingers of rebirth and taking note of some of them every week.


-- The Lower 9th Ward, which lost its public library in Katrina, has a new library branch, located in the Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School for Science and Technology. The library has received sizable donations of books, computers and money to rebuild its collection.

-- Lakeview neutral grounds are being brought back to life by residents and hundreds of volunteers who've tackled numerous replanting projects. Al Petrie and Glenn Stoudt with the Lakeview Civic Improvement Association and Connie Uddo, director of the homecoming center for St. Paul's Episcopal Church, have been coordinating the ongoing work.

-- The St. Thomas Community Health Center has opened a coffee shop and community meeting rooms on lower Magazine Street to provide a gathering place for people. Tambourine and Fan, the Treme-based group that teaches young people entrepreneurship, is running the coffee shop.

-- The New Orleans Police 5th District, one of the last district stations still housed in trailers, is getting a new home at the former Universal Furniture Store on St. Claude Avenue, according to the Police Association of New Orleans. Construction, which PANO says will take about a month, will begin shortly.

-- Nursery-rhyme mosaics that deck the walkway of Edward Hynes Elementary School won't be destroyed in the building's demolition. Neighbors and former students of the Lakeview school persuaded the Orleans Parish School Board to save them, and they'll be featured at the new Hynes school.

-- Enthusiastic crowds turned out for Art for Arts' Sake, particularly on Magazine Street.

-- Tulane University has enrolled 215 undergraduate transfer students for the fall semester, a university record.

-- Slidell's First United Methodist Church has reopened its Pumpkin Patch for the first time since Hurricane Katrina.

Lower 9th. Ward Project to build 150 Homes

"In a novel and ambitious effort to return New Orleans homeowners to their own neighborhood, an international consortium of architects led by film star Brad Pitt announced plans Wednesday to develop at least 150 storm-safe, environmentally sound houses in the section of the Lower 9th Ward reduced to rubble by a massive levee breach.

Working lot by lot instead of amassing huge development tracts, the project, dubbed Make It Right, will take applications from homeowners who want to rebuild their own properties with model homes now being designed, said Virginia Miller, a New Orleans spokeswoman for the project.

"Make It Right isn't buying big parcels of land," she said. "We don't have an interest in being a developer. We have an interest in building houses for people."
unlike other plans, including recovery director Ed Blakely's $1.1 billion blueprint to rebuild the city starting in 17 target zones, Make It Right is not designed around a traditional commercial center, nor does it aim to expand an area already beginning to thrive.

Instead, it focuses squarely on a neighborhood that has become an icon of New Orleans' destruction: the blocks just east of where a powerful storm surge crashed through the Industrial Canal floodwall during Hurricane Katrina, obliterating dozens of homes and reducing hundreds more to piles of splintered rubbish.

Miller said the project area will extend across the 11 blocks between North Claiborne Avenue and the Florida Avenue Canal, and several blocks to the east, though precisely how far is in flux.

Loan program

With the average home expected to cost between $100,000 and $174,000, planners anticipate most homeowners will be able to contribute some cash for construction but that most will fall about $70,000 short of paying off their new homes, according to a program dossier.

As a result, Make It Right plans to offer forgivable gap loans of as much as $100,000, with the caveat that applicants must have owned a home or lot in the Lower 9th Ward before Katrina. No homeowners who participate in the program will pay more than 30 percent of their gross monthly income on house payments, documents show.

Homeowners will be expected to contribute money from insurance proceeds, savings and Road Home grants, and to investigate their options in the traditional mortgage market. But Miller said a large loan reserve will be available, financed largely by contributions of $5 million each from Pitt and Steve Bing, a film producer and philanthropist who inherited his family's real estate fortune." |Read more|

Gubernatorial Candidate, John Georges Believes Gambling Can Bring Jobs To Louisiana

"That image of high aspiration is one the New Orleans entrepreneur wants to project in his campaign for governor this fall."

"Georges says he wants to do for Louisiana what he has done for myriad business ventures: Create better management systems for more efficiency, invest in modernization and hire leaders "who will know how to merge and consolidate."

"He has branched out with real estate ventures and a variety of investments, including the New Orleans Brass minor-league hockey team. The long and diverse list of big-name partners with the Brass included Ray Nagin before he became mayor of New Orleans, Republican Party leader and shipbuilder Boysie Bollinger and two close associates of former Mayor Marc Morial: Roy Rodney and Stan "Pampy" Barre. The team played for several years until the NBA's Hornets came to town and supplanted the Brass' lease at the New Orleans Arena." Read more

Homeowner Holds Burglary Suspect At Gunpoint

"For David Holbrook of Mandeville, arming himself and capturing a thief who recently attempted to burglarize his house not only protected his family and their belongings, but may have finally put away a teenager who has stockpiled criminal charges over the past two years.

The drama began to unfold Aug. 26 at about 5:15 a.m., when Alana Holbrook awoke to find a man outside the doorway of the master bedroom at their home on the 100 block of Cindy Lou Place in the Old Golden Shores neighborhood. After seeing her wake up, the man fled downstairs as she woke her husband, David Holbrook.

As his wife called the police, Holbrook armed himself with a loaded .45-caliber Ruger pistol and began searching for the intruder, later identified by police as Matthew Weaver, 19, who lives just three blocks away at 212 Fountain St.

Holbrook didn't find the suspect inside or outside the house, but discovered the burglar had stolen a laptop computer, a computer game system and money from the purses of his wife and two daughters, ages 12 and 16.

Returning outside, Holbrook spotted the suspect coming from the side yard, heading across the street.

Holbrook ran toward Weaver, gun aimed, and ordered him to the ground. Weaver complied, and Holbrook held him there for several minutes until police arrived.

After arresting him, officers recovered the stolen goods, which had been stashed in the bushes across the street. The suspect also had money stolen from other locations, according to the Mandeville Police Department.

Weaver was taken to the parish jail in Covington and booked with burglary of an inhabited dwelling.

From October 2005 to August 2007, Weaver accumulated 31 criminal charges involving nine separate incidents, court records show. The charges are mostly burglaries and theft, but also include a misdemeanor drug charge and a second-degree battery charge from January 2007.

Weaver is set to go to court Monday for the battery case, and the recent burglary arrest will not affect those proceedings, said Lt. Tommy Breazeale, spokesman for the Mandeville Police Department."


*Note: Arming yourself is another solution to trying to prevent home burglaries. It may also be necessary in order to save your life.