People Get Ready

I’ve been waiting to comment on Ray Nagin’s latest high-gloss publicity stunt until I had an opportunity to crunch the numbers. The “Recovery in Progress” booklets (pdf) distributed in June 2008 contain “an educational graphic that depicts the process behind the progress” of the recovery, along with a basic project worksheet containing 293 planned projects. The publication is apparently part of Ray Nagin’s attempt to begin “public outreach on recovery.”

While outreach is a laudable endeavor, at nearly three years into the recovery, it seems a little late in the process to be thinking about communicating what the hell the mayor’s office is doing.

Moreover, that communication strategy, at best, falls short of an honest assessment of where things stand. At worst, it’s a costly waste of recovery money to communicate information that could be handled better in other ways.

The first thing one notices is how few of the 293 projects undertaken by Ed Blakely’s Office of Recovery are actually complete. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that the expensive catalog of projects has no executive summary detailing the embarrassing lack of “cranes on the skyline.”

The second thing one discovers is that there’s no tabulation of how far into the planning process the projects are, how much money they’re anticipated to cost, where the money is coming from, or what the process is for awarding projects to contractors.

Readers are told they can “track our progress” at cityofno.com/recovery, but while the map and query interface there looks nice, it doesn’t provide any additional useful information.

In short, this looks like just another effort by Ray Nagin to put a new shine on his sh** for leadership.

On the other hand, we’re reminded on the cover that we can still “Rethink. Renew. Revive.” I think that starts in 2010 when we can elect a new mayor.

Here are the “Project Lifecycle Definitions”:

By my count, nearly three years after Hurricane Katrina, just 5 projects are complete — 2 percent of the total 293 projects — and only 32 projects have moved beyond the design phase into construction — 11 percent of the total.

More closely examining the types of projects, 184 of them — fully 62 percent — are street improvement projects. The vast majority of these are repaving projects. Others are more significant bridge rebuilding or complete street repair projects. Many are beautification projects. This is not in any way to de-emphasize the vital importance or cost of fixing the subsiding, wavy, pothole-ridden streets of New Orleans, or the importance of cleaning up and beautifying vital corridors of the city. It’s merely to question what the process was for prioritizing, counting, and allocating money to projects, and to ask what may have been left out. But these obvious details are suspiciously omitted from the mayor’s PR initiative.

Another glaring fact which emerges from studying the booklet, is that nearly three years after the federal flood, vital criminal justice facilities remain on the drawing board, long after these were identified as critical to bringing back a safe city — what everyone agrees is a precursor to a robust recovery. Most notably, the crime lab, property and evidence room, and third, fifth and seventh district police stations, remain stalled in planning phases. These should have been restored to full functionality long ago. Obviously, these offices continue to serve their duties out of temporary facilities, but they should all be operating out of permanent buildings by now.

Here’s my own tabulation of project progress:

Here’s something New Orleanians would be forgiven for not knowing about the mayor’s recovery communication strategy. “Our Recovery” czar is providing daily updates on the recovery — at least that’s what he told a group at a lecture in Sydney, Australia on April 5th last year:

Conscious of the ongoing distress felt by local residents, Dr Blakely gives daily media interviews to reassure people that New Orleans will recover and that local government remains deeply committed to rebuilding the city.

You’ll have to excuse the doctor if you haven’t seen much of him lately. You see, he keeps a pretty busy lecture circuit. He was recently at another lecture in Ann Arbor, Michigan, telling planning students up there what a miraculous job he’s doing.

Too bad those attractive recovery signs that have appeared all over town weren’t available yet for his presentation. I’m sure Dr. Blakely would have really generated some “oohs” and “aahs” with those beautimous signs of progress signifying nothing.

I hope Ed Blakely reads this, because I think I’ve discovered what’s really holding up the recovery. It’s this guy. He’s pictured in a number of the frames depicting project phases, each time doing nothing more than holding a cup with his arms folded.

If we could replace this one weak link in the recovery, I’m sure things would really start rocketing forward.