ArT Home New Orleans Needs Your Help

Hey Guys-

As you may know, ArT Home New Orleans begins this weekend. Hope you have seen the great insert on ArT Home New Orleans in the current issue of Gambit. We are starting to get a nice stream of calls, and more media is coming this week and next. But we really want to make sure this is a success as a precursor to other marketing and development efforts, and to make sure the artists and homeowners have a good experience. So please help us get the word out.

WE HAVE VOLUNTEERS/DOCENTS FROM OTHER ORGANIZATIONS, BUT WE STILL NEED MORE HELPING HANDS TO MAKE THIS EVENT A TRUE SUCCESS. PLEASE CALL US TOMORROW IF YOU ARE AVAILABLE TO DONATE YOUR TIME THIS WEEKEND, OR NEXT. ALL VOLUNTEERS/DOCENTS WILL RECEIVE THIS ART HOME NEW ORLEANS SILKSCREEN POSTER IN EXCHANGE FOR THEIR HELP.

PLEASE BE SURE TO CHECK OUT THE LIST OF HOMES IN THIS WEEK'S GAMBIT TO SEE IF THERE IS A HOME OR STUDIO YOU WOULD PREFER TO HELP.

Here also are some ways you can help us get the word further out:

Please tell all of your friends, associates, family, artists, neighbors....EVERYONE about ArT Home New Orleans, taking place this weekend (December 4-5th) and next weekend (December 11-12th!)

Please post this on Twitter, Facebook, and any other social media outlet that you normally do.

If you have any media pals, please try to get some additional coverage in any way you can.

Please consider helping us get signs around to participating homes and studios...maybe in your part of town.

THANKS ALL, SEE YOU SOON AND HOPE YOU ALL ENJOY IT AS MUCH AS

WE HOPE ALL OUR VISITORS WILL TOO.

JEANNE, KATHERINE AND LAUREN, 504.218.4807

Health clinic at L.B. Landry High School

The Louisiana State University System has opened a full-service health clinic at the new L.B. Landry High School in Algiers.

The clinic has two waiting rooms. One will process students and other children; the other is for adults. Behavioral health services will be offered for all ages.

Children and students will be served by a pediatrician and a school nurse. The adult services staff will include an internist, two family medicine practioners and one family nurse practioner, with at least two of those professionals on staff daily. The behavioral health services will include a social worker with counseling credentials who will offer initial assessment and make referrals to a staff psychiatrist who will work by appointment.

Initial hours will run from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.

The L.B. Landry clinic will accept all forms of insurance. It will accept patients regardless of their ability to pay. Vis

Reader responds to city's property tax increase

Reader comment: "Property taxes need to be reassessed fairly across the board. Currently, there are vast discrepancies between the average citizen and those property owners that are connected. Hands get greased and property tax for the wealthy if often half of what the property is worth. Until the practice of unfair and illegal assessments are investigated, we do not need to think about an across the board increase. We already pay our fair share."

New Orleans City Council Meeting Notes for December 2, 2010

New Orleans City Council approved the operating and capital budgets for 2011
Scales back proposal, yet property tax and sanitation fees will increase next year to help finance city government

• Council members present: Council President Arnie Fielkow, Stacy Head, Jackie Clarkson, Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, Jon Johnson, Susan Guidry, Kristin Gisleson-Palmer.
• Only three people spoke during public hearing regarding budget at 10am. Residents were able to air their opinions on a proposal to raise property tax rates in the city.
• Landrieu's called to roll forward tax millage to an estimated $23 million toward balancing the 2011 budget.
• Fielkow: Council cut will $4 million from the mayor’s budget.
• Council added funding for public defender’s office, animal control and better city planning Fielkow: Landrieu called the budget “the moral document”; three weeks of budget hearings and two weeks extension; “lays a foundation to move the city into 2011 and into years to come,” City Council has received the mayor’s budget with “favorable consideration;” regarding the deficit: “a short fall of this magnitude cannot happen again.” Budget is “a living document” that will be revised throughout the year; sewage plan must be put in place before throwing out money on the problem---“It’s the belief that a full comprehensive plan must be created before throwing money at the problem."
• Cynthia Hedge-Morrell: roll forward of the general approval of a 6.74 mills property-tax increase; "don’t support half measures in these times---this amendment in the budget to increase millage is not reasonable."
• Jackie Clarkston: "We had to make cuts and find more revenue, don’t like property taxes going up, but we had to bite the bullet; didn’t want to cut services, we could not find vital cuts without cutting services so accepted 2 mill increase---“this was our best compromise.”
• Stacy Head: Budget is too heavy of a burden on such a few property taxes; relying on property taxes and increases is not going to work; city has not collected sales taxes and property taxes as required according to recent city assessments; didn’t like the end result of this measure but will comment thoroughly later.
• Palmer: We tried to give the mayor everything he wanted and more.
• Jon Johnson: Will vote for this ordinance and we will have an opportunity to come back in years to come; hopefully we will not get ourselves in the same predicament as the former administration and move to go forward in the best interest of this city; council: next year is a property tax assessment year and we will roll back our millage more; look for revenues elsewhere.
• Fielkow: Mayor and Council has a great partnership.
• The council agreed to reduced the proposed millage increase by two mills, 25 percent, but it still raises taxes.
• Hedge-Morell the only one to vote against 6.74 mills property tax increase.
• Fielkow indicated they will further increase the sanitation fess residents will pay.
• Stacy Head request reports on off budget funding and spending from mayor’s office.
• Capital budget passes unanimously.
• City Council discussed an ordinance to deposit first 3.75 million of sales of blighted properties into the general fund.
• City Council approves property-tax increase for 2011 2 mills short of 8.74 mills that Mayor Landrieu sought.
• Johnson disputes earmarked monies for blight ---suggest it should be added to the general fund from Sheriff’s office---wants the monies monitored very closely for blight that was added to the general fund; resources coming out for blight should go toward neighborhood revitalization.
• Ordinance for blight amendment passes unanimously.
• Budget that will be passed on December 2, 2010 was for $4.80 million.
• Fielkow: Lowered the budget by $1.5 million.
• Kopplin: I can’t tell you exactly what the sanitation fee needs to be.
• Johnson: How do we know how to properly fund sanitation contracts when they aren’t in place?
• Fielkow: Budget will fund virtually all mayoral initiatives despite reduction tax proposal; Johnson: “I will vote for the amended tax increase because this is our first year. We will have opportunity to revisit.
• Head: Afraid tax increase will hurt small business. “ This is not the ultimate result I hoped for, but it is a compromise."
• Hedge-Morrell: Council’s reduction of proposed tax increase is nickel and diming. Prefers full millage increase will vote against the amendment.
• N.O. City Council proposing no new tax revenue for sewerage & water board.
• Mayor's office says the council’s intention to hike trash fee from $12 a month to $22 may not be enough.
• Fielkow continues public response to budget amendments.
• Richard’s Disposal and Metro—citizen speaking on behalf of the contractors: "You can‘t compare one contractor’s expenses with another contractor’s expenses; Mr. Richard has decided to come down on his price like Metro. Evidently, the council is not giving the same opportunity to Richards as with Metro; asking the Council to reconsider and provide the funds for his contract and the monies he invested in his contract to help clean up the city of New Orleans.
• Representative from the local NAACP chapter read a letter: Proposing for Richard’s Disposal to adopt a budget to maintain its current contract from the City of New Orleans with Richards---to prevent the city from becoming involved in a costly legal battle.
• Sanitation ordinance to increase from $12 to $20 unanimously approved.

NPN comments on proposed tax increase

Public gets one chance to talk about proposed tax increase

By Ariella Cohen, The Lens staff writer

For the first time since Mayor Mitch Landrieu proposed raising property taxes to balance the city’s 2011 budget, the tax-paying public on Wednesday will have a chance to weigh in on the issue. This first and only public hearing will be held just hours before the City Council is required by the City Charter to vote into law a roughly $485 million budget.

The public hearing on the proposed millage increase will begin Wednesday at 10 a.m. and conclude in time for the City Council to continue with its regular monthly meeting, a meeting that tomorrow will be dedicated to last-minute wrangling over departmental budgets and of course, the controversial tax increase.

Landrieu has proposed increasing the city’s property tax rate to the maximum approved by voters: a jump of 8.74 mills that amounts to a tax increase of about 7 percent. For the owner of a $150,000 home, the increase would mean paying an additional $75 in taxes per year. The owner of a $500,000 home would pay an additional $381 in taxes.

The millage increase is expected to raise $23 million. Each mill generates about $2.6 million, meaning that for every $2.6 million cut from the city or raised by alternate means, the council can reduce the property tax increase by a mill, which is equal to $1 in tax for every $1,000 of a home’s taxable assessed value, or $10,000 in real value.

Observers say that it is unlikely that many residents will attend tomorrow’s public hearing, given that it is during working hours and was not widely advertised. Prior council budget hearings attracted few observers for similar reasons. The Lens was the only media outlet to attend every day of hearings over the monthlong process.

“People want to weigh in because eventually the money is going to come out of their pocket, but the process makes it difficult,” said Aretha Frison, a representative of the Neighborhood Partnership Network, a coalition of neighborhood leaders and city residents. The organization advocates for a more open and transparent budget process through membership in the New Orleans Coalition on Open Governance. The coalition, to which The Len also belongs, asked the council to release its version of the budget last week so the public would have a chance to review the document before a vote. That obviously did not happen.

Frison said that while she hopes people come out tomorrow, she fears that the general public does not understand what is at stake.

“If I go to the store and someone helps me select an item, I know what it is and what it’ll cost,” she said. “With this budget, it’s like they want to sell us something but they wont tell us what it is.”