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Tonya
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Username: Tonya
Post Number: 428
Registered: 07-2006
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, August 24, 2006 - 07:59 pm: | 
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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/24/60minutes/main1933092.shtml
(CBS) Confronted by accusations that he’s taking too long to clean up his city after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin defended himself by remarking on New York City’s failure to rebuild Ground Zero.
Nagin made the remarks in an interview conducted by CBS News National Correspondent Byron Pitts which will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, Aug. 27, at 7 p.m. EDT.
On a tour of the decimated Ninth Ward, Nagin tells Pitts the city has removed most of the debris from public property and it’s mainly private land that’s still affected – areas that can’t be cleaned without the owners' permission. But when Pitts points to flood-damaged cars in the street and a house washed partially into the street, the mayor shoots back. "That’s alright. You guys in New York can’t get a hole in the ground fixed and it’s five years later. So let’s be fair."
Nagin is confident New Orleans will be whole again and will even be able to withstand another hurricane of Katrina strength, pointing out that taller and stronger levees are being built. It will take time.
"We’re into a five-to-seven-year build cycle … . At the end of the day, I see the city being totally rebuilt. I see us eliminating blight, still being culturally unique," Nagin says.
One example of new development Nagin points to is a 68-story Trump Towers condominium complex, a project that makes some critics wary that New Orleans will lose the heritage that made it unique.
"I think you are looking at basically a town that will be a playground for the rich for the next 40 years," Leonard Moore, a professor of African-American history at Louisiana State University, tells Pitts. "I look at the post-Katrina piece as a game of musical chairs….Once the music gets turned off, the white folks have a place to sit down, a place to sleep, a place for their children to go to school. We’re going back to a trailer."
Nagin says he is looking out for the poor, mostly black, residents who are dispersed all over the country, some of whom are waiting to return to the city.
"What I do have a problem with is some entrenched interests that are looking and salivating over certain sections of the city," Nagin says.
The mayor says these interests want him to keep those poor people from coming back so they can get rich developing the land.
"I don’t think that’s right," Nagin says.
But before any rebuilding can take place, the clean-up and restoration of the city’s infrastructure must be complete and it will be Mayor Nagin, recently re-elected, who leads the efforts.
"Should things have happened quicker? Yes. But everyone has their own style of leadership, and right now our political leader, our political father is Ray Nagin," says Oliver Thomas, New Orleans City Council president.
"So for the next four years, we’re going to sink or swim with him," Thomas tells Pitts.
©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 429
Registered: 07-2006
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, August 24, 2006 - 08:01 pm: |
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http://www.wnbc.com/news/9734218/detail.html
wnbc.com
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin
New Orleans Mayor Takes Shot At NYC
POSTED: 6:46 pm EDT August 24, 2006
UPDATED: 7:29 pm EDT August 24, 2006
NEW YORK -- New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, confronted with accusations he's taking too long to rebuild his city after Hurricane Katrina, takes a swipe at New York's redevelopment of the World Trade Center site on a television news show.
Nagin, weaving through the wreckage in the devastated Ninth Ward neighborhood, claimed much of the debris was removed from public property, but when a "60 Minutes" correspondent pointed out flood-damaged cars on the streets, Nagin shot back, "You guys in New York can't get a hole in the ground fixed, and it's five years later. So let's be fair," according to CBS.
The program is scheduled to air Sunday night; text and a video clip from the Nagin piece were posted on CBS' Web site Thursday.
The New Orleans mayor is known for his blunt, unpolished style, which has been the source of local popularity and numerous gaffes since last year's storm. And he's not the first to compare the two cities; New Orleans residents frequently complain that the response of the federal government to the needs of the Gulf Coast has been far more sluggish than it was after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Still, his comment rankled some New Yorkers.
The chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the agency created to oversee the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site and downtown Manhattan, pointed out that New York sent firefighters, police officers and engineers to New Orleans to help in the days following the hurricane.
"We understand how difficult rebuilding a city after such destruction can be," the chairman, Kevin Rampe, said in a statement.
Rampe said "tremendous progress" has been made in lower Manhattan, with the Freedom Tower, a transportation hub and a memorial to the nearly 3,000 attack victims currently under construction. Work on the tower and the memorial is in the preliminary stages, and the construction is going on 70 feet below street level.
The agency is set to go out of business this fall following the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attack because it has completed its mission, Rampe said.
A spokesman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg said lower Manhattan was thriving.
"Record numbers of people live downtown, and new cultural attractions are making the area a vibrant, 24-hour-a-day community," Stu Loeser said. "We wish the same bright future for New Orleans and continue to stand ready to provide any help we can, just as we did in the immediate aftermath of Katrina."
Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005, and levee breaches made a soup bowl out of New Orleans, wiped away towns and caused at least 1,321 deaths in and around the area.
The subsequent rebuilding in New Orleans has been marred by scandal and stalled by bureaucracy. Audits found that the federal government wasted millions of dollars in the contracts it issued in the days after the hurricane struck.
Wrangling among Nagin and members of the City Council over which areas of the city should be given resources to rebuild stalled the adoption of a unified redevelopment plan, leaving homeowners in many wrecked neighborhoods in limbo, unable to plan for the future.
An estimated 22 million tons of construction and demolition debris were created by Katrina. By comparison, Louisiana's largest landfill handled only 1 million tons of debris in an average year. An estimated 400 other facilities statewide were opened to handle the enormous amount of debris created by the storm and floodwaters.
© 2006 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
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