December 4, 2006
For Immediate Release

CBNO/MAC Cites Accomplishments of Community Congress II

When more than 2500 New Orleanians gathered in person and via electronic hook-up on December 2, 2006 as part of the Unified New Orleans Plan (UNOP) process, it represented the culmination of a vision first articulated by CBNO/MAC more than one year earlier.

Community Congress II, as the event was dubbed by the UNOP planners, allowed citizens both home in New Orleans and still displaced around the country to set recovery priorities.  These citizen priorities (see below) are intended to guide the spending of federal funds already committed to New Orleans, as well as to help attract additional monies from both government and non-government sources.

The event was produced by AmericaSpeaks, a national organization based in Washington, DC.  AmericaSpeaks has produced similar events around the country – including a 5000-person meeting in New York City after September 11 – but had never staged a conference involving so many discrete locations.  In addition to the New Orleans gathering at the Convention Center, satellite meetings took place in Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Dallas, and Houston.  16 additional cities from Seattle to Jacksonville to New York were linked via computer hook-up.

New Orleans citizens in all cities were able to discuss key recovery issues, respond to solutions presented by the planning teams, pose their own solutions and state their own priorities, then vote on their top choices.  Across the board, people preferred their own solutions to those initially presented by the planners.

CBNO/MAC had initially proposed such a conference in November 2005.  AmericaSpeaks came to New Orleans at that time to produce a recovery conference sponsored by Governor Kathleen Blanco, and CBNO/MAC President Keith Twitchell helped staff the event.

“I was familiar with the AmericaSpeaks approach and technology from a public participation conference we attended,” recalled Mr. Twitchell, “but seeing it in live action was even more impressive.  Even back then, we realized that a large number of our citizens were going to remain displaced for a long time, but that they still needed to have the opportunity to participate in the rebuilding of our city.”

Less than two hours after the Governor’s conference had ended, CBNO/MAC began discussions with AmericaSpeaks about collaborating on a much broader planning meeting.  “As soon as I confirmed that they had the capability of holding simultaneous meetings in multiple cities, with live, real-time interaction among participants in each place, I knew we had to make this happen,” Mr. Twitchell stated.  “We worked with AmericaSpeaks on many different proposals, and advocated constantly for using this approach to inform the planning process with as many citizen voices as possible.”

Joining displaced citizens to the UNOP process was perhaps the most important achievement of Community Congress II.  “CBNO/MAC has been advocating for these people to have a voice in the New Orleans recovery all year long,” observed CBNO/MAC Co-Chair Kim Boyle.  “Having engaged them for this conversation, the bar has now been raised, and all future planning simply must include their voices.”

Another important accomplishment of Community Congress II was its success in bringing together an accurate demographic representation of pre-Katrina New Orleans.  CBNO/MAC was a key partner in the outreach effort that drew the full New Orleans diversity to the meeting.  Racial demographics at CC II were almost identical to those of the city pre-storm, and a full 25% of the participants fell into the lowest income category.  “Bringing out people from the low end of the economic strata is always the most difficult challenge for these kinds of events,” commented Theo Brown, a Senior Associate with AmericaSpeaks, “and the fact that so many low income folks participated is a win for New Orleans and shows the strong effort made by the outreach team to include all groups of citizens.”

Topics discussed by the Citizens at Community Congress II included education, housing, neighborhoods, infrastructure, health care, and city services, among others.  Priorities were selected by voting among citizens in all locations at the end of each discussion period, and at the end of the day, 16 overall priorities were selected.  These are listed below.  It is interesting to note that of these 16 priorities, only two were among those originally proposed by the UNOP planning teams, while the rest represent ideas that bubbled up from citizens during their discussions.

Final Community Conversation II Priorities

1. Effective Category 5 levees have to be built faster, regardless of what we homeowners do – more pumping stations, look to the Dutch

2. Improve school quality – better paid teachers, improved admin. and facilities

3. Health Care – utilize mobile units and temporary sites with joint services – ensure equal access until population warrants permanent facilities

4. Apply holistic approach – wetlands rebuilding and conservation are part of flood protection

5. Create homeownership opportunities for low-income and public housing residents, such as mixed-income development. “We reject any option that would concentrate poverty.”

6. Make schools 24/7 community centers in neighborhoods where people live; physically rebuild community around schools

7. Concentrate available infrastructure funds in areas of the city with the greatest need

8. Provide housing priority for evacuees so we can come back

9. Homeowners make their own rebuilding decisions with the best available information.

10. Place main stations where people are, and satellite/mobile stations in low population areas

11. Provide incentives for homeowners to buy blighted property in their neighborhoods quickly & easily

12. Focus on making quality of infrastructure equal across city – don’t worry about equal spending

13. Restructure criminal justice system, e.g. access, response and coverage “adjust system before brick and mortar”

14. Develop a plan to increase services as population grows

15. Connect public housing with job training and support services.

16. Get additional infrastructure funds from the business community (casinos, etc.)