Thread: You guys in New York can't get a hole in the ground fixed, and it's five years later.

Nagin Takes Swipe at New York
New Orleans Mayor Faults Post-9/11 Rebuilding

NEW YORK (Aug. 25) - New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin criticized efforts to redevelop the World Trade Center site when confronted in a television interview about delays in rebuilding his city after Hurricane Katrina.

During the "60 minutes" interview, a correspondent pointed out flood-damaged cars still on the streets of New Orleans' devastated Ninth Ward. Nagin replied, "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 chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the agency created to oversee the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site and downtown Manhattan, said that 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 under construction.

"We understand how difficult rebuilding a city after such destruction can be," chairman Kevin Rampe said in a statement.

Nagin, known for his blunt style, is not the first to compare the two cities. New Orleans residents frequently complain that the federal government's response after Katrina has been far more sluggish than it was after the Sept. 11 attacks.

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.

Compiled from reports by the Associated Press and CBS


8/24/2006 21:52:33


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Way to show those New Yorkers who is the boss!!!!!!!

Pimped!!!!

Very helpful comments...