Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Q ninety three is your boy wild Wayne coming at
you man.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
I hope y'all getting ready for an amazing weekend and
every last.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Friday of the month, we will go on air with
the Mayor.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
A great opportunity for the Mayor Helena Moreno to talk
about some of the initiatives and some of the things
that are happening around the city. We have such a
great base of fans that listen to Q ninety three.
This is a great kind of wit to get that
information across the people. And drum roll, please, we have
Mayor Helena Moreno in studio.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
How are you? I'm great? How are you? I am
good man? You're upbeat. You're upbeat Friday all the time,
That's right.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Are you ready for like this Lynchen weekend? And Good
Friday next week and all.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Of that's all that.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
It's Palm Sunday.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I'll be at church, you know. Yeah, ls, you ladies
gonna kick butt tonight. I'm excited.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
You know, you got the TV on here and I'm
seeing all the Sweet sixteen drama. But I think I
think LSU is gonna be real good tonight. I'm excited. Yeah,
I think they got nine o'clock. That's right, nine o'clock tonight.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
So there's always good times in New Orleans.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
We are a very spirited city, obviously, but there's also things.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Going on, some good, some bad, and now they are
squarely in front of you.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
We talked about these things for many years, going back
to WDSU days when you're up at baton rouge and
city council.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
But now you're the mayor, So I got some questions
for you. Let's do it because we all air with
the mayor.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
When you first officially went into office, one of the
first initiatives you jumped.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
On was getting lights, oh yeah, to work.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
For so long, they were hazardous areas that seemed pretty dark,
and it seemed like it should have been an easy fix,
but seemed like it had gone neglected for a very
long time.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
So how did you make it happen so quickly? Well,
I'll say this.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
You know.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
The main thing I just always kept hearing and I
experienced myself just obviously living here, is that just the
basic services were so off. So it's everything from lights
don't work, sidewalks are broken, streets are messed up, and
that right there just just totally dampens the morale of
(02:09):
the entire city. And so I knew that as soon
as I took office, I had to quickly start working
on these issues and fixing these problems to really improve
our quality of life. So the light piece, I hired
Steve Nelson, who is just an amazing infrastructure guy. Okay,
So I hired him to beat the deputy CEO of infrastructure,
(02:32):
and I told him, I'm like, Steve, come up with
a plan to get these lights working, like, figure it out.
And so one of the things that he first did
as he was getting ready to take the job is
he met with the DA's office, and the DA's office
had mapped out our entire city and found key areas
where improved lighting would also have a public safety benefit.
(02:55):
So Steve said, instead of just looking at the three
to one one list and going on to the next
after the next, you may be fixing a light that's like,
that's not really like impacting a lot of people, right,
So instead he started to really shift on where are
repairs that we can make and have the most impact.
So within my second day in office, he was already
(03:16):
like turning on the lights. So then we knew that
we wanted to have an even bigger impact and just
start just like sweeping the whole city and just turning
the lights back on. But we needed money, and as
you know, I've got a little bit of a cash
crisis here, a little bit, right. So that's when, you know,
sometimes God brings you these things into your mind at
the at the in the middle of the night and
(03:36):
at three in the morning. Literally one night, I was like,
wait a second. A while back, when we had a
settlement with Energy over the whole paid actor scandal, oh yeah, yeah,
we find them five million dollars and we didn't use
the whole amount of money yet on other initiatives, right,
And so there there was still two point eight million
(03:56):
dollars left over in that settlement fund. And so I
called the members of the city council. I'm like, can
we use this? Are you okay with using this two
point eight million dollars to just start flipping on lights
across the city? They were like absolutely, because that's all
the complaints that they get.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
You know, I think that is a much smarter way
the approach you guys adopted, because you easily could have
just did the three to one one thing.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
It just went after any lights.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
But impactful lights, lights that maybe need to be on
so maybe it's not criminal activity going on in those
areas or has it.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Is for driving totally. No, that's a much smarter approach.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
So once we got the two point eight million dollars
over to the to fix lights, that's once again where
we looked at work and we have the most impact.
So we said, let's do the interstate lights, Let's finally
light up the high rise bridge which is went out
for who knows how long, and let's do that in
some of our major routes. And so that's been happening,
and I want to say that we are at about
(04:56):
fixing you know, in less than one hundred days that
I've been in office, about two thousand lights across the city. Yeah,
and so that's like a major record for like obviously
this short period of time. But it goes to you know,
the directive coming from the mayor, having a really talented
leadership team at DPW, and just finding a path to
get the job done. As I said when I got inaugurated,
(05:17):
I truly believe if there's a will, we will find
a way. And so this whole team, like our will
is there. We want to fix these things, and so
we're finding a way to get it done even with
the budget crisis that are So with that budget.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Crisis, and I know you guys had done some stuff
with the state, but additionally some other things that you
were doing were returning like some city properties back to commerce, right,
so this could be another revenue generator. So like what
qualified these properties to go back in commerce where they
just in disarray, where they just in horrible shape for
(05:53):
a long period, Like what qualified them?
Speaker 3 (05:55):
So we have a lot of city owned properties that
are either buildings or just parcels of land that we're
not using. I mean everything from the old and OPD
headquarters to the old Second District headquarters to an old
incinerator site in New Orleans East. So we have a
ton of these different properties, and unfortunately some of them
(06:18):
sit there and they start to get blighted, right, And
so instead of just like sitting there and just holding
onto these properties, we need to have a real assessment
of these properties and figure out a plan to get
them back into commerce. But then there's also certain leases
that the city has of some really valuable properties that
we also need to look at on whether we need
to revise some of those leases as well. I mean
(06:40):
everything from as you know, we've got some major riverfront
properties over where the Four Seasons is out, We've got
the Caesars deal, We've got over at upt like all
of these different lands where we have leases, all of
that needs to be looked at.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
So were they bad leases maybe?
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Now I'm not saying that they're bad leaders.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
We thought deals from before.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
I'm just saying we need to look at these, okay,
you know, and see you know what potentially you know,
could be revised or not. Maybe they're fine. But as
far as the unused parcels of land that the city
owns or the unused buildings, we have to put those
back into commerce. Why are we holding onto these you know?
And and so, And it starts with one having a
real assessment of what these properties are, you know, what
(07:21):
potentially could they be used for, what is the condition
of these properties, and then having a real team of
real estate experts to start the marketing and pushing pushing
that information.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
So will that be maybe something civic source later or yeah?
Speaker 3 (07:34):
And actually we're having the New Orleans Building Corporation kind
of lead on that. And so that's what we plan
on eventually doing having this whole kind of you know,
dashboard or website, whatever you want to call it, or
where anyone can just go and figure out like, oh,
this property could potentially be something beneficial for my business
or whatever else.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Improvements and neighborhoods, no doubt. So you obviously cut your
teeth in bat and Ruge. You got on there on
your polytical platform, and you started learning all of this
stuff once you got away from WDSU. So at this
point you're well versed in how things work up there.
The legislative session is happening, What is coming down the
(08:13):
pipe for New Orleans that we should be aware and
concerned about.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
Well, I'll start with aware and what could be positive
for us. And it's probably one of the biggest pieces
of legislation that I have for the New Orleans area,
and it has to do with sewage.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
And water board.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
And it's a piece of legislation that would allow the
New Orleans City Council to have more oversight and control
over the Sewage and water Board. Okay, because right now
a lot of people don't know this, but the Sewage
and water Board actually reports to three different entities, but
neither one of the three entities, has full control of
the Sewage and water Board oversight control, so it's actually
(08:51):
a state entity. A lot of people don't know that
Uage and Waterboard is a state entity really. And then
it has a governing board made up a private citizen
sins and the mayor and a city council member to
members of the boarder liquidation and nobody really knows who's
like ever on this board, right, and they meet in
a closed room and all these different things. And so
while I sit as a chair, I don't have full
(09:13):
control though of the Sewage and water Board like a
city department.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
So that's that's that's just the title.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
And you know, if you don't have full control as
the head chair, that's right.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
And so then finally you have the New Orleans City
Council and they are responsible for voting rate increases up
or down. They can't change the proposals or anything they
have that so you have three different entities and no
one is able to fully hold the Sewage and water
Board accountable. So it's been recommended for many many years
(09:52):
that the City of New Orleans should be like other
parishes where we have more control over the water and drainage.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Okay, and we need control.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
And so this piece of legislation would allow for the
city Council to you know, put forward a series of
different ordinances that would require, for example, budget approval, UH,
contract approval, oversight over contracts and what those look like
so the public could understand the sewage and water board
contracts better, UH, all all types of cash management type
(10:23):
of UH directives and and policies that the that the
council could move forward on. And so this would add,
in my opinion, a level of transparency that has been
missing for so long with the sewage and water board.
And sometimes adding a lot of sunlight into something creates
better outcomes.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Gotcha? Any other initiatives we should look at coming.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
From the state level, Yeah, I mean I would also
say this. You know, there's some legislation that is being
proposed dealing with consolidation of courts here in New Orleans
and like consolidation of civil district court and criminal court
and action of judge ships. And you know, it's interesting
that that's coming from legislators not from New Orleans, right,
(11:07):
And so that piece and ultimately, you know, I'm going
to follow the lead of the of Rafael Goanecci, who's
over the Metropolitan Crime Commission, who thinks that this is
not a good idea that overall that you know, here
in the city of New Orleans we deal with, you know,
very severe types of criminal cases. And while we are
a city with a population of roughly you know, three
(11:29):
hundred and sixty two to three hundred and sixty five
thousand people living here, that ultimately we have such a
we need such a greater court due to the fact
that think of all the number of tourists and all
the number of people who come into the city, right,
so that part and so you know, I don't necessarily
agree with with these these pieces of legislation that are
(11:51):
coming in. And look, I mean I don't think it
gets as far as you know, judge ships and criminal justice,
I mean, probably the top expert that we have in
this region as the Metropolitan Crime Commission.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Well, keep me abreast of what's going on. You're on
the air with the mayor. You gotta love that we're
out of town, out of time. Today, we're getting ready
for festival season. I know you're excited.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
I can't wait.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Maybe next next month we can talk about this new
leadership board you put together for Essence, because it's a
very impactful event that happens in our city for well
over twenty years and we want it to be the
best that it can be.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Absolutely me too, and that's why I put together the
steering committee. And yeah, next time around we'll talk about that,
we'll be able to talk more about their work because
they're just about to get started this week on.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
The air with the Mayor with Mayor Helena Moreno and
you boy, wow, Wayne, you'll have an amazing weekend.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
We'll be back all right, Wayne.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Thanks