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Supporters of a resolution to allow the City Planning Commission to review plans for changes to Audubon Park suffered a severe blow last Thursday as Councilmember Jay Batt withdrew the resolution that would have enabled it.

Citing an apparent duplication of interdepartmental efforts as well as the City Planning Commission’s reluctance to review the controversial and politically charged plans, Batt made the decision to withdraw the resolution. While the issues he noted are certainly worth consideration, his comments about the saveaudubonpark.org web site were a curious statement on public input. Councilmember Batt criticized the anonymous nature of the web site and its parody of Audubon Nature Institute executives, especially Ron Forman. As we understand it, the authors of the website did indeed identify themselves in writing and at any rate information on domain name registrations is publicly available. The question that comes to mind is: why are city councilmembers and the Audubon Institute so troubled by criticism anyway?

The Audubon Institute has a record of attempting to intimidate members of the group in the past. In November of last year, Save Audubon Park received a letter from Henry W. Kinney on behalf of ANI threatening legal action if the group did not stop using “Audubon Park” in its name. The group identified the letter as an attempt at intimidation and without legal merit. Parody is an exercise of protected free speech. We maintain that the key issues in the controversy are related to a lack of meaningful public input and accountability in the Audubon Institute’s operations, regardless of which side you are on.

We are also tracking what appears to be an increasing tendency of the ANI to focus resources on fee-for-use revenue-generating projects (note: page on ANI website has been taken down) (exemplified by the upgraded golf course and club house facility) at the expense of amenities enjoyed by the broader community. While it is true that additional revenue streams potentially could be used to upgrade the public spaces, this is not a guaranteed outcome. Well-maintained public spaces are both a symbol of and a catalyst for community development. The extent to which public spaces are converted to private reserves and the majority of citizens are excluded from enjoying them by prohibitively high access fees is the extent to which we undermine our own community.

If the City Planning Commission truly does not want to review ANI’s (land use) plans, curious as that decision may be, then it is critical that the Audubon Institute enact hearing policies that facilitate transparency, meaningful discussion and public accountability, removing personality driven politics as much as possible from the process, on both sides. We understand that there are no easy answers about the use, alteration or management of the park, but the goal should be to make the park serve as diverse a community as possible. Audubon Park still belongs to all the citizens of New Orleans and it is the responsibility of the Audubon Nature Institute to ensure timely and meaningful public input on all decisions related to the disposition of this public resource.

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