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I lived in New Orleans and then Metairie La. From 1990-1997.. And it’s sad what it’s all come to. I’m sadden by what the mayor and the rest like him is doing to the small businesses there. It’s like a slap in the face to the small businesses.. It’s ok to have some big businesses there also, but the mayor and the rest should not forget what parts the small businesses play as well. And remember how the small businesses were there to help as best they could after the Katrina Storm.. I now live in the state of Michigan, but always look forward to visiting or living in New Orleans area once again in this lifetime.. I wish all the best for those in the New Orleans area. I do still have beloved friend that still live there. They know who they are. They are still in my mind and heart. May things come together for New Orleans and the surrounding areas. Peace Be With You All

What I like about the locally-owned businesses is that you come to know their employees, and can talk about how the city looks, who’s come back, what you need to buy, and the best place to go, if they don’t have what you need. In a big-box place like Wal-Mart on Tchoupitoulas, you are lost!!! The W-M employees are very nice, but the store is huge.
New Orleans’ economy literally runs on small, independent businesses, which reopened as soon after the storm as possible. Where else but in NO could you have bars opening up for residents, first responders and others who’d returned or rode out the storm? These places ran on grit, generators, and the owners’ generosity. Nagin and his team should thank local businesses for trying to stay open and keep the economy going, instead of having Virginia Boulet talking about “kick-starting” the economy with big-box stores all over the place. How about “kick-starting” the economy with CDBG grants to local businesses, so that they can stay open, pay their rent or mortgages and utilities/phone bills, and be ready for the influx of returnees coming back to the city?

Most everyone I know shops at Wal-Mart, Target, Lowes, or Home Depot sometimes. If I can save a dollar on a box of wheat thins, it would be ridiculous for me not to do so - even if I have to shop at Wal-Mart. Lets keep those tax dollars within New Orleans and provide the full range of shopping options. The Earhart corridor seems like an appropriate location for big boxes.

Let’s be honest, we’ve all shopped at Target, Wal-mart, K-mart and other retail stores. They have low prices and provide one-stop shopping; a prized asset with this areas worsening traffic. So why should we work to stop more of them from being built and consider moving our patronage to other stores with higher price? Why should we use mom and pop stores? The fact is, no matter how convenient or budget-friendly big box retailers may be to us, they have an enormous negative impact on the community. Like blisters mistaken for healthy growth, they stress nearly every aspect of our community as they gobble up land, hundreds of thousands of square feet of floor space at a time, leaving mothballed hulks in their tracks and their traffic issues that create more pollution for us.

What are we doing to increase our neighborhoods protections from this? I know some of the changes are well intended, but it may take time to separate those changes from the ones designed to give developers absolute power. Developers have an opportunity to appeal any decision made by bureaucrats, boards or commissions of our city council. In fact they see law suits as just another tool in their toolbox that they use often. Neighborhoods, local stakeholders and citizens deserve the same opportunity to appeal decisions that directly affect them.
Let?s give neighborhoods a chance to win other battles, which will be fought uphill the entire way against developments going on all over this area, in your neighborhood and in mine.

Should we champion the neighborhoods fighting the Home Depots and Big boxes? Should we ensure that opportunities in our neighborhoods to integrate small-scale retail are not lost? Right now the developers are choosing to create a big box chain stores that will undoubtedly fail for us in the long term. Let?s see some new office space and affordable housing and real jobs! I believe our city is being taken for ride here.

Every big box retailer adds cars to arterial streets by the tens of thousands, clogging already congested intersections and thoroughfares. If big boxes are to rein over our neighborhoods, they must be held responsible for the traffic and other issues they cause.

An issue that receives far too little attention is that the vast majority of big box retailers are non-union. Even as starving students, the money saved by shopping at Home Depot instead of the corner store contributes to a company that sees nothing wrong with paying its employees minimum wage with no benefits while preventing them from organizing. Personally, I prefer to pay an extra 5 dollars for a Christmas tree or 25 cents for a box of Kleenex at the corner store and know that I’m not contributing to the degradation of the people checking me out.

Locally owned businesses also suffer with the presence of big boxes. Some people undoubtedly see no value in “mom and pop” businesses, but they are an important part of our community that prevents the homogenization of New Orleans.

We need to start thinking about Buffer zones for neighborhoods and time restrictions for truck deliveries and garbage pickup. This may seem extravagant at first glance, but picture for a second living with a family and a baby only several feet away from 24-hour parking lot lights, loitering customers, outdoor fertilizer and potting soil displays, idling trucks and a giant red sun in the shape of a “K”, crowds of people leaving Bars at 3 am. Do neighborhood protections and heavy fines for messy businesses that follow zoning and ordiance rulles still seem so frivolous?

Few people consider that we heavily regulate where pornography - a perfectly legal product - can be sold simply because we “don’t like” stores that sell it and “don’t like” their impact on our community. I’m not advocating removing any regulations on pornography, but the analogy shows the importance and legitimacy of limiting business rights in our neighborhood. Why aren?t we fining the local bar that has thousands of cigarette butts outside and rats out back?

The big box issue will remain at the forefront of our City’s agenda. Let’s hope that New Orleans will fall under the category of “never again.” The decisions for these developments are not final. Some may consider big boxes to be an issue only for elitist liberals. I prefer to believe that a larger group of people can appreciate the seriousness and complexity of these issues.

Thanks so Much!
Francis Puertos

This administration and council were very insensitive to locally owned businesses PRIOR to the storm—this practice only appears to continue.

Local businesses and advocates have got to come up with a plan to apply significant pressure on local government to spark action. What I am looking for (or talking about) is something on a scale that New Orleans residents and businesses have not applied in my memory.

We had what I thought was a fairly successful community campaign with the St. Thomas affair. I was taken aback by the arrogance of the Council and the Mayor’s office to completely disregard the voices of many groups and the people involved. Today, even with those efforts, we see Wal-Mart in the Lower Garden District and new housing for (who?)….

To be sure, certain council members paid the price for their lack of respect to the community voices. But we had to wait four years, and perhaps the overlap of Katrina frustration, to throw Gill-Pratt, Clarkson, and Batt out of office.

We shouldn’t wait four more years to apply this pressure again.

Ideas? No matter what they are, they need to come again from the community and local businesses. We really need to stand up against this latest policy.

Just my two cents….
Bill White

Bill White is right!

If I were a politician or candidate looking for an anti-corporate-welfare issue to champion, one that would resonate with ordinary voters and small business owners; that would increase government revenues progressively; that would win the support of most academic economists and newspaper editorial boards; and that would put my crony-capitalist political opponents in an immensely awkward position, I would figure out a way to champion a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati. The New Yorker’s incomparable James Surowiecki explains the decision here.

The case involves tax credits that the city of Toledo gave to Daimler-Chrysler, a major local employer, in order to lure the company into building a new plant there. Such sweetheart deals are, of course, extremely common. Giant manufacturers and big-box retailers routinely play cities and states off against each other in order to get their tax burdens lowered or lifted entirely tax. The governments play along because doing otherwise risks watching jobs go elsewhere. But as a general economic matter the incentives make no sense. They don’t increase the number of jobs or the amount of economic activity in the country overall. They deprive governments of needed tax revenue. And they put smaller firms at a disadvantage. Your average auto repair shop or florist or small software company doesn’t have the clout to get its taxes reduced by threatening to relocate.

These are all good arguments for disallowing such tax incentives. But the Sixth Circuit decision puts forth another one: they violate the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. I’m no lawyer, so I don’t know if this is a sensible or tortured interpretation of the Commerce Clause—read the decision yourself here. Certainly the ruling will be appealed. Still, as Surowiecki notes, “for the moment at least, much of what we know as corporate welfare may be technically illegal.”

But why leave it solely to the courts? Politicians ought to weigh in, too. Let’s see some smart Democrats—and maybe some honest Republicans—sponsor a bill to outlaw this kind of corporate blackmail.

To Bill White and anyone esle,

That is why I decided to check out the Progresive party. This was not easy for someone who was raised as a Democrat.
I know the Progressives would welcome you with open arms.

Sometimes people ask me, “How could you turn your back on your Democratic roots?” It’s a good question.

I have nothing against Democrats. As you now know, I used to be one. Most Democrats are good, hard-working, well-intentioned people. In many cases, including in mine and my wife’s, it has been a family tradition to vote for Democrats. Our parents and grandparents voted for Democrats for reasons that were good and noble … in the past.

THE CURRENT wave of favoritism and corruption is not due to something being wrong with people like us raised as Democrats, but to one group and one party’s having had absolute control for too many years.

Too many officials and city appointees did not have to work hard to get where they are now. They consider public service their right, not a privilege. Without the checks and balances of another point of view, they have become arrogant, self-serving and corrupt.

Single-party rule is now just a big problem here. We need to think about reviewing laws and policies to ensure that local whistle-blowers are fully protected and that potential corruption is identified early. Let’s provide anonymous counsel to those unsure if superiors are asking them to bend the law. And lets eliminate any loophole that inadvertently protects wrongdoers.

History teaches that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The current abuse of power in Somerville is not random. It is the predictable result of one-party or gourp domination. We need competition in the political arena, and we need it now.
MY WIFE’S grandfather was a member of the a Regimental Combat Team and lifelong member of a local Union.

Now, her grandmother is embarrassed by government corruption. She cannot understand how the behavior of so many public officials — all Democrats — can be so at odds with her beliefs and core values, which she always assumed were those of a Democrat.

You don’t have to be a member of any particular political party to want honesty in government, a stronger economy, better schools, an equitable public transportation system and a healthy environment. These are everybody’s goals.

Republicans, Porgressives, and Democrats may differ over how best to reach them, but we all want the best for New Orleans.

Better than incentives to big boxes, why not incentives to manufacturing employers? I’d love to see a new employer or five who could offer decent wages to people who needed the opportunities before K.