New Orleans, a year later, still bickering, still looking for votes.

I have been watching the Katrina anniversary specials this week and wondering if ABC will send someone like John Stossel down there to ask the local officials what the heck they are doing. Here we are year later and the City Council just passed the FEMA elevation guides for rebuilding in low lying areas.

Most homeowners who want to substantially renovate or construct new houses in New Orleans after Sept. 15 will have to build at least 3 feet above the ground, and much higher in some places, under new zoning rules that the City Council adopted unanimously Friday after federal and state officials threatened for months to withhold millions of dollars in recovery money if the standards were not enacted.

No one in office down there wants to make the hard decisions. Someone needs to have the leadership to tell residents that the we are not going to rebuild slums and ghettos. As a taxpayer, why should I have to pay to rebuild a house in an area that is 10 feet below sea level? That is a waste of money. The City needs a smaller footprint, and better leadership.

As the water receded, a smaller, sadder New Orleans looked to Mayor Ray Nagin and the City Council for leadership. They responded with chaos. The symbol of their failure is New Orleans' lack of a citywide plan to rebuild - the first essential step toward renewal. Without a plan, residents don't know whether city services, utilities and other families will return to their old neighborhoods. So decisions about rebuilding are deferred and residents stay away, compounding the failure.

It seems that Mayor Ray Nagin wants as many citizens as he can living in New Orleans. The poorer the better. Those are the people who voted for the Mayor of Chocolate City. Nagin knows his voters, and they want everything back the way it was, only with more money in their pockets. He doesn't want to upset anyone, that is why there are dozens of competing plans to rebuild each separate community.

The Mayor should have told all these community groups that, we need speed and hard work right now, not bickering and endless ideas about how to do the job. He should have hired the best urban planner he could find, one with no ties to political groups and said, this guy is the best in the business and I will look to him for solutions. They will not be popular solutions for some areas and some people, but I have a to find a solution for the whole of the City, not block by block. Instead, the City Council and the Mayor have come up with this;

A unified neighborhood recovery planning process for New Orleans inched forward Monday with the signing of an agreement by city and foundation officials and the assignment of consultant teams to assist residents in different parts of the city. Covering a wide range of infrastructure needs and other projects, from parks to rejuvenated schools, sought by neighborhood leaders, the unified plan is expected to be completed by the year's end. It will be used by the Louisiana Recovery Authority, or LRA, to guide use of many millions of dollars on storm recovery needs in New Orleans.

The plan is expected to be completed by the end of the year? Sounds great, a watered down plan with many factions trying to make everyone happy delivered a year after the flooding. Way to go Ray, way to go.

What about those levees, I bet the local governments are willing to do whatever they need to get the upgrades completed right? Wrong.

After several weeks of negotiations, amendments to existing cooperative agreements have now been signed between the corps and local governments that will let contractors begin lifting subsiding levees, do pump station work, and shore up some flimsy floodwall in East Jefferson, as well as finish building 11 miles of levees on the east bank of St. Charles Parish.

But none of the new work can begin in Orleans, St. Bernard Parish or on the West Bank of Jefferson Parish, and no new Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control, or SELA, projects in Jefferson or Orleans parishes can be let until local, state and federal authorities resolve remaining disputes and amend their Cooperative Project Agreements as well.

What the fight Jefferson parish comes down to is the feds want the local government to acquire any needed land to do repairs, and the locals want to do their 'best efforts' to acquire the land. What part of flooding don't the locals get? If the Corp of engineers needs the State or County to acquire a 100 strip of land to widen a levee or upgrade a pump station, make it happen. The Feds (you and I) are the ones spending the BILLIONS of dollars to strengthen the levees, can you folks down there at least pull your weight?