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24 3. A HARBINGER OF PROBLEMS TO COME I WENT BACK TO AUSTRALIA AND RETURNED A FEW WEEKS later, the first week of December 2006. I had asked the mayor to set up a meeting for me with the people I’d be working with, to see if there was some mutual comfort and a general agreement on what my role would be if I took the job. I had a packed agenda. I met with police superintendent Warren Riley and chief administrative officer Brenda Hatfield, who said with a warm smile, “I’ll be glad to get this recovery off my desk.” Legislative director and mayor’s aide de camp Kenya Smith showed me around City Hall, and introduced me to city council members and staffers. I went to meet city attorney Penya Moses-Fields in her office. She told me that her role was to be the lawyer for the council and the city, and to be the mayor’s and the city’s conscience. I also met the mayor’s communications chief, Ceeon Quiett. In the evening, Mayor Nagin organized a dinner for me with the team. I met all the key people except Donna Addkison, chief of development. Next day, when I did meet Addkison, it was an uncomfortable encounter. She is a small, energetic brunette, the epitome of professionalism, with bright eyes that beam at you like searchlights. I was taken aback when, throughout our interview, she played a television so loud that I had to ask her over and over again to repeat what she’d said. Even with those hints, she didn’t turn off the Tv or even lower the volume. She was also jumpy. She asked me my role and then, before I could answer, said that she had much of the recovery underway and that I wasn’t needed. Addkison invited to the meeting a man named she identified only as “Tony,” A Harbinger of problems to Come 25 one of her staff, a stoop-shouldered creole with curly hair and a solid build. I had no idea who he was or what he did. She didn’t mention his title. But when the meeting ended, she said, “I know you want Tony on your staff. you can have him.” Walking me to the elevator, Tony apologized for the tenor of what had just occurred. For my part, this was another harbinger of a potentially serious problem: I wasn’t sure about joining the team if there might be holdouts. In disaster recovery , a senior holdout not only can hurt your program but can poison the work atmosphere. Although I wanted to meet with the mayor to discuss Addkison, I was only able to talk to him by phone just before I took the job. He assured me it would all work out. I had my doubts. Council member Willard-Lewis was a vocal leader of the black community ’s recovery effort and set up meetings for me in the wards. I met for the first time with the full United New Orleans Plan (UNOP) senior team. Laurie Johnson and Steven Bingler were among its leaders. As the UNOP team briefed me, it became clear that the city had a number of planning teams that were in competition with each other, including the controversial “green dots” plan I’ve described. They also gave me a briefing on the pre-Katrina population, which one said was a bit inflated since actual home occupancy levels based on water and gas meter use were much lower than the official census. I asked for their best guesses, which ranged from 385,000 to 454,000 but well short of the official 484,000 census figure of five years earlier. The lowest estimates were based on the dwellings drawing electricity and water regularly. As Greg Rigamer, the New Orleans economist/ demographer, said, the number depends on what you want to count, those here all the time or those here some of the time. The city council commissioned neighborhood plans that it intended to present to the Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA) as the city’s recovery plan. In a hostile voice, I asked Laurie and Steve in the council chambers, “Why isn’t this being done by the City Planning Office? This is the city’s job.” Steve agreed calmly. “But Ed, you don’t understand. The city doesn’t have the capacity to do the job.” I would soon find out that he was right...

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