by Mike Hoss \/ Eyewitness News<\/p>\n
Posted on January 5, 2010 at 4:41 PM<\/p>\n
Updated \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTuesday, Jan 5 at 10:04 PM<\/p>\n
NEW ORLEANS — An agreement has been reached between Mayor Ray Nagin and members of the New Orleans City Council to restore some of the funding that had been cut for several city services.<\/p>\n
Negotiations have been ongoing on this issue since last month, with officials trying to reach a compromise between the two budgets: the mayor’s budget and the council’s budget. Significant cuts went into effect this week, but around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, all the parties said they had reached an agreement on the 2010 budget with many of the services restored.<\/p>\n
Among the services that were restored include blight hearings, as the city tries to get some of the blighted properties back into the market; money for the District Attorney’s Office; juvenile and municipal criminal courts; emergency services; and the parade viewing stands at Gallier Hall for Mardi Gras now has the funding for the city to put them up and take them down.<\/p>\n
“I’m happy to say that through our collective discussions with the mayor, and Dr. Hatfield and councilmember Morrell as budget chair, we have restored a number of the cuts that were made that the public wants restored,” Fielkow said.<\/p>\n
Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell said while they could not restore everything, that’s just the nature of the budget process. “Again, I want to reiterate what our council president said, and what Dr. Hatfield and what the mayor agreed to: we looked at critical issues that had to be restored,”\u00a0she said.<\/p>\n
A four-day work week at City Hall remains in effect. Friday it will stay closed, and its new schedule will stay from Monday to Thursday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.<\/p>\n
“Just keep in mind that even though we are only open four days a week, our employees are working 35 hours a week,” said Dr. Brenda Hatfield, chief administrative officer. “And so actually the day is extended until 6 o’clock for services, and some people in the community like that.”<\/p>\n
So where does the new money come from? It comes from new revenue projections. The mayor had his budget, with the revenue projected at about $462 million, and the City Council was a little lower at $455 million. The compromise for the new budget for 2010 is somewhere around $460 million.<\/p>\n
The issue now goes to the City Council on Thursday. They must first vote unanimously to put it on as an emergency agenda item, and then it must be a simple majority vote of the council to pass, once again, the 2010 budget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Mike Hoss \/ Eyewitness News Posted on January 5, 2010 at 4:41 PM Updated Tuesday, Jan 5 at 10:04 PM NEW ORLEANS — An agreement has been reached between Mayor Ray Nagin and members of the New Orleans City Council to restore some of the funding that had been cut for several city services. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,4,107],"tags":[197,114,196],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.carnivalneworleans.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.carnivalneworleans.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.carnivalneworleans.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.carnivalneworleans.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.carnivalneworleans.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=632"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.carnivalneworleans.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":634,"href":"http:\/\/blog.carnivalneworleans.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions\/634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.carnivalneworleans.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.carnivalneworleans.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.carnivalneworleans.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}