New Orleans -- Despite announcements from the mayor's office touting millions of FEMA dollars dedicated to road repair, some construction fails to get started.
The Office of Public Works admits they are still months away from revealing exact plans and even further away from actually paving roads. Even when work begins you may not get the streets of your dreams.
Grinding, scraping and lifting away the old is a welcomed inconvenience on major thoroughfares like Jefferson Davis Parkway, but the nearby residential streets are much more quiet.
Leslie Perschall of State Street is not very optimistic. Perschall said, “You feel like it's just not going to get done. I've even stopped sending emails because there's no new information.”
A few community leaders joined the city council public works committee Friday morning.
Latoya Cantrell, President of the Broadmoor Improvement Association, asked “When can we expect to know?”
Cantrell said she expected details and time lines. So did Council Member Kristen Palmer, who said, “That's what we were all expecting, I think, the council members as well. I think that's what we were all expecting time lines and specific streets.”
Deputy Mayor Cedric Grant says it will be a while before those kinds of details are released. He said, “That's why I wanted to spend time explaining how involved and intricate it is. I'm really hopeful that somebody in Washington has an epiphany and we agree, all of us, that there is an alternate project that can be proposed which is the designation that's called for to redistribute how this work is done.”
Residents on State Street call it the roller coaster and it's an experience most have driving around the city unfortunately there is not a lot of clarity about when that bumpy ride might end.
Grant says even in this second phase of FEMA repairs funds only apply to Katrina damage. He says the city needs to find funds to fill the gaps. He said, “To sit here today and tell you yeah the 2700 block of this at this point I'm not there yet.”
Perschall hopes this process is better than phase one. In that round she and other neighbors claim there was no real order to the street repairs and obvious problems just got worse. She said, “Never mind they have already torn up that section. Why is the next one marked? Then never mind they’ve finished this section. Why is that one marked? With the FEMA money my big concern is even if we get more how are they going to control it properly.”
They're questions that residents, looking to get asphalt moving in their neighborhoods, would like to see answered sooner rather than later.
Grant says some neighborhoods can expect to see plans this summer with work coming much later in the year.