On Wednesday, January 16, 2008 the first public meeting of Transparent Accountable New Orleans met at the offices of Neighborhood Partnership Network (NPN), on 3500 N. Canal Street. NPN’s mission is to improve our quality of life by engaging New Orleanians in neighborhoods revitalization and the civic process. These are the meeting notes.
Marty Rowland, coordinator for Transparent Accountable New Orleans introduced himself as a professional civil and environmental engineer (whose doctorate concerned natural resource management systems) who has an understanding of how government operates. Rowland’s expertise for coordinating the study includes certification as a federal facility auditor as well as an auditor for the Carnegie-Mellon University’s Capability Maturity Model Integration that is used at a major aerospace facility in eastern New Orleans. He sees an opportunity to take a small part of government, its parking lots, and evaluate performance against the City’s intention regarding their operation. His idea for conducting the study came after City Councilman Oliver Thomas admitted that he had taken a bribe to influence the awarding of a city contract to a parking lot contractor. Ever since teaching a course at Tulane’s College of Engineering on urban infrastructure, Rowland has sought an opportunity to implement his system of infrastructure management that he developed and taught. He says he seized the opportunity to study parking lots and convinced Councilwoman Midura to put him on the agenda for an upcoming meeting of the Governmental Affairs Committee (note: what was to be presented on February 4th will now be presented on February 14th). He sees subsequent opportunities to study more complex agencies upon a successful study of parking lots.
Transparent Accountable New Orleans is a volunteer group of professionals that currently includes five engineers, an architect, two urban planners, a management systems expert, business people, neighborhood activists, and concerned citizens. The group would study City-owned parking lots for the dates of 1997 to 2007 and present a final report with recommendations at the end of a 90-day period. The group is not organized to root out corruption, but to understand what the City intends to do in its official capacity and measure the performance of City government in achieving that intent. Rowland is looking for an accountant, and an attorney, as well as professors and students of political science, accounting, engineering, law, sociology, economics, and urban planning.
University professors and students are sought for the evaluation so that scientifically-designed field work could be conducted to measure parking lot performance. Five intentions for running parking lots were identified: a) maximize public revenue; b) maximize revenue to a private parking lot contractor; c) set operation to break even and thereby give parking customers the cheapest fares; d) set operation to maximize flow to adjacent businesses; and d) run them such that the time a City worker has to deal with their operation is minimized. Other studies that may be performed include those that would report satisfaction of those using the lots and opinions of business people near the lots regarding how they be better operated. How many studies are conducted will depend on the number of volunteers for the study. For parking lot performance, students would monitor parking lots during selected average weekdays and weekends.
A map from a 1994 City Planning Commission Report was presented showing parking lots, that does not identify which are public or private. (See note below about which lots are public.)
Rowland explained public agency transparency as the free opportunity for anyone to access records on any aspect of government and have clear explanations as to what any record means regarding public revenue, public outlays, capital budgeting and expenses, and current operational expenses. He expressed concern about the general tendency among cities, especially New Orleans, to enter into public-private partnerships for public service provision, considering the fact that open meetings and open records laws that pertain to a city may not apply to the private company. He explained accountability in two ways. First, “certified public accountant accountability” means, for example, that a city orders 10 stop signs and 10 stop signs are purchased; books balanced, case closed. The other type of accountability, and the type of concern to the group is “end result accountability” whereby the 10 stop signs are installed exactly where and how they were intended to be installed.
A meeting attendee pointed out that more locals would shop in the French Quarter if the parking rates were not so expensive. Those in attendance generally agreed, confirming the appropriateness of learning the intent of the City on how their lots are run and if it were not their intent to attract business to the French Quarter, why is it not.
Another attendee asked if we would be reviewing contracts, to which Rowland said yes.
Note 1: Next meeting of Transparent Accountable New Orleans is Wednesday, January 23, 2008, 6:30 pm, 3500 N. Canal St, 2nd floor.
Note 2: The current parking lot contractor introduced himself at the end of the meeting to explain that the City only owns two sets of lots. The first set includes the lot between the floodwall and the Moon Walk at Café du Monde and amphitheater and the lots at the northwest and southwest corners of Elysian Fields and Decatur, near Frenchmen St. The contractor explained that the City gets none of the parking lot revenue at these locations, that it all goes to the non-profit French Market Corporation. The second parking lot is location at the Union Passenger Terminal (bus / train station). He did not volunteer anything about that lot.
