[StBernard] Recovery

[Westley Annis]

Laurie,

you have been at this long enough to know if you let yourself react too much
in one direction or the other to a snapshot of what is happening it will
cause you to be bouncing all over the place in your perception.  I encourage
you to look at larger segments of time.
 
With that said, the pace has slowed because the administration made a
decision with the contractor to decrease the numbet of crews on the streets
because of the decrease in storm debris verses construction debris and with
the crackdown by FEMA on picking up construction debris it was becoming more
difficult to keep crews.
 
You hit the nail on the head- the issue is enforcement such as refusing to
complete final inspections on houses that have let construction debris sit
on the property or be thrown across the street or on neutral grounds-
Unfortuantely these are sometimes unpopular decisions and no one wants to be
a "bad guy" right about now.  It still has to be done though. 

So the short answer to your question is yes, there continues to
opportunities for improvement.

God Bless,
Craig

-----Original Message-----
Craig, I was in the parish today and had the feeling that recovery was just 
an illusion also.  I was so sad cause it looked so much more dirty than last

time I was there, which was about 2 weeks ago.  I've been sick and haven't 
been there for a couple of weeks. Then I realized it looked so bad because 
more people were fixing up and working on their houses so more trash a 
debris was outside on lawns and in piles everywhere.  All the FEMA porches 
and pipes from old FEMA trailers looks really bad piled up on Paris Road.  
When is all this going to be moved away?  Are things going to get better and

the pace stepped up on picking up trash?  What about new construction 
debris, which seems to be everywhere?  Is there real recourse for the parish

to make people get rid of this mess in a faster and more efficient way? Any 
way to enforce this so things don't look so messy and dirty?

Laurie