The New Orleans Citizen Participation Project

The winding down of summer coincides with putting the finishing touches on a couple of major components of our ongoing citizen participation work -- and we're still keeping the heat on with the New Orleans answer to the Ice Bucket Challenge!

The most exciting piece is completing the report on our Latino Community Health survey.   This is part of the CPP's Latino Community of Interest pilot project, with our partner Puentes New Orleans.  The New Orleans Health Department also joined us in conducting the survey.  We've put a lot of work into the report, which we plan to release in mid-October, but the findings are clear:  for a variety of reasons, Latino residents in New Orleans face multiple obstacles to accessing health care and to other important aspects of healthy living.  The good news is that some of the problems can be fixed easily.  For example, as simplistic as this may sound, the simple lack of Spanish-language signage on the exterior of health clinics prevents many residents from knowing where to get health care.  We are already working to raise funds to place both exterior and interior dual-language signage on as many health clinics as possible; we can do an entire clinic for just $1000.  We expect to have the full Health Survey report posted on our website in a few more weeks.

We are also nearing completion of our evaluation of the City Planning Commission Neighborhood Participation Plan (NPP), the first major piece of our full Citizen Participation Program to be adopted by the city of New Orleans.  Overall the NPP is really doing its job of preserving neighborhood character while promoting quality economic development.  It is, however, only a first step towards meaningful and inclusive community engagement throughout New Orleans.  The city is on the verge of a major update to its Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance (CZO), which is where the NPP legislation sits, and we have made a few initial recommendations to improve it, such as increasing the minimum notification time for NPP meetings, setting a maximum distance for holding these meetings from the property site, and increasing residents' access to the meeting reports.  We are confident these recommendations will be accepted as the new CZO moves forward, and both the Planning Commission and the City Council have told us that they will be very willing to consider further amendments to the new CZO once our full report is completed, which we expect will be before the end of the year.

We're also still working on connecting New Orleans residents to the city budgeting process, and will be having a major community event on October 8.  We are partnering with numerous organizations to provide information on every aspect of the budget.  The real fun, though, will be engaging residents in a process to develop the People's Budget, which we will release at the same time the mayor releases his budget.

We continue to move ahead with other key aspects of the CPP work, including the neighborhood boundary mapping project and our new resource publication, the Residents Guide to City Government.  All work and no fun, though, makes for a dull project, so we decided to spice things up (literally) with the New Orleans answer to the Ice Buck Challenge:  the NOLA Heat Challenge!  Check it out at www.vimeo.com/102070194.

The seasons change, but nothing changes our focus on creating every possible opportunity for meaningful civic engagement in New Orleans.  This work only happens because of the support we get from people like you; on behalf of all of us who are involved with all of these projects, thanks so much for keeping it going!