What I did today

So, now that I actuallt have work to do, I should write about it.

Most mornings, I start by reading the paper. This morning I found out that the FBI is investigating the spending of Federal Money in the County. No surprise there. We will see what happens.

I then had a few errands, like I promised to get some information for a county employee, so I tracked it down and called her.

Then, at 10 am, we had a meeting with the Citizens Recovery Committee, to try to repair our relationship. The CRC had spent the previous meeting extracting a few pounds of flesh from the new team lead, and had gotten out a lot of their anger. They were ready to get to business. We discussed the time frame and work plan for the next three weeks (when we get sent home).

Then I met with the county community development and planning department. There are a couple of projects that are connected to them. For instance, there is an idea to create a Builders Row, where home builders can build model homes and everyone can shop and compare. Also, there is a plan to have a one stop shopping information center for people that want to buy new houses or refurbish their homes. The idea would be to have all the necessary government officials, non profits, banks, etc, all in the same place. Both of these projects are important to get the parish back on its feet and both could get outside funding.

So I met with them. The associate director was really excited about the projects, but the director decided they were too busy to help. They suggested I talk to the tourism department. Evidently, the planning department does nothing that could be confused with consumer service and they pass off those things to other departments.

I explained that I was not going to put much effort in to the projects if they were not going to be ready to work on them after I left. There are too many things for me to work on to put a lot of energy into a project that lacks a local champion. We will see how it goes.

Next, I met with a council member that is hosting a neighborhood meeting, and tried to help him prepare. When DPZ (Duany) was here, he suggested that the parish host a bunch of neighborhood meetings so neighbors could decide if they wanted to rebuild, rebuild on a smaller foot print, or move to a new area of the parish. The council members are on their own to host the meetings. They receive no staff support. They will all do different things at their meetings and all get different information and results. It will be ugly. Planners should be involved.

Then, the new and old team members met to get the new members up to speed on the changes that have happened to the project (the source of the citizens uprising).

Finally, at the end of the day, I met with the architects that are coming up with a competing plan to DPZ’s vision about what should happen in the parish (what areas should be redeveloped and what should turn into greenspace). It is a little weird because DPZ’s plans were made in isolation of this other architect’s firm. In any case, we had a good discussion session about their plans.

So that was the day. Again, it is great working for a boss that is not a micromanager!