The ordinance banning open containers on Jefferson Street and the McKinley and Surrey strips that failed on a 5-4 vote Tuesday could wind up back before the City-Parish Council in a couple of weeks, and the councilman spearheading the effort to revive the ordinance predicts a favorable outcome.
District 7 Councilman Don Bertrand tells The Independent he’s asked the council clerk to put the “go cup” ordinance on an upcoming agenda, hopefully for the Oct. 5 meeting. And Bertrand says his five colleagues who opposed the ordinance can expect some pressure in the intervening week and a half. “They’ll be hearing from the downtown business owners who have to deal with the mess,” Bertrand says.
The ordinance banning open containers was designed the address the problem of plastic cups used by bar patrons to transport their alcohol out of the bars, which creates a lot of trash littering the parts of town where bars have proliferated. It was one of two before the council Tuesday; the second, banning cruising by motorists, was pulled from the agenda after the open container ban failed.
The measures are two of a handful of ideas endorsed by some downtown business owners, the Durel administration and police to address the large, sometimes rowdy crowds that descend on the downtown on weekend nights. Banning loitering was also part of the conversation several months ago, but it never got traction in the form of an ordinance.
On Tuesday, Sept. 28, the council’s agenda includes a discussion item that many feel would be most effective in mitigating the crowd issue downtown: banning 18-20 year olds from bars altogether. Police allege — and bar owners dispute — that many of these underage patrons are managing to get alcohol despite the minimum legal drinking age of 21, exacerbating the crowd-control problems police have on weekends.
The measure is only a discussion item and it’s unclear whether it will ever be expressed in the form of an ordinance. Bertrand is doubtful: “If we can’t even pass an open container ordinance, I don’t see how an 18-20 year old ordinance would stand a chance,” he admits.
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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