What's Next? - 5/7/2006

Commission offers a menu

Recovery means different thing to each city

By GEOFF PENDER
glpender@sunherald.com

The Sun Herald is planning a series of reports on the Governor's Commission and its progress over the next two weeks. The series started on Sunday May 7th, and will go on until May 18th. Read each article here.

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Gov. Haley Barbour says the 238 recommendations of the Governor's Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal are not a community to-do list and that it would be wrong now, or maybe ever, to go through marking them as done or undone.

Some notable recommendations have been met. Most remain undone. A large number are likely never to be tackled. That's not the point, Barbour says.

"The purpose of the commission was not to tell the people on the Coast how to rebuild, so it's a mistake to look at how many were adopted and how many have not been adopted," Barbour said. "The commission succeeded enormously in illuminating for people what could be - showing community leaders their options, their alternatives, what other cities have done and why."

Barbour created the commission shortly after the storm ripped South Mississippi apart, announcing plans for a "renaissance," not just a rebuild. The work of the commission, privately funded, included 500 volunteers on 20 committees investing more than 50,000 hours developing recommendations. It included a charrette, or brainstorming session, of historic proportions, drawing hundreds of top urban planners, architects and experts from around the world. It spawned numerous public town-hall hearings in most communities across South Mississippi.

The commission's chairman, wealthy Mississippi philanthropist Jim Barksdale, noted "We crammed the work of decades into three months."

The result was a 178-page bound volume titled "Building Back Better than Ever," which includes recommendations on improving land use, housing, business, tourism, health care - almost every aspect of South Mississippi life.

Barksdale, whose commission technically was disbanded Dec. 31 after its report was delivered to Barbour, declined to be interviewed, saying through a spokeswoman he's lately been detached from the subject. But in the introduction he penned for the report, he said the commission began its work by noting that in similar efforts - in Mississippi after 1969's Hurricane Camille, in Galveston, Texas, and elsewhere - there was a failure to follow through with plans for renewal after disaster.

"The fact is, we're facing some of the same challenges of recovery, rebuilding and renewal in 2006 because we failed to engage them fully after 1969," Barksdale wrote.

But by most any measure, the Katrina commission has already seen far more results than similar efforts after Camille.

"I consider it to be a home run," said Coast businessman Dave Dennis, who chaired the cultural preservation committee. "I don't want to handicap what percentage of the recommendations will be put into play, because I don't know. But I think Katrina popped this Coast hard enough that people know we can't just go back to business as usual. I think we'll see a goodly part of this process embraced and moved forward with."

Barbour said: "I don't expect anybody to agree with all the recommendations. I don't agree with all of them... I was asked the question by a lady in Pass Christian do I think in 10 years we'll look back and say the Coast is as good as it was Aug. 28, 2005. I answered that if that's what we look back and think, then we will have failed. If the commission's work succeeds, if community leaders succeed, if the governor succeeds, then the Coast will be bigger and better. If all we get is what it was in 2005, I will have failed. I will have failed not because I didn't impose my preferences. I will have failed because I did not lift people's horizons enough, will not have gotten people to see what could be."

Linchpin issues

But there do appear to be some linchpins among the commission's goals - common issues that must be tackled.

One is housing.

Lack of affordable, permanent housing has been noted as a chief concern of most committees in the commission. And housing must be built differently, with Katrina in mind. Schools face difficulties with students and their families living in temporary campers. Hospitals face loss of doctors and nurses who can't find housing. Businesses can't recruit employees because there's nowhere for them to live. Even the military and defense contractors are grappling with the issue.

The shortage is so bad the state is putting plans for a business incubator on the back burner and instead considering building dormitory-style housing for workers, which could themselves later be converted into business incubators, said Joe Cloyd with the Mississippi Development Authority.

Barbour has been lobbying in Washington for funding for "Katrina cottages" or some alternative to the FEMA-supplied travel trailers thousands of South Mississippians are calling home. Already a $4 billion federal grant promises to help many homeowners rebuild, but the program does not cover all and solutions must be found for renters and low-income residents. On the Coast, the housing market was already tight before Katrina.

So far, most of the commission's 36 recommendations for housing remain undone.

Another linchpin, some say, is relocating the CSX railroad tracks to allow building of an east-west roadway, something sorely needed before Katrina. Barbour and Mississippi's congressional delegation are pushing for funding for the relocation in Washington.

Barbour said: "CSX right-of-way acquisition and relocation is a priority... But here again is an example of where my views about how that roadway would be used differ with what the New Urbanists (experts who helped the commission plan) want. I think most people on the Coast think the highest and best use would be a connector for motor-vehicle traffic, so we could return Beach Boulevard to a scenic byway. I think (the New Urbanists) wanted a streetcar system and pedestrian walkway. But again, whether I agree isn't the point. The point is the people on the Coast get to look at ideas and decide which ones work and which ones don't."

One linchpin to the commission's goals appears already to have fallen into place: the creation of a regional water and sewerage board. A regional approach, Barbour said, will allow South Mississippi to cope with the expected northward migration of residents from near the coastline.

The Legislature created a six-county regional water and sewer board, and through agreements Barbour helped secure in Washington, it's expected to receive about $600 million in federal funding to expand services.

Will Longwitz, former communications director for the Governor's Commission who's now a lawyer with a Coast firm, said, "I find it encouraging that there has been movement of any kind on something as big as the water and sewer authority."

Can't be measured in tons

There's been nothing like 100 percent buy-in to the commission report by local government leaders. Some, at times, sound fairly critical of many recommendations and even the process. Ditto the state Legislature.

"Some of it was good, but some of it I think is too expensive - the people of Biloxi cannot afford it," said Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway. "A lot of people with the commission kept saying we're starting with a clean slate. We're not starting with a clean slate. People still live here and own the property. I believe in property rights - a person can do what they want with their land. A lot of these folks involved were people from the outside, and the governor said time and again this is just ideas and the communities can make their own decisions."

Bay St. Louis Mayor Eddie Favre said, "The problem with many of these ideas is still who's going to pay for it. Nobody's addressed the issue of lost operating revenues for the cities, counties and schools. Are we even going to be here as a city and a county and a school district? If that can't be figured out, what good is the rebuilding effort going to be?... From a timing standpoint, I don't know if it was the greatest timing in the world for the charrettes and planning. People were still trying to survive and get debris out of their houses and find a place to live. Planning for the future is difficult when people can't see beyond piles of debris. From that standpoint, a lot of (the commission plan) is grandiose and in some cases just not going to be practical."

But both mayors say they've parroted the Governor's Commission, and helped create similar organizations on the local level. And both believe some good will come from the commission's recommendations.

"I don't think it's going to just sit on a shelf and collect dust," Favre said. "Much of it can be used, although maybe modified. So much of it does make sense. I think a lot of it will come to fruition, but maybe the approach needs to change a bit - more like 'We're here to help you, whatever decision you make we are going to back you, fund you, any way we can.'

"I think some good things will come from it," said Holloway. "I don't know how much, but it's something we don't take lightly."

Longwitz echoed Barbour's views that the commission's success or failure should be viewed with a broad, long-term lens and that the key will be community buy-in, not work in Jackson or Washington.

"I find it unprecedented and astonishing that local governments are moving forward with their own plans, creating their own renaissance commissions," Longwitz said.

"Almost every town has been holding their own charrettes. That impetus is a major product of the commission's work... (The commission report) is like a menu in a restaurant. The patrons can come in and look at the menu in different ways and decide what they want."

He added, "This is not debris. You can't measure it in metric tons. It'll be a lot easier to look back with regret at what didn't get done then to look at all these moving parts now. It's like flying over in an airplane and trying to see who's on the ground."

posted by Steve Howard @ 4:42 PM