Huge Progress In The Recovery Plan for New Orleans: Red Dots to Orange

I, like the majority of my neighbors, was very involved in the recovery process of my neighborhood after Hurricane Katrina. We came up with a fantastic citizen driven plan. We worked very hard. I went to so many meetings, well over 200, and was frustrated by the many times that the meetings were a charade. They were designed to say that people in the neighborhood had input, but in the end it was clear there was no real opinion being sought. I came to detest Concordia who made quite a bit of money running these. My biggest frustration came when the input involved putting colored dots on where you live. This happened in 2006 when I was asked to put red dots on my neighborhood at the "Unified" New Orleans Plan. Here were the red dots in my hood:

There have been about 200 official plans since then, the latest being last weekend. This is supposed to be the real super-unified really really this time it's true plan. I skipped it. Mostly it's because I'm so busy working on finishing our house. But it was healthy not to be there. So much money could be spent on rebuilding houses, and instead it all goes to the "planners" who I wouldn't trust to plan my son's upcoming 8th birthday party. Apparently the biggest change this time around is that the dots have evolved from red to orange, as you can see in this picture from Karen Apricot forwarded to me by Karen Gadbois.

Do you see that? The dots were red, and now they're FREAKIN' ORANGE! Way to go planners. I'd like to see some more research on how many people in my neighborhood are fans of the fleur-de-lis. Maybe people opposed to the fleur de lis put the dots in the wrong place.