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Councilman George Cavignac
(504) 650-1285
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To my fellow St. Bernard residents, here's an article I have submitted to the Times Picayune in response to their usual disrespectful coverage of St. Bernard Parish issues. Feel free to respond to my e-mail and give me your thoughts...George
As a St. Bernard Parish Council member and resident, I am outraged and appalled by the "easy out" afforded by playing the race card and taken by both Judge Berrigan and Mr. DeBerry. To be quite frank, to simply say St. Bernard is "acting a fool" as Mr. DeBerry puts it truly speaks to an uninformed and thoughtless position. It fails to take into account the incredible urban planning and development issues St. Bernard leaders face every day as we struggle to recover from Katrina. It's time to set the record straight regarding the public and political response to the proposed mixed-income apartment developments.
The objections of our Government and of the people that we represent are based not in racism, but in our deep concern for our parish's recovery effort, and in the inability of the Parish in its current phase of recovery to provide the necessary support systems to these developments, whether for black, white, or purple-pink-polka-dotted residents. Has it occurred to any of our critics that St. Bernard Parish has no hospital? Limited public transportation? A struggling economy with problems compounded by the national economic situation? A complete, end-to-end destruction of our housing stock with owner and rental values struggling to recover from both Katrina's devastation AND the national housing crisis? An extreme inability for the Government to provide assistance to those most in need for hurricane evacuation purposes? The proposed development is a plan doomed to fail the Parish as well as the people it is designed to aid. This was the very basis on which other affordable housing developers were denied permission to build in New Orleans East, although Judge Berrigan and the editorial staff of the Times Picayune seem to ignore this. I assume they feel that because New Orleans East is predominantly African-American, their similar objections had to be considered more valid than ours.
St. Bernard must focus now on the continued development of basic services for its citizens while developing sound policies to protect what is arguably the most unstable real estate market in America. Rather than constructing these developments in a community better-suited to meet the needs of its future residents, these predatory developers are attempting to capitalize on this most desperate real estate situation, and will further hobble our market with this plan. Their concern lies only with greed and the tax credit "goose that laid the golden egg."
St. Bernard has always been home to dedicated, community-oriented people -- people who value their neighbors, their homes, their way of life. Who is more racist? Those who would continue to perpetuate the failed model of densely crowded, low income, multi-family developments or those of us who would prefer to consider alternatives like utilizing those federal funds to help those most in need with gaining access to routes of home ownership, which is the pillar of community stability, personal pride, and individual and community wealth-building?
If anyone knows about helping others in their time of need -- regardless of race, creed, or color -- and has proven time and again that they are ever-ready to do their part, it is the residents of St. Bernard Parish. But we demand that OUR way of doing things -- with a responsible, self-sustaining, recovery-oriented plan -- be continued for OUR community. Don't ask us to take three steps back when we have fought so hard for each step of forward progress in our recovery. I can only hope and pray that more sound wisdom prevails at the appellate level, and Judge Berrigan's ruling meets the same fate she is trying to impose upon St. Bernard Parish's character.
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