NEW ORLEANS— In addition to deciding the next district attorney, voters in Orleans Parish will decide issues that affect their wallets. There are three propositions the city is asking voters to renew.
In an exclusive interview with WGNO News, Mayor Latoya Cantrell said, “I’ve had to cut 100 million dollars out of the 2021 budget and we cannot afford an additional gap of 23 million.”
Millage One deals with maintenance and infrastructure, something the mayor says the city needs to make a firm commitment on.
According to Cantrell, “We have not had a dedicated funding source for routine maintenance. This has prevented the city from having an annual plan for streets that will be repaved, potholes filled on an ongoing basis.”
Most of the opposition to the propositions has centered around Millage Two which reduces some funding for the library and rededicates that money. Some see this as taking money from a finite budget and moving it to the idea of early childhood education.
Mayor Cantrell countered, “It’s not an idea. It’s something that we’ve invested in heavily to get to this point to have a funding stream over the next 20 years that invests over 30 million in early childhood for our families.”
Millage Three addresses money for housing and economic development at a time when the mayor says the pandemic has laid bare our city’s need to look at new opportunities for workers.
“There is an obligation that we have right now to connect our people to growth opportunity, workforce development training to have them take advantage of of jobs that are alive and well right now.”