Jimmy’s Music Club launches challenge against city ban on alcohol establishments in Carrollton

To Lyle and Drew:

If “everything” that has made NOLA great, where are the 130,000 who left New Orleans, 7 years after Hurricane Katrina? I read every day that NOLA is tops in all the “up and coming, brain magnet” polls and surveys, yet appears to have nothing to show for it except the same crime, drunks, addicts and still NO JOBS. And certainly no alcohol tax revenue from any of the bars or even great restaurants that serve alcohol which was supposed to pay for fixing the streets, lights. Or pay for NOPD consent decree or any of the “still” lowest paid public employees of the nation.

By the way, “underage” drinking is where most criminals, dead beats, panhandlers/homeless get their start. (why not ask the Mayor’s son regarding drunk driving?). And just because one can die for one’s country when they are 18, does NOT mean they have enlisted, gone through boot camp, or served even a single day in a war zone. NOTE: “Can-die-for-one’s-country” is NOT the same as “in-the-line-of-fire” or “served-in-a-war-zone”.

By the way, there are OTHERS who live in the Freret area and they just want to “WALK” and stay alive. Not dodge bullets, get car jacked, raped, or get they daily drugs from drug dealer.

And if you goto City Hall, be prepared to answer the above questions on WHY the 130,000 didn’t come back, or why there are virtually no Fortune 500 companies in New Orleans, or why New Orleans has the highest poverty rate even with all the so called alcohol taxes from Bourbon St for the last 50 years.

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Only two businesses on Oak St. offer live music and alcohol, The Maple Leaf Bar, which predates the moratoriums, and Oak Wine Bar, which was put through a torturous approval process for being a “bar” even though it table-serves food. So strictly speaking, yes, a good-neighbor agreement can be a way to go about reaching a compromise, but for Jimmy’s there’s way too much uncertainty. It’s a late-night music venue and bar, which means these neighborhood associations will look on it more harshly, and if existing GNA are any precedent (stringent rules on hours, parking, loitering, noise, go cups, etc.) then a compromise will take a very long time to work out, if ever. Attacking the legality of the new moratorium is the better bet.

I have to say, it’s so weaselly, like plagiarism, to ever-so-slightly massage the boundaries and then call the whole thing a new moratorium. If that’s the way Susan Guidry operates then I’m really disappointed in her.

Larry, I would actually agree with you that neighborhood groups suffer from public misconceptions. However, I believe that Uptown Messenger has already done the service you are requesting. In fact, and I don’t say this lightly, but I don’t think there is any single source of better information about the benevolent work that neighborhood associations do in this city. Judge for yourself — I’ve tried to collect all our reporting on neighborhood groups in the last two and a half years under one category, which you can find here: http://uptownmessenger.com/category/neighborhoods/

For those who choose not to peruse that link, I’ll review. Off the top of my head, I have reported on Larry’s group (Central Carrollton Association) doing an interesting range of civic activities: cleaning up the cemeteries, raising money for improvements to the Nix branch library, organizing a holiday lights festival and neighborhood block parties to try to welcome more neighbors into the group, and pressuring the city to fix a dangerous section of Lowerline Street next to a school. I think the Japanese food store mentioned elsewhere may actually be the only land-use issue I’ve covered with CCA, though again, I’m working from the top of my memory here and certainly stand to be corrected.

This pattern repeats itself with neighborhood groups across Uptown, and with some, a cool thing happens: you find them deeply engaged in important citywide civic issues in uniquely local ways. A few examples: the Irish Channel association, with its close proximity to a number of Uptown’s large housing projects, makes its primary activity the support of recreation activities. Yes, they also take positions on land-use. But they spend far more time, energy and their own money in support of the Lyons booster club, because they see the firsthand the good that recreational opportunities do in the city — as well as the gap left by “official” city entities.

Another: the Carrollton-Riverbend Neighborhood Association, which is being demonized here. You know what I’ve heard them discuss, and work on, and organize around — far more than any bar? Bringing the Priestley campus back to life as a school serving the neighborhood. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen Anne Wolfe or Betty DiMarco (two association leaders) before the City Council or Planning Commission, but the good Lord and every RSD superintendent knows they are at every single meeting where Priestley’s future might come up. (And I don’t think any of them actually have school-age kids.) And it’s worth noting — as you’ll find in our coverage — they’ve supported far more ABOs on Oak Street than they’ve opposed. I wasn’t there for the Oak Wine Bar meetings though I was for the Mellow Mushroom, and while the process wasn’t always pretty, it was always clear they (as a whole) wanted businesses on Oak — as witnessed, ultimately, by their support.

Finally, you like that pretty fountain in Coliseum Square? The pretty water that comes out of it? Proud of your tax dollars for supporting something so attractive? Well, don’t be. That’s the work of the Coliseum Square Association, alone. Those guys pay for its repairs when needed, they manually keep it clean, and I’ll leave it to your imagination how it would look if given over to the city.

(I said “finally” but there’s so much more: the Freret Neighbors United has been hard at work replacing their tree canopy that was so obliterated in the storms, and they also love hosting political debates. Audubon-Riverside has been investigating the closure of their closest fire station. State Street Drive is getting together a new Little Free Library. Milan built a phone tree to network reports of open-air drug deals and gun battles. They fight blight. They have holiday parties for kids who couldn’t have their own. And on and on.)

I’d even argue that, for many of the higher-functioning groups I’ve mentioned here and others, this charge of unaccountability is likewise baseless. They publish agendas regularly, they hold meetings in public places, they hold annual meetings where they select new board members from the public, and so forth. They don’t hide! They actually put themselves out there — isn’t it a little ironic that Mr Speir is being called out by name for being “unaccountable” by anonymous commenters (and to those of you who use your real name, thank you). Once, the Coliseum Square group had an agenda item to discuss noise from the Eiffel Society — so the owner showed up, responded, joined the board and is now on his second term.

Uptown Messenger has written on all of this, for these groups and many more. Not just printed press releases — we’ve sent an actual journalist to cover these things. Often me, but sometimes we’ve even paid others to go when I couldn’t. I think the work these groups do is important, and I’m not sure these groups have a better friend in the media than this website.

Yet, this perception problem persists. These opinions that neighborhood groups are overreaching and unreasonable somehow get held by pretty fair-minded people. And I believe it’s because these land-use issues are the sole things that neighborhood groups do that directly impact people far beyond their own neighborhood boundaries. Why do people dislike them? Because they want to go to a place like the legendary Jimmy’s in Carrollton (as do I), they hear some neighborhood group is opposing it, and ergo, neighborhood groups oppose the things they want. Doesn’t matter how many things the neighborhood has previously supported, or how many good works the association members have done.

Larry, I heard a while back of a technique used by one neighborhood association board to help inform its own opinions, and I guess I wish I saw it used more today. Hundreds of households voluntarily pay dues to each of these associations — so they must be doing something right, right? So, before their meetings, this association in particular would do an email poll of their members about whatever issue they were going to discuss. That way, if the people who lived closest to the place in question were the only ones who showed up, theirs weren’t the only opinions being represented in the room. Now, the association board didn’t hold itself to the results of the email poll — they reserved the right to hear the details of the issue and make their decision as leaders. But, at least they had some additional context for the decision — and when they wrote their letter to their council person or city planning, they’d just make note of the poll results to. “As a board, we voted this way for these reasons: _____. Also of note, an email poll of our members showed this: _____.” There’s nuances to it, but I think it would help counter this constant charge that the decisions made by neighborhood groups are being made by disproportionately small numbers of people.

I ardently support both civic involvement and local business. Uptown Messenger is intended to champion both. I don’t think our society is worth much without either, and I genuinely think there’s room for both. I actually think that both alcohol-serving establishments and neighborhood groups both get an unfair shake from the other side, and I also admit that both sides in their excesses are sometimes guilty of the things they are being accused of.

Our columnist, Owen Courreges, recently chose to write a column lampooning one neighborhood group for their decision on a land-use issue. I was emailed afterward by a member of another association — someone I know well and respect quite a bit — who felt that piece was insulting to associations in general. I made many of the same points to him that I’ve made here, and I offered to let him write a response. For his own reasons, he chose not to take me up. So I’d make the same offer to you. I’d genuinely love to publish your thoughts on the role of these associations in New Orleans civic life, and there’s a solid base of reporting here for you to build a case upon.

And now, I’ve got a Jimmy’s supporter waiting in my inbox to extend a similar offer to.