Petition to reenter unflooded areas of Uptown

[infrogmation]

To:  Mayor Ray Nagin and associated staff

Dear Mayor Nagin,

While we understand that much of New Orleans needs to remain vacant for health and safety reasons, we recognize that the Uptown area was spared much of the hurricane/flooding damage and thus we feel that it requires special consideration.

Specifically, we the undersigned, who are residents and business owners within the Uptown area, are asking for permission to be granted to return to this area.

Please consider at least temporary permission to allow us to retrieve our belongings and business papers. Later, we hope that this area may help to revitalize New Orleans. Thank you for the work you continue to do to restore this great city and thank you for considering our request…

http://www.petitiononline.com/UPTOWN/petition.html

Comments

[twillis.livejournal.com]

That sounds pretty good.

Another thing that might help is if you put together a sort of proposal regarding how you would go about doing this.

It might bolster your case if you had a clear plan of what you wanted to do, how you would go about it, what would be accomplished.

By this I mean, you might divide it up into three parts: Getting There, Collecting Stuff, Leaving.

"Getting There" could be broken down further into what sort of vehicles you'd need to bring in, how they would get there, the planned route, etc. Also maybe what sort of security and health personnel (I'm thinking first aid type stuff) would need to come along. How big a group would be going in at a time.

"Collecting Stuff" could be a procedure for securing house (like having security people check the building for problems before going in, I'm thinking looters, scared people, or even animals. Work out a procedure for labeling boxes, etc. Estimate how long you expect collection to take. (As a subset of the main Plan, each individual should have a personal plan for what they want to retrieve and where they believe it to be). Also might be useful to have a check list of items you expect to find so that if any have been stolen or damaged, you can provide that to your insurance company.

"Leaving" should cover your route out, where you are going to store stuff, etc. If we are talking a large amount of items, you might want to try to arrange storage beforehand.

You could use this to address the sort of security and health concerns that they Mayor's office would no doubt have. Plus, if you have already worked out the logistics, they wouldn't need to.

A methodical approach could help you guys too, in that you will no doubt have your hearts broken all over again, and again. Having a plan on paper might help you get through it, you know?

Don't know if I'm making sense or not. I'm just thinking that a good organized plan showing that you've given everything careful thought would emphasize the advantages of getting a headstart on revitalizing New Orleans while showing that you are attempting to minimize potential liabilities by addressing them in advance.

Does any of that make sense?