Category: City Council

Food Trucks, Who’s Your Nanny?

I don’t know about you, but I sure am glad we have LaToya Cantrell making sure food trucks look pretty and Jackie Clarkson looking out for restaurants’ private property rights.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013 saw another round of debate over Councilmember Head’s proposed food truck ordinance changes. I have been critical over a number of the changes, but at least they’re a step in the right direction. However, I’m starting to wonder if the council will even take that first step.

Councilmember Cantrell apparently thinks New Orleanians have difficulty distinguishing between food trucks and carnival-food vendors. How else could she justify suggesting an aesthetic requirement on truck operators? Aside from this being a ridiculous idea, I have a question for Councilmember Cantrell. Who’s aesthetic standard will apply? Yours (which could be awesome or terrible, but that’s irrelevant)? Or will it be some generic, uniform design that will actually make it more difficult to distinguish between the trucks? Newsflash, it is not the role of the government to decide what is aesthetically preferable. Get out of the way and stop playing government Nanny. Aesthetics have absolutely nothing to do with whether the trucks operate in a safe way in preparing food for their customers.

I reserve my most significant outrage for economic protectionist, Councilmember Clarkson. She believes it is her job on the council to protect restaurants from having to compete with those big, bad food trucks who are stealing everybody’s business. Ms. Clarkson does not think food trucks should be able to operate within 100 feet of an existing restaurant. Don’t ask her what a suitable distance is though, she has no idea.

“You’re talking about land owners, private property rights, you’re talking about tax payers on property. I come from that world…I’m trying not to get into measurements with you, and I’m trying not to argue.”

Well Ms. Clarkson, you are wrong in several ways. First, lets talk about those land owners and private property rights. You are allowing restaurant owners to tell other business owners where they may operate on public property (streets). A restaurant’s property rights and land ownership do not extend to the parking spaces on the public street. Also, I fail to see how your argument is in any way logical. Do you complain when a restaurant opens within 100 feet of another restaurant? What about when a bank opens within 100 feet of another bank? A salon 100 feet from another salon? You get the idea. If we were to apply your reasoning to all aspects of commerce we would quickly see New Orleans devoid of commerce. The better idea is that there be no distance requirements. Look at the line of art galleries on Royal St, the bars and restaurants on Magazine and Oak to name just a few examples. When businesses compete with and complement each other it creates thriving neighborhoods and districts. This is what your policy would prevent, Ms Clarkson.

Second, food trucks also pay taxes. They pay sales taxes on all their supplies, they pay fuel taxes on their gasoline, they contribute to payroll taxes, federal and state, for their employees, and they collect sales taxes for the city of New Orleans. The point isn’t that restaurants pay more taxes because of property taxes. That is a choice restaurant owners made when they went into business.

At the core of the issue is that banning food trucks from reasonable operating locations serves only one interest. The interest of a business that has set hours, a set location, seats, air conditioning and heating, etc. This restriction protects the business that already has all the advantages. The public is the group that suffers.

If you keep up your nanny-like behavior Ms. Clarkson, I will be happy to help send you back to the world you so proudly come from next election.

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Tax Breaks For All

Since 2008, 62 “cultural districts” have been created in Louisiana. Of those 62, 20 are in Orleans Parish. Currently, a 63rd is being proposed for the Uptown-university area of New Orleans.

According to the Louisiana Culture, Recreation, and Tourism Department, “The primary goal of this initiative is to spark community revitalization based on cultural activity though tax incentives.” To accomplish this goal, they allow artists selling their original artwork within the districts to waive sales taxes. Also, owners of “historical” properties (i.e. 50 years old or more) can receive tax credits for renovation work.

I requested and received the annual reports for all 20 of the New Orleans districts. The data can be found here. For some reason, the Lincoln Beach district did not file a report for 2011 though. If you wish to see other years, simply change the year in the domain name.

If the goal of the New Orleans City Council is to make all of New Orleans one giant cultural district, they are well on their way.

 

The red blocks are the existing districts, with the blue being the newly proposed district.

I began this post with an aim different from where I wound up. Originally, I intended to dig through the annual reports to see if these districts were truly gaining anything from these special tax breaks. Also, I wanted to try and quantify the cost associated to taxpayers for these breaks. During my research though, I discovered that last Monday, July 23, 2012 was the first day of an investigative panel seeking to quantify all the tax breaks given in the entire state of Louisiana. I’ve sent an email to the head of the review committee to specifically request they not overlook the cultural districts. The results of this review are due by February 1, 2013, so I will eagerly await their report and save my time for other projects.

However, as I thought more about the issue, I realized my position had somewhat drifted. Yes, we need “to flush out low-performing and obsolete tax incentives by exploring their economic impact and value to those affected by them,” as House Speaker Chuck Kleckley, R-Lake Charles, a member of the Revenue Study Commission, put it. But, we also need to use the data to better simplify the tax code so all Louisianans benefit.

After all, a tax break or incentive simply allows people or businesses who earn income to keep more of their income. That is not a bad thing. Where it can get out of hand though, is when some parties are benefiting more than others simply due to their lobbying might. I’m excited to see the commission’s results and what kind of drastic, beneficial changes can result for all Louisiana taxpayers over the next year.

 

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Council Gets Back to Black vs White Version 2.0

Unfortunately, it appears I was correct in my last post. Possibly overlooked as a result of the more advertised decision to support NIMBYs and hamper Tulane’s new football stadium plans, was this little nugget from Thursday’s (May 3, 2012) New Orleans City Council meeting.

Seriously, what else could Hedge-Morrel and Johnson’s childish reaction signal? Yes, race politics are still alive and well in this city.

I had hoped to use this post to take the rare opportunity to praise Johnson and Hedge-Morrel for opposing the vote yesterday on the Interim Zoning District, but alas, it must be overlooked as a result of their final actions of the day.

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Council Gets Back to Black vs White

Don’t worry, I already expect racism accusations in response to this post, but it’s something I feel needs to be put out there before any decision is made by the New Orleans City Council.

There’s been a lot of discussion recently about changing the way we elect Councilmembers At-Large. Currently, all candidates run together on one slate and the top two vote getters receiving over 25% of votes are elected. Apparently, a number of elected officials have a problem with this. Their stated reasoning is that those elected are not chosen by a 50%+ majority, and therefore do not “represent” the majority. Their solution is to have two separate seats on the ballot so winners have a clear majority.

I do not believe their stated reasoning is the truth, unfortunately. Based on the comments centered around the council runoff between Stacy Head and Cynthia Willard-Lewis, I fully believe what’s actually going on is a way to underhandedly assure that one at-large seat is held by a white person and one seat is held by a black person. Of course no one could ever publicly state that that is what’s happening, but why wouldn’t it be? Members of the black New Orleans political class continually insist that race is the reason for every perceived slight.

How else could you interpret comments like Willard-Lewis saying in reference to all portions of the community feeling “they have access and that their voices will be welcome, respected and heard?” Or even more blatant, New Orleans native and former mayor of Atlanta, Andrew Young, stating “If you don’t have somebody representing you in public office, you really don’t get your share.” Translation; white people only represent other white people.

As a white person, I find these comments to be completely offensive. Also, Willard-Lewis and Young are being incredibly irresponsible. Instead of using their positions of influence to try and help remove economic, societal, and governmental barriers they prefer to hold their community back. Real opportunity and achievement is colorblind and until they stop viewing the world through a racial lens they will only fall further out of touch with the New Orleans of 2012 and beyond.

 

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City Council Not Hailing A Cab Anytime Soon

Numerous times I’ve pointed out some of City Councilman Jon Johnson’s dumber comments and ideas. However, I’m happy to say I agreed with him last week. While reading over the Times-Picayune wrap-up of the new taxi regulations, was this encouraging statement, “I don’t know how we can rationally say to someone that … (the) investment can be taken away from him or her without properly compensating that person.”

Johnson’s comment was in reaction to the terrible passage of changing the characterization of Certificates of Public Necessity and Convenience (CPNC) from property owned by driver’s or cab companies to privileges bestowed to them at the mercy of the city council.

It’s bad enough that New Orleans arbitrarily limits the number of CPNCs, but now they’ve made a cartelized system even worse for individual owner-operators and smaller cab companies. What single driver would go to the effort and expense if his livelihood could be revoked at any moment, while also prohibiting him from selling his CPNC to start another career? I highly suspect this was a move requested by companies like United Cab to give them some protection on the back end to make up for the costs they will incur to make the required upgrades. Under the guise of “consumer protection” and “tourism” the council was only too happy to oblige.

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