Caddo Parish Sheriff Angry After Recent Meeting With FEMA

[struggle4progress]

You can find FEMA trailers throughout Caddo Parish, and that's a problem for Sheriff Steve Prator, who met with a FEMA representative on Monday. Prator says, "we call it FEMA, but the truth of the matter is it's not FEMA. It's private contractors". Prator and other Northwest Louisiana officials met with FEMA and the Louisiana Hurricane Housing Task Force last Thursday. The leaders were told the parish governments had the final say on placing FEMA trailers. Prator says, "in our meeting yesterday, he said we must have misunderstood that because even after the meeting, they were moving trailers". FEMA supplied Prator with a list of about 15 trailer sites, one prator has no confidence in. Prator says, "we know there's other places they're working that's not on the list".

The FEMA representative gave parish officials more disturbing news, telling them how the housing process will go. Prator says, "he said we can expect 100 percent occupancy in every trailer park in Caddo Parish and any piece of property that is zoned to allow trailers will be at 100 percent capacity, and we have no say on that. We're going to have a say on undeveloped land that's going to be turned in to trailer parks". Prator continues, "100 percent occupancy, and creating new trailer parks, that would bring new stresses and stretches with respect to protecting the citizens of Caddo Parish". Prator also says the FEMA representative did not shy away from concern that 80-100,000 more evacuees could come back to Louisiana; right here, to northwest Louisiana.

If FEMA does plan to put trailers in rural Caddo Parish, it may not have many road blocks, because there are very few parish regulations on private property.

http://www.ksla.com/Global/story.asp?S=4059755&nav=0RY5

[tularetom]

1. Your last paragraph says it all.

While I understand and even sympathize with the sheriff's concern for keeping order in the face of perhaps thousands of hurricane evacuees moving into his jurisdiction, it appears to me that local officials are partly responsible for the problem by taking a laissez faire approach to zoning and land use regulations. If private property rights outweigh the public interest, this is the end result. There will always be a property owner willing to sell his land to the highest bidder no matter what the impact might be on his community.

Not to defend FEMA but it seems to me that Prator's real bitch is with his local legislators who allowed this situation to arise.

[No Exit]

3. I don't think so.

I read it as FEMA telling the parish authorities that this is the way it will be. I don't read it as local property owners supporting what FEMA's doing.

The original post said nothing about "selling land".

What's so terrible about a laissez-faire attitude about zoning and land use regulations in a rural, moderately-populated parish? People move to the country to get away from hyper-regulation of how they use their property.

[No Exit]

2. So the federal government can just confiscate people's private

land and use it to put housing on?

So I thought the republicans were the party that holds sacred the principle of private property, and the democrats were the party that believes in communism and "from each, according to his means, to each, according to his needs"?

[Chomskyite]

4. I smell classism and racism too.

Here on the northshore, there's been a lot of reaction from local upper-class whites to the idea of blacks and Hispanics and poor whites living next to them in trailers. The first guy Mary Landrieu beat, Woody Jenkins, is spearheading the anti-trailer efforts down here.

[...of J.Temperance]

5. I BET you anything in 2008 the GOP will run Woody Jenkins

Against Senator Landrieu. The man is a certified nutjob, he's like Tony Perkins on Hillbilly Heroin.

The Caddo Sheriff and the Shreveport Mayor just need to tell FEMA to go and stick it where the sun don't shine, I know I would.

I can't remember if this is the SAME Sheriff, who after Junior's pointless appearance in Shreveport for the even more pointless Suzanne Haik Terrell...this Sheriff blasted that "I resent Bush coming to Shreveport".

We need to put these uppity Repukes in their place, and we need to start doing it NOW. The time is NOW, considering Fuckface in the WH has an approval rating of 40%

[Feron]

6. I wouldn't bet on that...

The GOP will run somebody like Jay Dardenne, James David Cain, or John Kennedy if he switches parties.

Woody Jenkins may have name recognition, but he tore his drawers after the '96 recount debacle. Jenkins would only be a candidate of absolute last resort and the GOP isn't desperate.

[...of J.Temperance]

7. Well

I'm not sure Dardenne or Cain could win...and Kennedy didn't get too far when he ran for Governor.

The Louisiana GOP ain't desperate but they are pretty stupid. Who in their right mind would have run Terrell AGAIN and AGAINST Foti?

Senator Landrieu will fight whoever like a junkyard dog and leave them in a pool of blood.

[Scout1071]

8. As said from week one - let the Disneyfication of Nawlin's begin.

No way they want all those poor people back after they invest that much money to rebuild the city.