Leo Watermeier: High Hopes
by Bill Loefhelm

Watermeier, "a day spent away from New Orleans is a day wasted."

Leo Watermeier answered the door of his French Quarter campaign office smiling, looking professional in a shirt and tie, if in need of a little sleep. He was typing an e-mail evaluating the performances of the “major” mayoral contenders in the previous night’s televised debate. Repeatedly left off the invite list, he said e-mail had become the most effective way to communicate with constituents. He seemed pleased the Times Picayune had picked up some of his comments about the Big Three, including his observation on Ron Forman’s and Mitch Landrieu’s “lack of substance.” We began with his latest e-mail campaign salvo: the need for a new chief of police.

Watermeier believes crime has returned, saying, at least in the French Quarter, “the drug dealers have been back for three months. The only difference is that while there were two dealers for every block of Bourbon before the storm, now there’s only one.”

His criticism of current chief Warren Riley stems more from Riley’s rising from the rank-and-file than in performance. “I’d conduct a nationwide search for a new police chief. We need an outsider,” Watermeier said. “The department is too political to promote from within.” As a further counterbalance to in-house politics, Watermeier also wants an independent body to investigate public complaints against the department. He acknowledged it was not a new idea but that it hasn’t gotten any traction because “the police don’t want people looking over their shoulder.”

I asked Watermeier what he would do for the boots-on-the-ground, the “patrol officers, SWAT team members” and the like. He simply said he would “supply and pay them well, though, as city employees go, the police are among the highest paid,” adding “you can’t attract the best without paying them well.”

I pressed for detailed answers about specific problems such as the prevalence of guns on the streets. Watermeier said, “I don’t know what to do about guns; it’s legal to own one.” I pointed out that many of the guns in question are illegally owned and used. I added that guns made murder easy, and a lot of people who killed with them might not kill without them. “I don’t know what to do about that,” Watermeier repeated.

He had little more to say about the drug problem, advocating, as people have for years, “changing the culture” that young people experience in New Orleans. He recommended “doubl(ing) per-capita funding for NORD” to provide “alternatives for kids.” As for the recidivism that hallmarks the drug trade, Watermeier proposes “emphasizing treatment (for addicts) in and out of prison.”

On rebuilding issues, Watermeier, who lost his family home of fifty years in Mid-City flooding, sounded the familiar refrain that “every neighborhood has a right to rebuild,” noting that only Katrina’s last-minute wobble east saved the neighborhoods that remained dry. “There is no such thing as a safe neighborhood,” Watermeier said in regard to future storms.

“Public housing is a need,” he said, and suggested re-vitalizing the city’s housing projects into mixed-income developments. New Orleans should “look at other cities” for public housing solutions, Watermeier said, and he feels “HUD has the outsider status and independence” to address the housing crisis. He sees “no political way” to close battered projects such as St. Bernard and C.J. Peete and noted “there’s nothing wrong with most of the buildings”, though the projects must be better connected to their surrounding communities. Once the projects are revitalized, Watermeier said, many of the city’s homeless first responders could live there and mentioned establishing a mayoral residence in the Iberville projects.

Many of Watermeier’s plans follow a similar pattern: hire outside the system, increase budgets, institute apolitical ‘civilian’ oversight. A major plank of his campaign is empowering the Office of Inspector General, a city government oversight commission established in 1996, but never brought to life.

The question many of Watermeier’s plans obviously begs is, “How do we pay for all this?” Again, he insisted the answers come from the top. Even these days, the money’s there, Watermeier said, it’s just mismanaged.

According to Watermeier, Mayor Nagin has “225 political appointees” on the city payroll under such titles such as “urban policy specialists.” They are, Watermeier said, the city’s highest paid employees. He seemed especially offended by Terry Ebbert, Head of Homeland Security for the city, who earns $140, 000 a year, and who Watermeier considers an utter failure during the crisis, and an invisible man after. In contrast to overpaid appointees, Watermeier noted, “twenty to thirty-percent of city employees have incomes below the poverty level, and fifty to sixty-percent of employees at Parkways and the S&WB earn below poverty level salaries.” Added Watermeier, “no one who works for the city should live below the poverty level.”

As for challenging the incumbent, Watermeier says Nagin “didn’t walk the walk of good government.” He points to Nagin’s unfulfilled campaign promise to take professional service contracts out of the mayor’s office. He also criticized Nagin for “bad appointments, and a high turnover rate” at City Hall, as well as for creating the perception that Nagin is “kind of a phantom at City Hall” who communicates poorly, or not at all, even with his hand-picked top executives.

A pre-K challenger to the mayor, Watermeier concedes his chances “have dimmed” with the Post-K emergence of higher profile candidates. Still, he has high hopes for the city’s future. He believes, importantly, that New Orleans has not lost its seductive charms. He talked of a young couple he met who came to do recovery work and have since decided to stay. An owner of several rental properties in the Quarter, he noted that while some tenants have moved away, he has had no problem replacing them. Having stayed in the city until the Wednesday after the storm, and having returned in September, Watermeier still feels “a day spent away from New Orleans is a day wasted.”

Bill Loehfelm holds down the bar at Lucy's. Look for his reports on tending bar in the Crescent City in forthcoming issues of NOLAFugees.com.