NEW ORLEANS -- As New Orleans faces a budget shortfall of tens of millions of dollars this year, the candidates who hope to be mayor next year are weighing in on how they would handle the city budget. The six declared candidates for the city's top job each spoke about their plans to make the city budget process easier to understand and more efficient.
Mayoral candidate John Georges said the problem is two-fold: not enough public input and not enough money.
"The most important thing we can do for the budget is get sales tax revenue up, by improving economic development in our city," Georges said. "We can not have a dwindling tax base in our city."
What to do with the money the city does have, though, will come down to priorities, which could be dictated by the public during community meetings. It is an idea being pushed by several of the mayoral candidates.
"It's an opportunity for every resident and ever citizen to give impartial, unbiased, without any intimidating, input-- just as we did with the Unified New Orleans Plan," said mayoral candidate Troy Henry. "That way, every resident gets a keypad, they get a chance to vote and prioritize on where the direction the city needs to go in."
"Six months before the budget is even due, we would have meetings in every council district with residents to find out exactly what their priorities are -- and the priorities that residents report are exactly what we would use to guide the budgeting process," said mayoral candidate James Perry.
"[It's about] going out into the community, having and conducting forums, having input onto the services the community wants and then looking at what can we afford, and letting the citizens know that it's a real process and their input is important," said candidate Nadine Ramsey.
For other mayoral candidates, the biggest problem with the city's budget is that not enough time is spent on it. As it stands now, the mayor presents it to the council 30 days before it needs approval.
"It shouldn't be a process you do 30 days before adopting a budget," said Leslie Jacobs, who entered the mayoral race on Wednesday. "It's a process you do all year long. We have to get good information out there, we have to partner with the council. We have to have total transparency."
"What I would do, and I'm from a state's perspective, the way we do our budget-- it comes out early in the year, we begin having budget hearings pretty early on," said mayoral candidate and state Sen. Ed Murray. "I think, as mayor, the city should produce a budget earlier."
The qualifying period for the mayor's race ends in December. The primary election is scheduled for Feb. 6 and the run-off election is scheduled for March 6.
