The New Orleans City Council held a special meeting on January 28, 2026, from 9:00 a.m. to 10:38 a.m. to receive reports from the Louisiana Legislative Auditor on payroll and retention payments, adopt a substitute resolution releasing emergency payroll funds, and take initial steps to regulate data centers through comprehensive zoning amendments and an immediate citywide moratorium. Councilmembers present were Green, Harris, Hughes, King, and Willard (Vice President); Councilmembers McCarron and Morrell were absent at the start. Morrell later arrived for the vote on Motion M-26-62.
Madam Clerk. I received a letter November 14, 2025. Dear Madam Clerk, pursuant to my authority in section three dash one hundred seven five of the home rule charter of the city of New Orleans. These meetings will be limited to the discussion and consideration of matters relative to the current financial condition of the city, including without limitation the status of the general fund and any changes to be expected revenue of funding and ordinance number thirty thousand five twenty-two and any other matters that may properly come before the city council. As usual, we will have the legislative auditor come up and report to us on payroll. We need to suspend the rules to receive the first report from the legislative auditor. I'll move to suspend. Seconded by Council Vice President Willard. One more vote. Five years. And we need to suspend the rules to add it to the agenda. I'll move Councilmember King seconds. All in favor? Five years. We need to suspend the rules to add a second communication from the legislative order. I'll move. Council Vice President Willard seconds. All in favor. All right. And we need to suspend the rules to A. I'll move. Uh Councilmember Green seconds. All in favor. Aye. You could just legislative auditor have the floor. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Mike Waggisback, Louisiana Legislative Auditor. Today, January 28th, we're here in accordance with the state bond commission terms and conditions for the approval of the City New Orleans 125 million dollar revenue note. And as of today, uh our preliminary review indicates that the city's request totaling five million five hundred and forty-six thousand four hundred and eighty-seven dollars and ten cents is outlined below for the transfer to the JP Morgan account. Um this amount, the five million five forty-six four eighty-seven and ten cents is payable to the Chase payroll card funding account is for the purposes of funding employee compensation and related employee and employer taxes. So if you go to summary A, you'll see the breakdown by police and fire, as well as some weekly payroll of the amount just mentioned. Then we have the breakdown by uh gross earnings on exhibit B showing the overtime pay. I'll note that this overtime pay in this particular pay period is three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars less than what they projected to spend, which is a good thing. And on exhibit C, we have the year-to-day payroll through uh January 24th, 2026. Uh gross earnings of roughly 29 million and overtime pay just over three million, which is about 10% of the gross. And after this payroll processing, it'll be we'll have a balance of roughly 13 million, but 12 million nine hundred and twenty-nine thousand three hundred and ten dollars. We'll note we had a question in the in the on an account service fee that we uh push back to city finance to check with the bank so that 8,322 and 35 cents was a little unusual for this type of account. So having having researched that, I think the uh the bank is in the process of reversing that that particular error on this count. Uh so we'll get we'll have that money and that'll increase the count by a slight amount. Um I can touch on the if it's appropriate now. Police retention payments. Yeah, hold on for one second. Are there any questions about this? Okay, if you will continue on the police uh retention payments. Yeah, so we spent uh a good part of last week and the weekend reviewing uh all the criteria and those who were eligible for this payment. It's roughly I think 800 folks that qualified, and out of the uh uh we we identified there's a total presented to us of nine million five hundred and sixteen thousand. We identified about six individuals that did not qualify, so we adjusted that down fifty-seven thousand three hundred and eighteen dollars and thirty cents. We sent those to the finance department HR, they concurred.