The New Orleans City Council held its regular meeting on Thursday, August 20, 2026, at 10:09 AM in City Hall Council Chamber, adjourning at 1:21 PM. All seven council members were present (McCarron, Hughes, Morrell, Willard, King III, Green Jr., Harris) for most of the meeting, with occasional absences. The council addressed a wide range of items including consent agenda approvals, an HDLC appeal, numerous zoning docket deferrals, funding for the Right to Counsel program, energy benchmarking amendments, community solar consolidated billing, polling place changes, multiple servitude agreements, appointments to boards (particularly the Sewerage and Water Board), and recognitions of the Young Leadership Council's 40th anniversary, retiring employee Tanga B. Wilson, and the EMLINE Foundation's Designer Kids 2 LA Fellowship cohort.
All right, good morning, everyone. Can we ask everybody to take their seats? We have a uh brief pre proclamation. Um, Sus, I'm gonna ask if you all want to come to the table really quick. As we all know, we are uh on a cusp of um commemorating the twenty first of Hurricane Katrina. And um, we have a a group of individuals uh led by our brother Susphive, uh, the Hurricane Katrina commemoration K twenty one committee who has been doing some extraordinary work uh over the years. Um, on behalf of our council president, he certainly apologizes that he's not here, he's in route, uh, had some uh matters that came up this morning that he needed to handle. Um, but the city council did want to acknowledge the extraordinary work, Seth that you uh and all of um you all are doing um to um commemorate uh the devastation, the challenges um of Hurricane Katrina. And so uh I I will give my colleagues the opportunity to say a few words. I'll start with Councilmember Green and then we'll uh go down the line. And um before we do that, Seth, why don't we just let you say a couple brief words and tell us about your work and and then we'll let the council members jump. Uh so of course I want to thank like this wonderful team that we have who work year in, year out uh on the particular work, also the hip hop compass uh who is present, who always support the work of New Orleans and the New Orleans Katrina commemoration. Uh, we appreciate the council for all the support that y'all do, everything y'all have done in these past couple of years that we've been uh collaborating on this uh Katrina anniversary. I also look forward to the future work that we are doing in this city to recognize the Katrina anniversary. Of course, uh making it a city holiday is uh always good for the city workers of New Orleans. Our goal is to make it a state holiday so that the citizens get the day off as well. Uh, but that's some future work that we definitely uh want you guys to collaborate with us on uh in the future. But this great body of uh organizers, they do uh some diligent work to make sure that the citizens who lost their lives in 2005 don't be forgotten, and also supporting the citizens who came back in 2005 and beyond to make sure that New Orleans uh is a great city to live in, and one day with the work of us uh collaborating, it'll be a city that is thriving for the citizens of this you know of New Orleans. And so uh we'll be here this year, next year, the next 10 years, the next 20 years, because we are dedicated for this work, and we just appreciate you guys recognizing us for the work that we're doing. Thank you, Susan, you know, you mentioned the um uh city holiday. We do want to acknowledge Council President Morel in his absence who uh was the lead sponsor on uh making that a holiday, but we want to acknowledge this entire council uh for co-authoring that um and and making that become a reality. With that, Councilmember Green. Thank you very much, Seth and the hip hop caucus and everyone who works hard to have us to remember Katrina. It's important to recognize that the work that you do, the many events that I attend, and thank you for those events, whether it be at the Lafite Greenway, whether it be you know at um different places throughout the city, help us to remember that 21 years later, we're still rebuilding in the city of New Orleans, and that Hurricane Katrina still has a permanent impact in many respects on our city. It helps people who are hit hard to remember that there are those out there who are thinking about them all the time, and also recognizes that the government still needs to do a lot to help us to recover from Katrina. My district includes a community, the desire community, for example, the Ninth Ward, which is still feeling significant effects of this storm. Helping us to remember, helps to keep people strong as we as we rebuild. Thank you for the work, and I look forward to celebrating with you for this 21st and for continuing years of observation. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Green. Um, our council president has arrived, so we're gonna let him um take the lead on this presentation. Well, thank you very much. I apologize for my tardiness. Um Seth's you and hip hop caucus have been uh fantastic, continuing each year to memorialize this tremendous historic, tragic event that has affected really the trajectory of our city, and not just the city as far as like its economic, but its socioeconomic, its cultural impact on the entire nation. I mean, when you look at what happened during Katrina and what was done to the city, and the lack of attention and effort that was done to bring people back, that has shaped the federal response to every single disaster afterward. Um though it was a horrific, tragic event that has deeply scarred our city. So many other communities around the country have experienced a very different response to federal disasters because of that. I mean even though Jimmy Carter created FEMA, FEMA was not up to the task of Katrina, and that led to people taking FEMA more seriously. With that being said, I think it's very very interesting. When I talk to Bill, they go, Well, we just did 20th. Why are we doing 21? I said, Well, I want to have you look at it a different way. Every single child born during Katrina is now 21 years old. Think about that for a second. So 18 is the age of majority. 21 is recognized not just by the government, but in our culture of really being that period where you fully become an adult, where Katrina has matured. And to that end, your remembrance, your celebration, your acknowledgement of Katrina has matured over the years as well. Because I mean, what one started, where you started versus where you were this year and where you were last year has grown and matured every single year, and you've continued to provide new and different ways to moralize this horrific event to all of us. So I look forward to Katrina 21. I mean, as much as one can look forward to Katrina Remembrance Day, having been through it, but it's just so important to teach generations, and I mean plural, generations of New Orleans about the New Orleans that was pre-Katrina versus the New Orleans that was post-Katrina.