"Innovative"

Photo courtesy of Sandra Stokes.

Perhaps he was talking about the VA Footprint house moving effort, which was funded by CDBG dollars.  That undertaking could conceivably bear the label.

But the Times-Picayune story today doesn't make any notation to that effect.  Instead, we see Mayor Mitch Landrieu praising the LSU/VA hospital complex itself as innovative:

"From the hospital complex rising in Mid-City to ongoing renovations at the airport and the Superdome to a wave of new schools that will be built with FEMA dollars, the mayor said New Orleans is emerging as a 'laboratory' for the innovative use of tax dollars to create jobs."

I'm sorry.  The leveling of 70 acres of neighborhood in a national historic district in one of the most historic cities in America - when far less destructive alternatives were available - is the absolute antithesis of innovative.  It's failed urban renewal razing of the inner city all over again.  The City should be ashamed that it permitted the federal and state governments to use taxpayer dollars to displace over 500 residents and over 50 businesses trying to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina.