Restoration 2007 Plenary Sessions
Restoration 2007 has exciting and informative plenary sessions planned, which feature several distinguished speakers.
Welcoming Remarks from the City of New Orleans and Opening Keynote by Dr. Douglas Brinkley -- May 2, 4:00 p.m.
The second annual Restoration conference kicks off with welcoming remarks from the Honorable Mayor C. Ray Nagin from the City of New Orleans and others to be followed by an opening talk provided by Dr. Douglas Brinkley.
Within 30 days after Hurricane Katrina, Mayor Nagin developed the Bring New Orleans Back Commission to develop a master plan for rebuilding and repopulating New Orleans. Each committee within the commission was tasked with formulating and designing ways to improve infrastructure and economic development, urban and city planning, education, healthcare, government effectiveness, culture and tourism.
After months of widespread community input and deliberations the commission issued a final report that has provided a blueprint for bringing our great city back. That report is today being supplemented by individual neighborhood planning through the joint effort of the Commission, Louisiana Recovery Authority and the New Orleans City Council. The City is well on its way to full recovery and has beaten all the experts re-population projections by more than 100,000 residents.
After the conference welcoming remarks, ICMA is please to present a keynote presentation and talk from Dr. Douglas Brinkley, Director of the Theodore Roosevelt Center for American Civilization and Professor of History at Tulane University, author of The Great Deluge.
Five of Dr. Brinkley’s books have been selected as New York Times “Notable Books of the Year”: Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years (1992), Driven Patriot: The Life and Times of James Forrestal, with Townsend Hoopes (1992), The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter’s Journey Beyond the White House (1998), Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company and a Century of Progress (2003), and The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast (2006).
Dr. Brinkley is contributing editor for Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times Book Review and American Heritage. A frequent contributor to the New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly, he is also a member of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Century Club. In a recent profile, the Chicago Tribune deemed him “America’s new past master.”
Restoration 2007 Town Hall Plenary, May 4, 10:45 - 12:00 p.m.
Rebuilding a Sense of Community After a Disaster
During this interactive plenary session, a panel of experts from various stakeholder backgrounds and experiences will respond to your questions from the audience on topics critical to community and economic restoration.
ICMA is pleased to have David Meeks as moderator for Restoration 2007’s Town Hall Plenary. David is the city editor of The Times-Picayune. After New Orleans flooded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, forcing the paper to temporarily relocate to Baton Rouge, Meeks, then the paper’s sports editor, led the newspaper’s on-the-ground coverage for six weeks in the devastated city.
Setting up makeshift bureaus in colleagues’ homes in the unflooded sections of the city and using a newspaper delivery truck to get around, Meeks directed what came to be known as the “New Orleans bureau.” The reporting team was an eclectic group that included the editorial page editor and her deputy, the art critic, music critic and religion writer, two metro desk reporters, photographers, the Saints beat writer, a sports copy editor and an attorney. For five days after the hurricane, before soldiers arrived to secure the city, the journalists were on their own. They worked in desperate conditions, moving from location to location as floodwaters advanced and reports of looting and lawlessness spread.
When the paper returned to New Orleans in October 2005, Meeks was named city editor. In April 2006, The Times-Picayune was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes, for public service and breaking news coverage.
Confirmed participants include:
- Jon Luther, Executive Vice President, Home Builders Association of Greater New Orleans
- Dr. Vera Triplett, Chair of New Orleans Community Support Organization
- Richard P. Weiland, CEO of the International Code Council
- Dr. Edward Blakely, Executive Director of Recovery Management from the City of New Orleans
- Kay Kell, City Manager of Pascagoula, MS
- Stephen Villavaso, Villavaso & Associates, New Orleans Regional Planning Commission & American Planning Association
- Tim Keeney, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oceans and Atmosphere, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce
- Bill Brown, Regional Director for Gulf Initiatives, Fannie Mae