Alan Gutierrez

Working backwords from Paul Baricos.

Date: Fri, 26 May 2006 13:36:22 -0500
From: “Paul Baricos” To: “Gerald W. Billes”
Subject: Re: Hollygrove Planning

Mr Billes:

I have been told many times before to go to hell, but never so thoroughly. First my personal response. I found your email insulting, divisive, and detrimental to the good of the neighborhood. We have been told in no uncertain terms and many times that we (neighborhoods) must plan if we are to survive. For months now we have been doing just that in Hollygrove and in scores of other neighborhoods. At the meeting last week at St. Joan of Arc we asked you, Lonnie Hewitt, and Shelia Danzig if planning efforts currently underway by local groups would be taken into consideration and you all responded emphatically yes. Now we are told not to get in the way, leave it to the so-called professionals. This is outrageous. We have worked very hard, have attempted to be as inclusive as possible, and have welcomed everyone in Hollygrove and surrounding areas to participate. We will not be excluded from this process.

I will pass along this email to our group at our Saturday meeting. We are not “confused” about what we have been doing “uninterruptedly” for over four months. I will recommend that we contact the Lambert group and/or the City Council to get an explanation on your role and ours in the “official” planning process.You are being paid with public money and we deserve such an explanation.

Paul Baricos

This is in response to this response.

On 5/26/06, Gerald W. Billes (gbilles@billesarchitecture.com) wrote:

Paul,

I appreciate the information you have sent to me. No one from our Neighborhood Planning team will be attending your volunteer group meeting on Saturday.

Although your efforts may have been well intentioned prior to our assignment to the Neighborhood Planning project currently underway, we ask that you respect the residents of Hollygrove and the planning team assigned by allowing the process to flow uninterruptedly. At this time my presence may only serve to confuse citizens in Hollygrove who may get the false impression that there is an association between our funded professional effort and your volunteer splinter group who has no official capacity to produce a “plan” for Hollygrove. You are invited to continue to attend our meetings and participate as other citizens have in our official planning effort and appropriately present information you have gathered. The information will be treated as a single point of view, however, until a consensus of those living in the individual neighborhoods has been reached. Points of view by those living in the neighborhood and expressed in our meetings will be given more weight than those by non-residents. We have begun to gather our own information through in-field surveys and other research methods and through neighborhood meetings we have begun to have. We will put pertinent material into our report and make recommendations that we feel is most relevant to the recovery effort.

We would appreciate you explaining these facts and the ad-hoc and unofficial nature of your effort to anyone attending your meeting. Please explain that there will be duplication of effort in what you are attempting to achieve and our planning process since we may be going through similar steps to gain information and insight into the needs and desires of the neighborhoods for which we are attempting to plan. Thank you for the invitation, non-the-less.

Gerald W. Billes, AIA, NCARB

Which is in response to this inquiry.

Mr Billes:

I met you at the Dixon/Hollygrove/Leonidas planning meeting. For several months a group in Hollygrove has been meeting focusing on planning issues. In addition to many smaller meetings we had several large meetings facilitated by architects from City Works - Angela O’Byrne was our primary contact. H.V. Nagendra of Blitch Knevel, a Carrollton resident, has also helped out. Steve Villavaso also attended several meetings. The meetings were primarily about visioning. At our last meeting we tried to put the vision into an action plan and also focused in on recovery activities (attached). Next week volunteers will begin surveying the Hollygrove neighborhood - both people and structures. I’ve also attached the survey instruments although we plan to modify them somewhat.

At our next meeting scheduled for Saturday, May 27, 9:00 am, Carrollton United Methodist Church, 921 S. Carrollton Ave., we planned to break into small groups outlined in the planning summary document attached. These groups would then implement the action items. We also want to identify and recruit block captains to keep communication’s open.

The impetus behind this has been an organization called Trinity Christian Community (TCC) - a social service organization located in Holly grove for over 15 years or so. Kevin Brown heads it up. We also started a CDC associated with TCC - I work with it as a volunteer. I live on Cohn St. in Carrollton, near the cemeteries.

We’ve tried to be as inclusive and open as possible. We certainly want to work with you in any way possible and look forward to intergating our work with the overall planning of District 3. I hope that you can attend next Saturday (and help facilitate the process) and would appreciate any comments or suggestions on our work so far. Please let me know.

Thanks.

Paul Baricos

Paul Baricos hosted the Web Publishing Workshop at the New Orleans Housing Resource Center. A mere 24 hours ago, he earned my gratitide.

I’m not alone.

I know nothing of Billes Architecture.

Paul Baricos holds workshops to teach homeowners how to navigate the bureaucracy. He’s created a well appointed office space from which homeowners can work. His was an early response, and continues to be an effective one.

This outrage is circulating far and wide.

When we got back, those of us who could get ourselves in order stepped out into our yard and asked, where’s the city? Rather than wait, we organized to govern ourselves. It’s been difficult without any funding or government support.

Now that there are funds available, there are professionals to spend them.