If the idea of the Draft Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance (CZO) makes you yawn, maybe this will make you wake up:  This is a once-in-a-generation change to the “DNA” of New Orleans.  The decisions soon to be voted on in this document by the City Council will affect YOUR neighborhood for years to come!
On September 9, the City Planning Commission voted to send a 684-page, redlined version of the Draft Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance (CZO) to the City Council.
This version contained many important differences from the previous version seen by citizens – many changes seem at the special requests of developers.  Yes indeed, it has good things in it – but it also actually loosens important protections for neighborhoods.

By: Keith Hardie

The Master Plan tells us what every New Orleanian already knows:  we are a city of neighborhoods, many of them  so completely unique that they could not be mistaken for any other place on earth. And, in its very first pages, the Master Plan promises to keep it that way, guaranteeing that  land uses will be "tailored to [the] character, conditions and needs of specific neighborhoods." 

Unfortunately, the proposed new Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance ("CZO"), though it is supposed to implement the promises of the Master Plan, breaks those promises in more ways than can be addressed in this column, but most of all by allowing live music in every restaurant from Lake Catherine to the Jefferson Parish line, and allowing restaurants city-wide to continue operations to as late as 2 AM.  Instead of recognizing the differences between neighborhoods, the proposed CZO, if approved by the Council, will impose a one-size-fits-all template, threatening to add quiet neighborhood restaurants to the growing list of late-night tourist traps.

When:                       
Monday, September 22, 10 to 11 a.m.
Where:                        
International High School of New Orleans 727 Carondelet St., NOLA                                
Who:                       
Mr. Raymond Hinz, Attache for education and linguistic cooperation, Consulate General de France 
And Mr. Sean Wilson, Head of School, IHSNO

Lusher Charter School senior Madeleine LeCesne, 18, was among five students appointed as a 2014 National Student Poet at the White House today by First Lady Michelle Obama. 

The First Lady hosted a poetry reading in the Student Poet’s honor where LeCesne and fellow honorees read original poems for the audience.  

The five recipients were chosen from over 13,000 entries nationwide for the honor. Earlier in the spring LeCesne was named as one of 37 poetry ambassador semi-finalists as part of the selection process for the new class of National Student Poets.    The other Student Poets were Weston Clark of Zionsville, Indiana; Ashley Gong of Sandy Hook, Connecticut; Cameron Messinides of Camden, South Carolina; and Julia Falkner of Louisville, Colorado.