I’m sick of the New Orleans Way of doing things. Who you schmooze shouldn’t cut it anymore. Who you know shouldn’t give you an inside track, even if you are a screw-up. Just because your mama was the Queen of Comus shouldn’t give you a leg up.

Times are getting tough for New Orleans: It has never fully recovered from the blow of the terrorist attack on Bourbon Street in January 2025. While local hospitality businesses, musicians and music venues capitalized on the presence of the Superbowl, it was expected that the city would recover and continue an upward trajectory, welcoming visitors as the city’s main economic driver. But that didn’t happen because of the turmoil created by the current federal administration, and it’s become obvious that it’s gotten worse with the most recent government shutdown that’s negatively affected travel all over the country—something over which we have no control.

We’ve depended on visitors and conventions for as long as I can remember (in years past, the CVB focused on conventions, but in hindsight, putting all of our eggs in that basket has not been the best thing our city could have done). A city’s economy dependent almost totally on tourism as the major support of its economic well-being and tax revenue is at the mercy of the state, the overall economy as well as transportation interruptions. We need a more diversified economy. If nothing else, we have to try to attract a different kind of visitor, one who’s interested in our culture, history, architecture and not getting drunk or high 24/7. We’ve catered to the lowest common denominator of visitor for too long. We should concentrate on changing that. Yeah, we love our ongoing party, but if this mentality isn’t producing good results for the city as a whole, we have to come up with a different strategy.

Additionally, the last mayoral administration seems to have been asleep at the wheel leaving the city mired in a massive deficit situation, which will have to be addressed and remedied by the new Mayor Helena Moreno and the City Council.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell managed to claim a significant portion of the hotel tax revenue from city coffers, which last year was $5 million. We certainly applauded this effort, but it seems to have concentrated more on free money for certain people and organizations, rather than using some of the tax money to build something that will benefit everyone, not just a few people. The hotel tax supports the New Orleans Cultural and Tourism Fund (NOTCF)—renamed a “foundation.” NOTCF is the non-profit that disperses the $5 million hotel tax revenue to culture bearers, organizations, festivals and others. I would expect that revenue to be substantially reduced after this year.

Many culture bearers and creatives have applied for and received grants from the NOTCF— and accounted for half—almost $2,500,000 of the total money in 2024 (latest report available). Recipients of funding over $50,000 included the largest festivals in the city: New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival ($95,000), French Quarter Festival ($75,000), “Festivals For Good,” National Fried Chicken Festival ($70,000), “Funky Town Festival Productions” NOLA Funk Fest ($50,000) and more, plus such entities as the Idea Village, NOCCI, the Tulane Educational Fund and many more. See this article for a breakdown of grant recipients over $2,500.

In the meantime, the city’s Nighttime Economy Office (OffBeat has been promoting for over a decade) has been housed in the Mayor’s Office. It’s supported the crucially important New Orleans Music Census and has developed actual information and strategic guides to the music economy. Good for them.

Having been around this city’s business and government leaders since the 1980s, I think there’s something wrong with the NOTCF and the way revenues are used and dispersed. There are lots of rumbling that the NOTCF funds are distributed to “friends” of NOTCF decision makers. No one will say anything publically, of course, knowing that those grants are there for the taking, if you have a good enough relationship with NOTCF people and you fill out a grant application.

The new administration has to have a “come to Jesus” meeting to decide how the hotel tax funds are distributed in the future. Giving out grants to friends and high-profile events just because someone requested it is just not practical or sustainable, given the city’s massive deficit and the decline in tourism.

First of all, the NOTCF’s fund disbursement and annual reports should include information on the actual reason grants were provided to any entity. These should be in a place where the public can see to whom and why grants were given. Info should be accessible to the public on an ongoing basis. That’s not hard to do online. What were the funds supposedly used for? Are there records of how the money was actually used? Shouldn’t that be required? How were recipients selected? What were the criteria? Transparency is key to the credibility of NOTCF funding. Otherwise, the grousing about lack of transparency and favoritism will continue, and I would bet we would be throwing money at people or organizations who may be misusing grants.

Then there’s the probability that there may be wasteful redundancy in the use of the hotel tax funds. Can’t every office that has anything to do with the “cultural economy” be housed in one location—in one office—so that the Nighttime Economy Office, The Film Office, the Cultural Economy Office, with liaisons from zoning and permitting for events, NOPD, New Orleans & Co., GNO, Inc., etc. be contained in one Economic Development Office? Shouldn’t that office be coordinated so that everyone would know what’s going on—to work together more effectively and efficiently? That’s sure not happening now.

And finally, and this is a big one: we need specific goals and strategies to reach them that can be checked-off over time—with the goals specifying measurements that demonstrate how far we’ve come to achieve the objective. The city should set and expect goals to be achieved that can be measured in numbers. For example—and I will use music industry development as an example, since I’ve been involved in it since before OffBeat even came into being. I’ve attended dozens, maybe hundreds, of meetings, conferences, and think tanks over almost 40 years, and I’ve yet to see a real-time established goal that will mean that New Orleans has achieved a level of success in growing its music industry. At this point, there is no definition of what a New Orleans “music industry” is. Isn’t it important to know exactly what we want to be? A music city like Nashville? A tech center like Austin? A live music mecca, like what New Orleans already is? A few years ago, GNO, Inc. paid a consultant hundreds of thousands of dollars to do focus group-based research just to determine (in its final report) that New Orleans needed sync rights agencies. How many of these have been established in the past five years as a result of this proclamation? The ostensible goal was to license local musicians’ music rights to music supervisors in films. Considering GNO Inc. invested a lot of money to determine this goal, wouldn’t it be apropos to delineate the expectations and effectiveness of that investment?

We need goals of what we want New Orleans to be, culturally and economically in four to 10 years. We need solid, definable goals (numbers of businesses, employees, growth in festivals, SA&PC parades, Black Masking Indian funding per gang, etc.) so that we can measure how well we are doing, all oriented towards achieving specific goals. We need to work together for the sake of the city as a whole, not for individual businesses alone. The city does has the ability to create laws and rules that could improve our culture, and our entertainment centers, like Bourbon and Frenchmen Streets.

I have rarely seen cohesiveness in city government, and given the straits that New Orleans finds itself in now, creating and working responsibly towards set goals seems to be the most efficient, savvy and effective way to go. For goodness’ sake, can we stop the surface schmoozing, backdoor dealing, and sloppy practices that continue to sabotage this beautiful unique culturally-significant city? Can we just try to set some laws and practices that will put New Orleans on the right track?

Determine the goals for the next four years, eight years, 10 years. Determine what needs to be done to achieve goals with measurable successes over time that can be monitored and adjusted, if necessary. Evaluate the success based on numbers, what’s working and what’s not. Correct strategies if needed. Achieve the goals.

We can’t continue as a successful city by depending on the schmooze, bullshit, lack of real knowledge and giving away money.  We need tangible results. Throwing money at people, businesses and organizations without demanding results from these grant recipients should be over. It’s not a healthy or effective way to improve or grow anything.  Getting free dough,  based on “who you know” and who you schmooze has to change. It’s time to cut the crap, and get our hands dirty, be ready to work hard—this does not rule out creatives—and to hold people responsible. New Orleanians are in this together and we have to make changes to keep us on the right track to success—but first we have to decide what success is and all agree to set our sights on it.