District A candidates address rentals, crime and flooding issues

NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — The night began asking each candidate if they support strict regulations on short-term rental properties.

All three that attended say keeping a tight leash on this business is a must, with candidate Robert Murrell going one step further.

“Ideally I’d like to put a ban on the practice of having short-term-rentals altogether,” Murrell said.

“They should be policed in the same way hotels are. They should have the same level of taxes applied,” District A candidate Alex Mossing said.

“Something that we can do immediately is increase nightly fees that are being charged to owners and the people that are paying to rent the spaces and we can use that for enforcement,” District A candidate Aimee McCarron said.

Each candidate was then asked how they would further combat violence in the city as well as expand on youth outreach.

“We need to take the maintenance portion of the budget and move that to parks and parkways so we can fully fund NORD in a way that they are providing only programing to kids. That they are not worrying about the maintenance of their facilities. That’s a different department,” McCarron said.

“Making sure that we have afterschool programs that address a variety of age levels and interest levels is really important,” Mossing said.

“We need to find ways to do violence intervention that doesn’t put people into the criminal justice systems,” Murrell said.

They then shared which policies they would support to help make District A more resilient to flooding.

“We should absolutely be focused on planting more of those trees we lost. A single Cyprus tree can soak up like 80,000 gallons of water at a time,” Mossing said.

“I want to see a focus on seeing green infrastructure and blue infrastructure to retain water as best as possible,” Murrell said.

“We also need to live with permeable concrete and blue infrastructure, that both the other candidates said, and tougher code enforcement on over concreting which I know is a huge issue on the upper part of District A,” McCarron said.

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