The consultant is "to provide expertise and assess efficiency opportunities with the primary goal of making New Orleans a safer place."
Although the council must appropriate the money for the Police Department and other local criminal justice agencies, and its members obviously have a deep interest in how well those agencies perform, the NOPD reports to the mayor, and the council usually has avoided getting so involved as to do things like officially "assessing efficiency opportunities."
Williams, however, complained that the city's public safety budget "grows bigger every year, but we are not getting better outcomes. ... We cannot continue to just throw money at the problem. We need to be strategic and surgical. We cannot be afraid to try new approaches. We also have to meticulously track all data to ensure that our dollars are spent wisely and are yielding the dividends promised."
How might the mayor-elect feel about what some might view as a potential encroachment on her authority?
She said she's all for it.
"In regards to public safety, I fully believe in building upon the spirit of collaboration so that these decisions aren't coming solely from the mayor," Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell said in voting to issue the RFQ.
"This will force us to work together as a team to make this city safer because we still haven't seen a real impact from the systems we have in place now. This represents a great step in the right direction for this council and entire city of New Orleans."
Historically, promises of cooperation between new mayors and councils have not always worked out. But perhaps things will be different come next May.
©2017 The Advocate, Baton Rouge, La. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
