Henry Solution to Economic Growth

For too long New Orleans has been a tale of two cities. New Orleans is recognized worldwide for great food, history, and culture. And as Mayor, we will continue to support our largest industry…Tourism.   However, poverty in our Black community is at an all-time and unacceptable high.  It is the true root cause of the public safety problem that exist in New Orleans today.  My plan is to expand the job opportunities for our great city allowing more residents to earn a true living wage.

My goal as Mayor is to add 40,000 new good-paying jobs to New Orleans through aggressive recruiting of Fortune 1000 companies.  We will become a Global Jobs City by incentivizing companies to relocate to New Orleans, via a customized value proposition, and overhauling the training of our citizens so that they are prepared to take on the jobs of the future.  The corporate recruitment process will be extensive and unprecedented in the history of New Orleans.  Unlike any of my opponents, I have significant experience recruiting companies and structuring value propositions for Fortune 1000 companies.  It can be done and will be done under my administration on behalf of the citizens of New Orleans.

Now imagine a City with a rich cultural heritage, the world’s best food and architecture, and now a thriving job market where our best and brightest can stay in New Orleans and have a fulfilling career.   Our children and grandchildren will no longer have to move to another city for employment.  It’s what we all want…And I’m uniquely qualified to deliver!

Vote Troy Henry Mayor

Enjoy the video on my plans: http://www.troyhenry.com/index.php/economic-growth/

For more info go to www.troyhenry.com

Troy Henry’s Reasons that the Mayor Must Step Aside as Head of the Sewerage and Water Board

 Troy’s Background

• NO born and bred
• St Aug, Stanford, CMU – Engineer
• HP – Medical device critical systems
• IBM FS – LA Class subs critical systems
• IBM GS – high availability fault tolerant solutions
• EES – Critical industrial Power systems solutions
• UW – Municipal cites infrastructure for many cities
• Flooded Business owner

Technical Issues about Sewerage and Water Board

• Already under a consent order
• Unaccounted water over 40%
• Storm-water management is the simplest of the 4 systems – boil water advisory
• No overtime but contracted out
• Catch basin company told not to work
• No 25-cycle power migration plan
• Expedited work at a premium costs waste $$$ — EXPENSIVE

Landrieu’s poor management of S&WB

• Flooding due to mismanagement
• Root Cause analysis ($500K) – Incompetent Negligence
  • Shield the blame
• Every aspect of the S&WB is undermanaged – slow spender (HUD)
• No performance management system – dashboard
• 7 years of Landrieu leadership – devastated the organization
• A good executive inspects and interrogates staff
• Poor management begets mediocrity
• Employee morale is very low
• Over 300 vacant positions — Black male un-employment could be impacted
• Naïve and/or negligent

Politics

• Rate increase treats people as walking ATM’s
• Landrieu is the source of the cancer. His personal political agenda supersedes his public service
  • Hand-picked Board with political orientation no technical/industry experience
  • Unqualified hire – Grant – No National search
    • Cedric Grant worked for me in an administrative role. No real water management experience
  • Landrieu’s poor management created a culture of dishonesty and deceit at S&WB
  • Politics cost the S&WB 2 leader jobs (Miller/Grant)
  • Destabilized the organization
• Grounds for immediate dismissal – unacceptable results and deception
• Time to go to Aspen but not to inspect the S&WB system

Solutions

Preface – Not about privatization; it’s about execution

Public service should be the only motivation

Structural

• Mayor step down as President for the remainder of his term; industry-experienced pro-temp
• Add competent professionals with industry knowledge to the S&W Board of Directors
• Hire a real Executive team with significant industry experience or I will in May
• City Council should become a true regulator of the S&WB just like all other utilities with Service Level Agreements and Rate control
• Deploy a true Performance Management System — green, yellow, red

Technical

• Automated Meter reading which is a 20-year old technology
• Commit to engineering migration away from 25-cycle power system unreliable, expensive and difficult to maintain… use a multi-feed multi-fuel solution – fault tolerant
• Consistently Clean the catch basins more than once every 15 years – over-maintain low lying areas
• Provide real-time water quality testing and publish the results – Lead
• Implement a barrel-aging management system — RFID and/or GPS – 21 days max
• Implement a leak tracking and resolution system

Skills to Transform

• I have experience running large complex organizations
• I have experience with performance management and accountability systems
• I will implement best practices across the organization
• On the job training is costly and will erode public confidence
• If we want government to work for the people and not on the people’s nerves – Troy Henry is the only candidate
• No alphabet soup or blue-blood support, but I have a resume and experience to get the job done
• Don’t let these outside influences take over and run your gov’t with their agendas.

PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release:

NEW ORLEANS, LA,  August 17, 2017
Mayoral Candidate Troy Henry is holding  a Press Conference, Friday, August 18, 2017, in front of the pumping station at N. Broad and A.P. Tureaud  at 11:00 AM to demand that the mayor immediately relinquish control of the Sewerage and Water Board.

Read below some of the statement by Mayoral Candidate Troy Henry demanding that Mitch Landrieu resign as President of the Sewerage and Water Board.
“Mayor Landrieu has not only lost control of the pumps and generators, but also the board and the hard working employees of the Sewerage and Water Board.   Mitch has proven incapable of properly managing the 1100 employees of the Sewerage and Water Board.  After he stealthily maneuvered behind the scenes to wrestle complete control of the board, Landrieu has completely failed the citizens of New Orleans.  We are still weeks away from a fully operational water management department, and now we must all be nervous with a threatening thunderstorm. His decisions only endanger the citizens by failing to provide storm water protection.  New leadership is immediately required.

As a former senior executive and operator of multiple cities’ water, wastewater and subsurface infrastructure, and as a Mayoral candidate, I have extensive experience managing large city water systems. I will lay out several solid reasons why the mayor should resign as the President of the Board and offer immediate solutions that will permanently stabilize the situation.”

Troy Henry Announces his Campaign Team

Last week, I made my final decisions for the members of my Campaign Team. Every one of these members has demonstrated to me a level of commitment that exceeds beyond excellence and they believe in my vision for the future of NOLA. I am confident they possess the necessary qualities to advance my candidacy to success.

Letter to the Editor:

Based on my experience, many people have asked me what I would do in response to the recent flooding and the increase in flood risk.  The good news is that I can offer a realistic hope that this will not happen again, if we take the right actions.

As panic spreads among public officials and candidates, they may be tempted to recklessly throw money at the problem, or offload the problem altogether and hand it off to someone else (i.e. a private contractor).  But now is not the time to make expensive and permanent changes; it’s time instead for a sober and experienced approach that is focused on sound management principles, accountability and experience.

For several years, I served as President of United Water, one of the largest private water utilities in the nation.  UW owned numerous municipal water systems outright and managed others under various contracts across many states, serving residential and business customers.  On a daily basis, we made major decisions about how to structure our business relationships with local governments, what performance objectives to set and how to measure them, how to hold our managers responsible for results, and how to communicate with our many stakeholders. I learned that good management is not a slogan, nor an empty promise.  It involves a number of very specific actions that bring about real results in the real world.  What can my experience tell us about the situation with the Sewerage and Water Board today?

First, resources must be budgeted and deployed based on a rational understanding of the problems.  For instance, there are currently about 60,000 catch basins in New Orleans, yet the current plans are to service approximately 3,000 of them each year, using only 2 trucks.  This is inadequate, given the importance of storm water collection to overall performance and risk mitigation.  There are other examples.

Second, all departments and functions must have clear performance indicators for the key objectives of the organization.  We must have early warning systems to identify problems before they become critical.  Number of pumps functioning, water quality at points throughout the city, number, age and location of barrels deployed daily are a few examples of key performance indicators (KPI’s) that should at the fingertips of the SWB management and the public.

Third, SWB Management must operate in a fully professional manner.  It astonishes me to have to say this, but executives must tell the truth.  We need full transparency – not only public reporting on a web site (as suggested to the current administration years ago), but a culture of respect for facts and a zero tolerance policy on secrecy.

It is possible that the SWB and its management can be reformed to conform to these expectations, but it is also worth considering the possibility that ownership or management – particularly the water supply and wastewater treatment portions – could be transitioned to a private partner.   Many major water utilities have proven that in many circumstances this arrangement can be the best option for the interests of the public.

One option would be the transfer of management of the system to a private operator, analogous to the arrangement between RTA and Transdev.  A second option would be a sale of the assets and the full operation of the system to a private operator under a franchise arrangement, analogous to the transition of the NOPSI power system to Entergy New Orleans.   These might or might not make sense for New Orleans today; the answer depends on multiple factors to be considered hopefully by the next Mayor.  The current Mayor should remain focused on the immediate matters at hand.

However, one potential pitfall is worth mentioning.  From my experience in the water industry, historically the private sector has a limited to no appetite for assuming responsibility for stormwater management due to the substantial liability exposure (i.e. payment for damages in the event of an adverse event).  The worst of both worlds would be any arrangement that allows a contractor to manage stormwater but exempts them from liability for their failures.  That would leave the City with all of the risk and insufficient control.  Whoever becomes out next mayor, this option must be avoided.

As we consider the next steps in managing this significant infrastructural challenge, we should be mindful that there is no substitute for industry experience and proven leadership.  These are important/major decisions being contemplated….not the time for on the job training.

Troy Henry

Flood Solutions

by Jeff Thomas

The recent disgraceful and revealing flooding events of the last week portray a stunning catastrophe of errors in the administration of New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu.  We must be better.  The notion of state’s rights and local control is that in this vast country of ours, different regions have different priorities.  Miami, Florida sets the international standard for hurricane wind resistance.  Los Angeles, CA leads the world in earthquake construction.  New Orleans should lead the world in flood protection.   Sadly, little has changed in the last 20 years.   Cedric Grant, soon to be former head of the Sewerage and Water Board, repulsively said he was “tired of telling people the pumps can only pump out an inch of rain the first hour and a half of inch every subsequent hour.”

The unusual thunderstorm that dropped 8 inches of water in only 3 three hours was sure to cause flooding almost anywhere.  Yet the resulting flooding was even more than should be seen if the pumps had been working at 100% capacity.  The extra flood water exposed that the city’s DPW and the S&WB were working in synchronistic incompetence.   Many say and believe the Lord works in mysterious ways.  So a couple of days later, when a fire took out the turbine for a main pumping station leaving the entire city vulnerable to flooding from even moderate rainfall, many were left afraid.  Yet had there been no severe thunderstorm or subsequent more than normal flooding, we might have experienced ignorant bliss or untold horrors from unimaginable flooding.  You know the S&WB team surely would have lied again, had we only experienced minor flooding or loss of life.

If you have a cell phone in Orleans Parish you probably got an alert at 3:00 in the morning the other day.  Left with no other option, Mayor Landrieu was forced to alert the citizens of the serious threat due to the loss of power at a major pumping station.  And after 8 years of no innovation or equipment backup plans or dramatic technological improvements (the 1 inch the first ½ inch every subsequent standard has been the case for the last 20 years) people must now fear not only a hurricane or tropical storm but the everyday afternoon thunderstorm.  This is not international leadership.

In the midst of the current mayor’s race, all the candidates are scrambling to capitalize on their water management experience or ideas.  Many have given generic and critical reviews of the current situation, but only one candidate offers a real solution. Real management experience.   That’s what New Orleans needs in the next mayor.

Troy Henry, a former President of United Water, has managed thousands of employees in a complex organization.  None of the other candidates have managed over 40 employees.  The recent floods and current citywide paralysis are the result of a lack of management experience at city hall.   Great managers have a clear and honest communication with staff.  Instead of firing incompetent or deceitful employees after a major catastrophe, Troy’s administration will provide the regular maintenance and cutting edge solutions to protect the citizens of our great city.  Click here to hear Troy speak about solving the flooding problem we now face.