After New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell postponed two town halls to discuss the city’s upcoming budget, it’s unclear when residents will have a chance to have their voices heard on how New Orleans spends its public dollars.

On Monday (July 22), the Mayor’s Office delayed an in-person town hall scheduled that day, citing the loss of community leader Bill Rouselle, who led the public relations firm Bright Moments, which has worked with Cantrell in recent years. The following day (July 23), the mayor also postponed a virtual town hall about the 2025 city budget.

“It was determined that the City will not move forward with tomorrow’s meeting and will work to reschedule as soon as possible,” Leatrice Dupré, the mayor’s press secretary, said in an emailed announcement postponing the in-person meeting. “This is due to the integral role that Bright Moments plays in the Administration’s goal to host a successful budget engagement process.” The second postponement announcement, sent the day before the scheduled virtual town hall, did not include a similar explanation.  

The Mayor’s Office has yet to offer alternative dates or details for the budget town halls. 

Dupré told Verite News that the Mayor’s Office did not yet have a clear sense of when the new budget town halls would happen but that the office was actively working on it. 

“There are several department chairs involved,” Dupré said. “Coordinating several people’s schedules does take time. So, it’s gonna take a couple of days to get back on track.”

The budget process, which is led by the mayor and her top deputies, comes at a fraught time for Cantrell this year. 

The town hall postponements also follow the July 19 indictment of Jeffrey Vappie, a former New Orleans Police Department officer who served as one of Cantrell’s bodyguards. Federal prosecutors allege that Vappie committed payroll fraud by clocking in time spent on “personal, recreational activities unrelated to his work duties, including a personal and romantic relationship with” the mayor. Vappie, who retired from NOPD in June, is now accused of seven counts of wire fraud and one count of lying to investigators about his alleged affair with Cantrell. 

In recent years, federal investigators have been reported to be probing Cantrell and her associates over gifts from a contractor, the subsequent firing of a Safety and Permits Department official and the use of the mayor’s campaign funds. Now, some experts predict that Vappie’s indictment may signal federal charges against Cantrell in the near future.

Reached by phone Wednesday, Dupré declined to comment on whether the postponements were due to the indictment. 

The postponements also come at a time when residents have expressed frustration with the mayor’s office and local government generally. According to a survey commissioned by Verite News, residents are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the job that elected officials are doing. According to the survey, 56% of respondents said they thought the city government was doing a poor job in spending tax dollars wisely.

The survey also surfaced concerns over quality of life issues, with over 50% of respondents saying they were “not at all satisfied” with public safety or the availability of affordable housing, and 49% saying they were “not at all satisfied” with the monthly costs for electricity and water.

The budget town halls would provide a venue for residents to discuss their concerns and advocate for the city to direct its money towards services that are important to New Orleanians.

The City Council, which receives the budget from the mayor by Oct. 1, will receive public input during its own budget hearings in October and November

Monet Brignac, a spokesperson for Councilmember JP Morrell, said that whether or not the mayor’s town halls take place, the council aims to work closely with the public upon receiving Cantrell’s proposed budget for 2025.

“The public needs more time with the City’s budget, not less,” Brignac said in an emailed statement to Verite News.

This year, the mayor is on a time crunch to turn in the budget after voters approved a charter amendment, authored by Councilmember Joseph Giarrusso, adjusting the budget schedule to give the council an extra month to review the mayor’s numbers. Now, the mayor is required to submit her budget by Oct. 1, instead of Nov. 1, ahead of the Council’s Dec. 1 budget approval deadline.

Nellie Catzen is the executive director of the Committee for Better New Orleans, which runs programs educating residents on the city budget, including publishing guides to the city’s budget and running surveys to solicit public input.

Catzen hopes that the two town hall postponements won’t presage cancellations, she said.

“These town halls are the minimum of what they could possibly do to get resident input,” Catzen said. “We stand ready to support the city in developing a process that is truly transparent and accountable.”

The budget town halls were first introduced by Mayor Mitch Landrieu in 2010. During most of his tenure as mayor, Landrieu hosted in-person town hall-style meetings in each of the city’s districts to discuss the annual budget and solicit public input. This was in line with Landrieu’s push to “budget for outcomes,” an approach designed to help public officials draft an annual budget according to public priorities – or desired “outcomes” – as opposed to just adjusting the budget each year based on prior spending.

Landrieu switched to a teleconference town hall in 2017, citing declining attendance, but received pushback from good government groups. “I don’t think it’s realistic to expect you’ll get anything in the way of meaningful during a conference call,” Keith Twitchell, then head of the Committee for Better New Orleans, told The Times-Picayune at the time.

When Cantrell assumed office in 2018, she dragged her feet on proposing a city budget and hosting community meetings to discuss the budget, only finally hosting a town hall in October, just weeks before the budget was due to City Council. Like Landrieu the year before, she hosted the town hall via teleconference.

She has continued this virtual approach throughout her tenure, noting in her annual budgets that she “participates in dial-in sessions with local radio media to allow thousands of residents across all Council Districts to provide feedback and voice their concerns regarding the City and the upcoming budget.”

In recent years, she has started hosting in-person meetings again.

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Katie Jane Fernelius reports on the local government for Verite. Prior to joining Verite, she was an independent journalist and producer. Over the course of her career, she’s reported for and worked...