Mayor says New Orleans is mending

NEW ORLEANS —  Mayor C. Ray Nagin, in his first State of the City address since Hurricane Katrina, said Wednesday that New Orleans was a city on the mend, despite broken promises from the state and federal governments.

“New Orleans is coming back, whether you like it or not,” Nagin said to applause from a crowd of city workers and community members at the National World War II Museum. “And you might as well deal with it.”

Nagin called on President Bush and Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco to do more to help speed the city’s recovery from the August 2005 storm. He said Bush had failed to move federal aid to “the people who need it the most,” and said he should forgive millions of dollars in disaster loans that the city took out after the storm to help it to continue operating.

He also called on Blanco to use a budget surplus to help the city.

“Use the $3-billion budget surplus to ensure a strong future for our state and for all our citizens,” Nagin said. “Because as New Orleans recovers, and as south Louisiana recovers, so does Louisiana.”

Nagin referred to the city’s challenges, including a storm-depleted police force dealing with a rise in violent crime and a healthcare system in crisis, but he also touted what he deemed successes, including the cleanup of the French Quarter and the return of more than half the city’s pre-Katrina population of 455,000.

He compared his city to a patient written off as dying who eventually recovered.

“We have stabilized. We are implementing plans for our future, and we are strong enough for the next phase of recovery -- the transformation to the new New Orleans,” Nagin said.

Swaths of some neighborhoods remain in shambles, with houses empty and many small businesses ailing or closed. Police still work out of trailers.

As of mid-month, the city had received $163 million in federal rebuilding aid, a fraction of the $1 billion or more it said it would need to restore what Katrina damaged.