Metro Council sets special meeting for Tuesday

The Metro Council will pick up on Tuesday at 5 p.m. where it unexpectedly left off Wednesday evening, when bathroom breaks and private conversations by four council members led to the loss of a quorum and a premature end to the meeting. Two controversial downtown projects that drew a standing-room-only crowd on Wednesday, but were ultimately left on the table, are once again on the agenda. Along with a host of other items, the council will take up the issue of whether or not to approve spending $900,000 on a stage canopy for the Galvez Plaza project downtown. The item has been deferred multiple times since a July 20 committee meeting. A much larger and more controversial project with a much longer history—the proposed downtown library estimated to cost $21 million—will also be discussed Tuesday. Five councilors are co-sponsoring a resolution asking the city-parish library board to scrap plans for a new library and come up with proposals for renovating the existing facility. J. Slater McKay, Forum 35 president and one of those who attended Wednesday’s meeting, says he and those around him were “dumbfounded” by its abrupt ending. Though he plans on going to Tuesday’s meeting to speak about both downtown issues—and is encouraging members of the young professionals group he heads to do the same—he says a provision needs to be in place to ensure a repeat of Wednesday’s episode never occurs. “The council needs to figure out a way to make sure it doesn’t happen in the future,” McKay says. “They wasted a lot of people’s time for a meeting with a lot of hype where virtually nothing was decided.” —Steve Sanoski