Two months before voters will pass judgment on several proposed financial remedies for New Orleans’ ailing infrastructure, Mayor LaToya Cantrell has given the clearest account yet of how current funding for streets and pipes is being spent — and has laid out in stark terms how much more is needed.

With the infrastructure funding she netted from her "fair share" deal reached earlier this year with tourism leaders and Gov. John Bel Edwards, Cantrell and her top aides pledged Thursday to double, within two years, the number of Department of Public Works maintenance workers.

She pledged to cut in half DPW's response time to calls made to the city’s 311 system and to give each City Council district its own pothole-patching crew.

But she said it will take far more than the "fair share" deal’s millions to fix all the roads, canals and pipes that have crumbled during years of deferred maintenance and that are being further battered by the effects of climate change.

She said that’s precisely why voters should pull the lever for a trio of infrastructure funding initiatives on Nov. 16.

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Part of what voters will consider is tied in with the fair share deal: a tax on short-term rentals whose proceeds will help to fund city infrastructure.

The other initiatives include a 3-mill tax to pay for repairs and maintenance of infrastructure, a $500 million package of infrastructure bonds and another $10 million in bonds for maintenance work.

Getting the plans on the ballot was not an easy task. Besides the months of haggling with tourism leaders and state officials involved with "fair share," Cantrell's administration then had to negotiate with the City Council over the bond and 3-mill tax proposals, after council members said the spending plans for those measures should be more closely tied to street and pipe improvements.

In response, Cantrell tweaked the proposals' language. She also denied complaints that the 3-mill tax would be a new tax, arguing that another tax to pay off bonds has decreased by the same amount, so there will be no net increase in the millage rate.

The council later approved the proposals, which would pay for traditional infrastructure maintenance needs as well as replacement of public safety vehicles and equipment needed for city facilities.

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Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Ramsey Green said the short-term rental tax and other "fair share" money would let the city double the DPW staff and respond within a week on complaints made to the 311 help line.

The money also would pay for 28 new pieces of equipment, including pothole patchers, vacuum trucks and excavators.

Green also said, as he has before, that the money would allow 72,000 catch basins to be cleaned on a three-year cycle. Those basins are supposed to be cleaned every five years now.

"The mayor's victory on 'fair share' is an unprecedented public safety measure and economic development boon for this city," Green said.

Of the $1.4 billion in federal money the city was awarded by FEMA to replace pipes and streets damaged in Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the city now has spent 5%, up from the 1% spent under Mayor Mitch Landrieu's administration, Green added.

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It has completed nine road projects worth $25 million and has 12 others underway that are worth $80 million, he said. Construction will begin in the next three months on another six projects worth $40 million.

Still more progress has been made on "green" infrastructure projects that are adding millions of gallons of stormwater storage capacity.

But FEMA and "fair share" money aside, the Sewerage & Water Board and DPW still need tens of millions of dollars more to be able to address new problems officials have identified in recent months, including the severe clogging of drainage culverts.

The S&WB's underwater cameras located an old car in the Lafitte Canal in Mid-City last month, prompting officials to begin looking into what else could be clogging the system near nine other flood-prone locations.

So far, they have removed 500 tons of debris from that canal but have discovered 20,000 tons more, S&WB Executive Director Ghassan Korban said.

"Cleaning that out requires so much more money" than the agency has, he said.

The city also needs new money to bolster the streets to withstand heavy rainfall events that are ravaging New Orleans, the mayor and others said.

Korban sought to quell suggestions that the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, known as SELA, which constructed huge culverts under several major Uptown streets, could be the cause of recent floods in the Central Business District.

"There is no connection, I can assure you," Korban said, but an outside firm will nevertheless look into any potential impact SELA could be having on other parts of the city.

Korban has called for eventually imposing a stormwater management fee to fund the hobbled drainage system.

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Asked about that, Cantrell said she is focusing for now on what is on the ballot in November. However, she did not rule out that the idea could come up in the future.

"I'm not leaving anything off of the table," Cantrell said.