Inside Helena Moreno’s 100-day plan to improve New Orleans: ‘24/7 mayor’
By Blake Paterson
Source: The Times-Picayune | NOLA.com
January 9, 2026
In her first 100 days as mayor of New Orleans, Helena Moreno wants to bring change residents can see.
She’ll start by turning on the lights.
After Moreno takes over as the city’s 63rd mayor on Monday, her administration plans to immediately get to work on repairing nearly 3,000 broken street lights strewn across the city, she said in an extended interview this week. First up will be areas with the highest crime.
It’s a small step toward fixing New Orleans’ crumbling infrastructure. But for Moreno, it’s a chance to show voters that she’s serious about her campaign promise of getting local government back to basics.
That message helped propel Moreno, a two-term at-large City Council member and former state legislator, to a dominant victory in the Oct. 11 primary, winning 55% of the vote.
After a three-month transition period marred by a double-barreled budget crisis, the mayor-elect said she’ll be moving fast in the next three months on improving infrastructure, solving the city’s financial woes, and revamping its permitting office.
A self-described “expert mass communicator,” she also vowed to be transparent about what she learns about New Orleans City Hall after she’s given the keys to the mayor’s office on the second floor.
“How bad is the problem … I think that’s going to be very important to also explain,” she said. “There’s this concern about what I could find once I get in there.”
Moreno will have the benefit of an incoming council who appears poised to work with her, and a bevy of support from other former or current elected officials she’s spent years building relationships with.
“This council and this mayor collectively made a pitch to the public that if you elect us, things will get better,” Council President JP Morrell, who is entering his second term, said in an interview. “If any one of us is an obstacle of that, then I think that’s on us.”
Nuts and bolts
The government that outgoing Mayor LaToya Cantrell will hand off to Moreno on Monday already looks far different than it did on Election Day.
Just days after Moreno’s victory, the City Council learned that Cantrell’s administration had run up a far bigger deficit than anticipated. A week later, the mayor’s top deputy revealed City Hall was facing a cashflow crisis and might not be able to pay its workers through the end of the year.
Moreno, the council’s vice president, stepped in as the city’s de facto leader. She convinced Gov. Jeff Landry to stand down on demands that New Orleans be put under state receivership and negotiated a deal that allowed the city to secure $125 million in bond revenues it needed to make payroll.
As part of the deal with state officials, the City Council agreed to give Louisiana Legislative Auditor Mike Waguespack veto power over how those bond revenues are spent. Waguespack is also investigating the Cantrell administration’s spending habits. Moreno has openly embraced his oversight.
Alongside consultants hired by her transition, Moreno also crafted a spending plan for 2026, with $150 million in cuts and a one-day-per-pay-period furlough for nearly 14% of the city’s workforce. Cantrell vetoed the budget but was overridden by the council.
Despite the city’s budget constraints, Moreno has said she’s confident she can accomplish much of her agenda. That’s because many of the issues plaguing City Hall, she argues, don’t require extra cash. They require leadership.
At the top of her org chart is outgoing District A Councilmember Joe Giarrusso, who Moreno tapped to serve as her chief administrative officer and first deputy mayor, overseeing day-to-day operations and city finances.
Moreno has also tasked Giarrusso with overhauling the city’s Safety and Permits Department, a process she said will take up to a year-and-a-half to complete but should show improvements within three months. A pilot program will help expedite housing and small business permits, and the department will within her first 100 days issue notices of violation to all illegally listed short-term rentals.
“It is what hinders a lot of progress in New Orleans. That one little office,” Moreno said.
On Day 1, Moreno will also create a new infrastructure coordinating council to speed up construction projects and provide the “Super Bowl level of service” she promised during the campaign. The group will be led by incoming Deputy CAO and Public Works Director Steven Nelson, who is joining Moreno’s administration from the Sewerage & Water Board, where he was general superintendent.
Moreno’s campaign pledge to eventually hire 100 new city maintenance workers will also get underway next week, starting with electricians.
“I didn’t realize this, but we have no electricians working for the city of New Orleans right now,” Moreno said. “Any type of minor electrical thing happening, we are going out to one of our vendors to get done.”
Those electricians will work with the city’s vendor to begin fixing the roughly 3,000 broken streetlights listed in the city’s 311 system, starting with areas that are hot spots for crime. Moreno’s team is utilizing data from the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office to figure out those locations, Nelson said in an interview.
The city will also utilize in-house employees to make repairs to concrete sidewalks for the first time in years, Nelson said.
Economic development
Moreno said the overarching goal of her first, four-year term is to reverse New Orleans’ population loss.
“I want people to always be able to call New Orleans home,” she said. “And then for people who have left, to have them understand that, hey, this is a place now where you can come back to. There’s enough opportunities here.”
For that to happen, Moreno said New Orleans needs to be a city where it’s both “easy to live” and there are good-paying jobs. Bolstering workforce training programs and assistance to local entrepreneurs seeking capital will be early priorities for her deputy mayor of economic development, Jenny Mains, formerly the chief commercial officer at Kenner-based CRC Global Solutions.
Another focus will be redeveloping long-vacant sites in New Orleans East, such as the site of the old Lake Forest Plaza and the city’s abandoned incinerator off Old Gentilly Road. On the campaign, Moreno said she’d provide every potential investor interested in the city with a “comprehensive briefing about New Orleans East, accompanied by VIP white glove treatment and concierge service at City Hall.” Moreno will also announce the site of a new City Hall annex in New Orleans East within her first 100 days.
Moreno will benefit from the completion or start of several major projects launched under Cantrell’s tenure. The Audubon Nature Institute is slated to finish the first phase of its new downtown park on the Mississippi River. Work on the redevelopment of the former Naval Support Activity complex in Bywater is expected to break ground later this month. And thanks to a bond proposition approved by voters in November, Moreno has the funds to begin demolition of Lindy Boggs hospital.
Other projects, like the post-Katrina renovation of Municipal Auditorium in Armstrong Park, are in limbo, after the Federal Emergency Management Agency last month refused to extend a $38.5 million grant for repairs. Moreno plans to lodge an appeal.
Moreno’s leadership team on Friday released additional details on their 100-day priorities and launched an online survey to gather input from the public.
Relationship with council
After a turbulent past four years between Cantrell and the City Council that Moreno led, the incoming executive and legislative branches seem to be on friendlier terms. Unclear is whether that goodwill will hold steady through Moreno’s tenure. Cantrell entered her first term in 2018 with good relationships with council members, but things took a turn in her second term.
Giarrusso, who served two terms on the council alongside Moreno, said last month that the administration will make sure council members are “active partners and understand what’s going on.”
“If I ever hear a council member saying, ‘I didn’t know about this,’ then I have failed, and I don’t like to fail,” Giarrusso said.
Moreno will also enter office with less power than her predecessors, thanks to her actions as a council member to rein in the executive branch.
Moreno’s nominees to lead 11 departments will require council confirmation under a charter amendment approved by voters in 2022. Another amendment finalized in November is meant to give her pick for city attorney, Charline Gipson, greater independence. The council this spring plans to put a third amendment on the ballot to restrict the mayor’s spending capacity. Morrell said the council may also flex its power under the charter to require confirmation of other officials within the Mayor’s Office.
Two former mayors this week said the charter amendments requiring council confirmation will slow the mayor’s ability to get a swift start.
“She may be able to navigate it and negotiate it because she has a supportive City Council,” former Mayor Marc Morial said. “But I fundamentally don’t like it.”
For New Orleans to “punch above its weight,” its leader must be able to move quickly, added former Mayor Mitch Landrieu. “I was not in favor of making it harder for the mayor to get stuff done.”
When the Legislature returns to Baton Rouge for its regular session in March, Moreno also plans to ask New Orleans’ delegation to introduce a bill to reform the governance structure of the Sewerage and Water Board. The utility is funded by the City Council, overseen by a board that’s chaired by the mayor, and regulated by the Legislature’s laws. Moreno wants to remove the Legislature from the equation. She also thinks the board should select its own chair.
Days 1 and 2
After her swearing in Monday, Moreno will go straight to her office and sign a series of executive orders laying out the structure of her government and putting the proceeds generated from the Edward Wisner Trust more firmly in the city’s control. At noon, Moreno will attend the swearing in of the new council.
That afternoon, she’ll meet with New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick, who Cantrell appointed in 2023 and Moreno has chosen to retain, to make sure they’re “aligned and ready to go.” (Moreno is also retaining Cantrell’s appointed leaders in the Fire, EMS, Sanitation and Code Enforcement departments.)
Moreno enters office as New Orleans closes out its third year in a row of reductions in violent crime. On Tuesday, Moreno will convene with New Orleans “key public safety teams,” including the FBI, DEA, State Police. District Attorney Jason Williams, Moreno’s long-time ally from her first term on the council, is also scheduled to attend.
That meeting will be led by Michael Harrison, the former NOPD police chief, who Moreno has tapped to serve as deputy mayor of public safety. He will help coordinate City Hall with NOPD and other law enforcement agencies while also overseeing the city’s emergency response operations. Moreno has also tasked him with coming up with a permanent security plan for Bourbon Street.
On the campaign trail, Moreno said repeatedly that if elected, she’d be a “24/7 mayor.” What does that mean?
“24/7 means that, all the time, no matter where you are, even when you’re working out, even when you’re on vacation, that you’re always there and ready still to respond to the needs of the people of the city,” Moreno said.
“My commitment is to put the people of New Orleans first,” she said.