The 2022 Gretna Heritage Festival Will Features John Fogerty, Beach Boys, and Revivalists

How long has the Gretna Heritage Festival been around? The festival has been around for thirty years.

This fall the 2022 Gretna Heritage Festival will be along the Mississippi River in downtown Gretna celebrating its 26th edition. It is a three day event from October 7th – 9th and will feature big artists like John Fogerty, the Beach Boys, the Revivalists, country singer Brett Young and Irma Thomas.

The single-day pass will be just $20 which can be used on any of the three days. An all three day pass will cost $45 and will be free for children 12 and under. This will be the first year that the festival has happened since before COVID-19.

Along with live music, there will be the popular Italian Village which includes over 100 craft and clothing booths and dozens of food booths, Kid’s Corner which includes games and inflatables, Margarite Village and the craft beer section. The multi-block festival will be fun for the whole family.

The festival first took off in 1994 and has been a success ever since. Big artists have been featured at the festival in the past such as KISS, Kid Rock, the B-52s, Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo, Earth Wind & Fire, ZZ Top, Huey Lewis and the News, Rick Springfield, KC and & he Sunshine Band, Hank Williams Jr., Lynyrd Skynyrd, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Melissa Etheridge, the Gregg Allman Band, Aaron Lewis and Poison’s Bret Michaels.

Revivalists, which was created 20 years ago in New Orleans, will be the opening night headliner. This year will have a vast array of genres including Thomas, Tank and the Bangas, Dumpstaphunk, Deacon John & the Ivories, Kermit Ruffins, Water Seed, Cowboy Mouth, Rockin’ Dopsie, Dwayne Dopsie, Amanda Shaw and Wendell Brunious. The Saturday night headliner will be Fogerty who was part of Creedence Clearwater.

The Gretna Heritage festival not only entertains locals but also benefits local businesses and organizations in Gretna. Proceeds from the festival have supported non-profit organizations like the American Cancer Society, Amigos Mexicans, American Heart Association, American Legion and much more. Sponsors of the festival include Bud Light, IMTT, West Jefferson Medical Center, Gulf Coast Bank & Trust Company, Where Y’At and many more.

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Patrick F. Taylor Science and Technology Academy Ranked No. 1 in Louisiana

What grades are served at Patrick F. Taylor Science and Technology Academy in Jefferson Parish?

Patrick F. Taylor Science and Technology Academy serves grades sixth through 12th grades.

 

The U.S. News & World Report ranked Patrick F. Taylor Science and Technology Academy number 1 in Louisiana. Benjamin Franklin High in New Orleans was the previous number one school. The principal, Sharmeika Daniels credits this accomplishment to the team effort between students, teachers, parents and administrators. Students have described the teachers as life mentors.

“This is my first experience, ever, that I’ve seen a leadership team, as well as teachers, parents and students, all on the same page,” Daniels said. “We’re a family here, and everybody’s input is important.”

“Teachers are demanding here and the content is rigorous, but that’s what’s going to be expected of the kids when they leave us.”

“There is never going to be a student on this campus [who] goes under the radar,” Daniels said.

The school is a magnet school that has a STEM-based college preparatory curriculum. There are around eight hundred students from the east and west bank of Jefferson Parish who go to the school that is named after the founder and CEO of the Taylor Energy Company. The school starts in the sixth grade where students will start to learn computer programing. Students have to score in the 85th percentile or higher on Jefferson’s Advanced Studies Academies admissions test to enroll.

“I will never take for granted how blessed I am to lead such phenomenal faculty and staff,” Daniels said. “All of our teachers are on board. That’s not an easy thing to do, to get a whole group of people to agree on one goal.

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Predictions for the 2023 Housing Market

How will the Fed stop housing inflation?

The Fed is putting a halt to the Pandemic Housing Boom by selling bonds making the mortgage rates rise, and slowing the housing market down.

The current housing market has been deemed the Pandemic Housing Boom because of the rise in buyer demand during the pandemic. This coupled with historically low mortgage rates and super low housing inventory caused the home prices to rise drastically. The Fed hopes this will not be the case in 2023.

When the pandemic hit, the Fed started to purchase bonds making the mortgage rates drop to historical lows. The rising inflation has pushed the Fed to start selling bonds which will cause the mortgage rates to rise. Within the past six months, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate went from 3.1% to 5.7%.

The rise in the mortgage rates has cooled off the rise in home prices. Unfortunately, it has also put a damper on many borrowers’ dreams of owning a home. Borrowers are having a harder time with the debt-to-income ratios and have lost their mortgage eligibility.

According to Zillow, home prices will jump an additional 9.7% between May 2022 and May 2023 instead of what has been seen over the past year of a rise of 20.4%. This slow down will still be double the average annual home price appreciation of 4.4%. Zillow has changed its views in the last few months cutting its price growth by 8.1% percentage points in the last four months. CoreLogic predicts a slower rise of only 5.3%, while Mortgage Bankers Association predicts a 3.1% and Fannie Mae a 3.2% increase.

“The trend appears to show that the market passed an inflection point for home values between April and May, transitioning from ever-hotter to somewhat-cooler price growth. This deceleration is a clear signal that buyers are dialing back their demand for homes in the face of daunting affordability challenges,” wrote Zillow economists in their latest outlook.

Some such as Capital Economics predicts home prices to fall 5%. This has only happened twice in the past
five years. Moody’s Analytics believes that there will be a 0% rise in some areas even seeing a 5% to 10% decline in home prices.

“Mortgage rates are rising and will reach 6.5% by mid-2023. As a result, mortgage payments as a share of income will exceed the peak seen in the mid-2000s. That will cut home sales, with existing sales ending 2022 more than 20% down from their end-2021 level. House prices will also decline as affordability constraints bite, but tight markets and a lack of forced sellers means we expect the drop to be relatively modest, with annual growth falling to -5% by mid-2023,” wrote Capital Economics in its latest outlook.

“The housing market has peaked. … Everything points to a rolling over of the housing market,” says Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi.

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Will There Be Fire Station Closures on the West Bank?

The east bank of Jefferson Parish consolidated its fire districts many years ago, and they are considering doing the same on the west bank of the parish. Jefferson Parish Council is currently conducting a study to see what would need to be done to consolidate the six west bank fire districts.

The study which was unanimously approved now needs consultants. The Jefferson Parish Council will now take between eight months to a year to find a consultant who will do the study. If the study goes as the council predicts, then it will lead to closing fire stations and putting trucks into storage. This does not sound too appealing but according to firefighter Deano Bonano, this could mean additional firefighters would need to be hired.

“If you consolidate all the districts, you can eliminate some stations, eliminate some trucks and cut back on administrative staff and costs,” he said.

Through the years, west bank fire departments have had a harder and harder time with financing and keeping firefighters. The department has both volunteer and paid firefighters. The west bank volunteer departments are run as private non-profits with their own boards.  For some of the smaller departments in the parish, it has been hard to get volunteers. The training requirements are very strict for volunteer firefighters.

These small districts are having to tap into financial reserves to hire paid staff to fill the positions not filled by volunteers. State firefighters are also not able to work in the departments because the districts are not part of the state firefighters’ retirement system. The benefits of the government-run fire departments are also taking qualified firefighters from the area.

The study will take these issues and others into account as they concluded how much it will cost every year for Jefferson Parish to run a west bank consolidated district. They will look at every issue as a big picture.

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A New Orleans Lakefront Condo Under Controversy

The Pearl condominium, a planned new residential development on the Old Basin Canal in New Orleans, has some flooding concerns. The West End development is being proposed by Oceana USA LLC and is located on South Roadway Street across from the Municipal Yacht Harbor.

The project will be on a segment of the New Basin Canal that is north of the Sewerage & Water Board’s Pump Station 12. This puts the development outside the lakefront hurricane levee. The original project was to be 15 stories but was revamped to six floors of condos, parking, and amenity space. The larger and smaller concept of the project needs 800 cubic yards of fill material to be added to the canal. This means that part of the building and its balconies would be built on what is current canal water.

This is why many such as the Lakeshore Property Owners’ Association, the Municipal Yacht Harbor Management Corp. and the Southern Yacht Club, as well as several tenants of nearby boathouses, are concerned with this project going forward. If they were to fill 800 cubic yards of the canal, this would make it more narrow increasing the potential of flooding boathouses and businesses that surround the project.

The canal is very important when it comes to rainfall runoff. In fact, it serves as the outlet for rainfall runoff pumped from about 1,600 acres of the Lakeview neighborhood by Pump Station 12, and if the pump station is operating during high tides, the narrowing of the waterway could cause water levels to rise a foot or more.

Oceana defends its project saying the canal would not increase water heights high enough for concern. The engineering firm that is working for Oceana points out that the canal is only 165 feet long and the water level raised in the area would only be around 10 inches. Changes would be unnoticeable in other parts of the harbor and the lake.

“While we generally support future development in our city, our utmost priority is to protect our canals from any potential negative impacts that may diminish our ability to pump storm water,” S&WB Executive Director Ghassan Korban said.

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