While Ron Forman's "Letter from the CEO" in the December 2001 issue of Audubon UpClose, the ANI members newsletter, seemed eminently worth sharing with a wider audience, we felt obliged to edit it somewhat for accuracy. Our edits are listed below the image...

1  Should add: "...or at least the parts of it that make us some money..."

2  Should read: "...reconstruction..." since "...redevelopment..." doesn't quite sum up the scale of the project very accurately.

3  Should add: "...New Orleanians with an extra $30 per day and a set of golf clubs..."

4  Should add: "...preserved, but missing a lot of bothersome limbs that were in our way..."

5  Should add: "...plus a lot of underutilized public park that we needed for our new golf course..."

6  Should add: "...where the traffic is already so out of control and inconvenient to the neighborhoods that they won't even notice the added irritation of a coupla hundred more cars each day..."

7  Should add: "...oops, despite what I would later tell the City Council on March 21st, when I would claim that we were NOT building a restaurant in the park because only golfers would be allowed to use it..."

8  Should add: "...down from the par 68, 1700 yards longer old course, even though everyone knows that GOOD golf courses are adding yards, not subtracting them, and a 4000 yard course is laughable in todays market of 7000 + yards golf courses..."

9  Should add: "... and if you believe that we'll EVER spend ANY of OUR money in the free part of the park, no matter how much profit we make, you're dreaming of a different park..."

10  Should add: "...except for the paltry $7+ million bucks in city property taxes New Orleanians cough up each year..."

11  Should read: "...Audubon Zoo..."

12  Should add: "...a future that hopefully includes a raise - after all, who can live on a measly $375,000 plus per year?"