Mayor Derek Slaughter is right to prioritize recertification of the levee and flood mitigation in 2024.

The levee, as our report in last Thursday’s edition noted, protects between $4 billion and $5 billion in economic assets — assets that employ many of the workers in our county.

The creation of new jobs in our region depends in part on offering diverse options for where businesses can locate their facilities. The ability to curb burdensome tax increases in the future depends both on bringing those jobs to our region and on enabling families to invest in homes in our city or in surrounding communities.

And any investment in anything else — whether it be upgrades and improvements to our city parks, renovations to City Hall, more police officers and police resources to keep streets safe and correct misperceptions about dangerous crime in our communities — are futile if a flood can wipe out those improvements.

And so the region’s flood mitigation strategy is the foundation on which any other necessary policy must be built.

We appreciate that Mayor Slaughter and our other leaders and public servants continue to recognize this and work diligently to repair and recertify the levee and flood control system. We hope to see momentum on this important issue in 2024.