Official Publication of the National League of Cities OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE NATIONAL LEAGUE OF CITIES
NATION’S CITIES WEEKLY
Volume 34, Number 6 | February 14, 2011
IN THIS ISSUE
www.nlc.org
PAGE 3
PAGE 3
Cities Celebrate One-Year Anniversary
of Let’s Move!
PAGE 4
Creating Pathways to Employment for
Disconnected Youth: Lessons Learned
PAGE 4
Mitchell Announces 2011 Committee,
Council and Panel Leaders
CDBG WORKS
CDBG Funds Vital To Village of Amanda
by Stephanie Spirer and Kalisha Davis
This is the first in a series of weekly spot-
lights on cities and towns that have achieved
outstanding results with the Community
Development Block Grant (CDBG) pro-
gram and demonstrate the importance of
full funding for the CDBG program.
The Village of Amanda, Ohio, is a
small, rural community home to approx-
imately 800 residents and 300 businesses
and homes. The village is primarily a
farming community with a large popu-
lation of low-to-middle income fami-
lies. With a modest budget for fund-
ing community development projects,
local elected officials heavily depend on
the funding that they receive from the
CDBG program.
“I was devastated to read that the
CDBG grant would be in jeopardy,”
wrote Carrie Ayers, the village’s fiscal
officer, in an e-mail to NLC. “Small
communities such as mine rely on the
CDBG grants. Our village has been
receiving CDBG grants since the project
was put in place.”
According to Ayers, CDBG dollars
offer a substantial benefit to Amanda.
Community Development Block Grant funds have helped the Village of Amanda, Ohio, with several
community development projects, including patching streets and resurfacing city blocks.
“We don’t have a lot of money in our
budget for patching streets or resurfac-
ing city blocks,” she said. “CDBG is
very important to our community. Just
recently, we wanted to resurface one
block and put in curbs and sidewalks,
which cost $45,000,” more than the
$30,000 the village receives from its
annual levy for all infrastructure projects.
In the past, local officials have received
a comprehensive grant for $500,000 to
provide much-needed home improve-
ments, including furnaces, roofs and sid-
ings to low income and elderly residents.
Details:
To have your CDBG story
considered, please e-mail Michael
Wallace at wallace@nlc.org.
Obama Outlines Vision for Broadband
Expansion, Public Safety Network
by Mitchel Herckis
Newspaper Handling
In a speech in Marquette, Mich.,
last week, President Obama laid out a
detailed vision of his Administration’s
proposal to bring high-speed wire-
less broadband access to 98 percent of
Americans by leveraging underutilized
radio spectrum and the build out of a
nationwide interoperable public safety
communications network.
Equating it to the Transcontinental
Railroad, Franklin Roosevelt’s Rural
Electrification Administration and the
Interstate Highway System, Obama said
that by creating the network, “We’ll
accelerate breakthroughs in health, edu-
cation and transportation; and deploy a
new nationwide, interoperable wireless
network for first responders — making
sure they have the funding and the fre-
quencies that they were promised and
that they need to keep us safe. And by
selling private companies the rights to
these airwaves, we won’t just encourage
private investment and expand wireless
access; we’ll actually bring in revenues
that lower our deficits.”
The creation of an interoperable
wireless public safety network was rec-
ommended seven years ago by the 9/11
Commission and long advocated for
by NLC and public safety groups. The
proposal would reallocate a portion of
radio spectrum known as the D Block
directly to public safety to form the
basis of the nationwide network.
see page 6, column 1
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