City Receives Some Clean Cities Stimulus Money, But None For Economic Development

On Friday, Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm informed Mayor Tom Leppert and the Dallas City Council, via memo, that the city's getting around $3 million in Clean Cities stimulus money to, among other things, "enhance fueling infrastructure, retrofit city vehicles and assist in the provision of training for alternative fueling."...

By Robert Wilonsky

August 31, 2009

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On Friday, Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm informed Mayor Tom Leppert and the Dallas City Council, via memo, that the city's getting around $3 million in Clean Cities stimulus money to, among other things, "enhance fueling infrastructure, retrofit city vehicles and assist in the provision of training for alternative fueling." The applications were submitted by both the city and the North Central Texas Council of Governments, which landed the $13-million grant and will dispense $2.8 mil to Dallas via a cooperative agreement.

But there's bad news as well. The city also applied for a slice of the $150 million in stimulus money being doled out through the federal government's Economic Development Administration, which it did not get. Among the items on the city's wish list: infrastructure improvements to the Dallas Executive Airport, a "redevelopment initiative" for the Lancaster Road corridor, the design and construction of an Urban League Campus Training Center ... and a "Southwest Center Mall Comprehensive Redevelopment Plan." Wrote Suhm, grants were doled out based on three "economic distress criteria," which the city did not meet. Alas, she adds, "The City will continue to actively research and pursue other grant opportunities for these projects."

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