City of Southfield Mayor Brenda L. Lawrence urged the Obama administration and Congress on January 21 in Washington, D.C. to streamline the system for providing federal recovery and energy block grant dollars to get urgently needed funding directly to America’s most hurting cities.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) last year authorized $787 billon to address the impact of the nation’s worst recession since the Great Depression. In Southfield, $875,700 in Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant funds have been announced but have not been entirely received. U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis also heard from Mayors about the need to reduce the paperwork of the summer jobs program for youth, so as to attract more private sector businesses in the hiring efforts.
The U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) issued a follow-up report on January 21 examining the pace of economic recovery, noting that the jobless rate was up in all 363 metro areas in November 2009, the most recent month of available metro data. Unemployment is expected to peak at 10.2 percent nationally this quarter, said the report by HIS Global Insight.
The USCM unveiled The 2010 Metro Agenda for America, which focuses on five key policy areas to support recovery: job creation through direct funding to cities; a more balanced transportation bill next year that recognizes the necessity to modernize the current transportation system in order to daily move goods and people in our metro areas of the nation; energy independence and climate protection through green, sustainable jobs and the mayors’ working programs like Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants, and Summer Youth Jobs.
At the USCM, Mayor Lawrence co-chaired a special plenary session with guest speakers Adolfo Carrion, Ron Sims, and Polly Trottenberg: Investing in Livable Cities to Meet 21st Century Transportation Challenges. She agrees that as Mayors, it is important to communicate and bring forth the needs of working families and of the community to the government in Washington, DC.
For more information, call Marty Williams, executive assistant to the mayor, at (248) 796-5100.