By Cheril Lee
Omaha, NE – 26 neighborhood projects are being funded through the Mayor's 2011 Neighborhood Grant Program.
The Mayor's Neighborhood Grant program gave out a total of $80,000 to neighborhood and business associations for green improvements and crime prevention projects. Mayor Suttle says the grants program gives neighborhoods the chance to find a project to work on right in their own backyard. He says each of the projects is unique and fills a specific need within the neighborhood, "Seven of them were for neighborhood patrols, buying radios or uniforms for their neighborhood safety. But the others went to everything from community gardens to enhancing a little traffic island where they wanted to put plants and kind of clean it up. Some went with bus benches. Some went with trash receptacles."
Winners were selected by a committee of local government, business and nonprofit representatives.