And One for You...

All the ingredients for a major battle were there. The Eric Mitchell T-shirt-wearers were in the house. City-wide community activists were milling around council chambers, chatting excitedly. And $2.8 million dollars in federal funding was at stake. The saga of the unused Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds had been building to a knock-down, drag-out finale for the past two and a half months, and after back-room politicking and plan after amended plan, all the funding contenders lined up at council last Thursday ready to duke it out.

Representatives from more than 20 groups, looking to fund a variety of housing, economic development, public improvement, and public service projects, were in council chambers to argue that their group should receive CDBG funding. And council wasn't just under the gun from the community, it had the feds to appease as well. Last summer the federal Housing and Urban Development Department (HUD) laid out a use-it-or-lose it scenario, requiring the CDBG money to be spent by June 30 or be sent back to Uncle Sam. It was time to dole out the money, pronto.

Having lots of dough to hand out is nice, but how did the city get itself into such a last-minute crunch? Many point the finger at Bill Cook, the former head of Neighborhood Housing and Community Development (NHCD). The department had known since last summer that slow spending was putting CDBG dollars in jeopardy, but word didn't leak out to council until recently. It wasn't until HUD's warning that the NHCD learned that it could no longer hoard millions of CDBG dollars for projects that were still in the planning stages. The money had to be moved to projects that could put it to use immediately, and Cook had to come up with a plan on how to do it.

At an April 2 council work session, Cook made his recommendation on how to reallocate the CDBG funds from several slow-spending programs - including Mitchell's pet project, the Austin Revitalization Authority - to the One-Stop Career Shop, an employment and job training facility. Mitchell was the first to raise objections to the concentration on One-Stop, arguing at Cook's initial presentation that since city-funded Austin Community College housed the program, One-Stop should not benefit ACC by receiving additional federal funding. Rumor has it that Mitchell had long intended those funds for Vision Village, an East Austin housing program he has been championing for more than a year. In fact, Bruce Sanders, leader of SCAN, the Southeast Corner of Associated Neighborhoods, claims he originally learned of the available funding from an anonymous fax warning him that Mitchell was hoarding the money. (SCAN leaders have long believed that their neighborhood has been neglected in favor of Mitchell's Eastside initiatives.) Mitchell did not return phone calls seeking comment.

What Mitchell and Sanders do agree on is that Cook - who resigned the day after his recommendations were made, amid speculation that he was forced out - failed to sound the alert within the community that the CDBG money was available. But even with the short notice, eligible groups itching to get their hands on the CDBG money were lined up around the block by the time council met last Thursday.

Councilmembers and the public were braced for a nasty fight in chambers that night. Whispers ran through the crowd when Mitchell's mouthpieces, Dorothy Turner and Rev. Frank Garrett, marched in with Mitchell's campaign brigade for the third week in a row - the meeting looked to be warming into another council-bashing feeding frenzy. But Mayor Bruce Todd was not taking any chances. "This is not the place to do name-calling," he warned, threatening to shut off the microphone of anyone who went ballistic.

Perhaps the warning scared them off, or maybe Mitchell's early departure from the dais to catch a candidates' forum took the wind out of their sails, but regardless of the reason, Turner and Garrett quietly slipped out. Gone was the rancor, as the same T-shirt-wearers who ranted about the racists on council last week miraculously morphed into a group of polite young men. In fact, the angriest, most vocal contingent in the crowd was not the Eastside residents, it was the Southeast residents of SCAN, who were looking for CDBG money to help fund a little league field in Dove Springs. Like East Austin, parts of the SCAN area are targeted for CDBG assistance, but SCAN leaders say that all the focus has been on the central Eastside.

"We have received $45,000 for all of Southeast Austin and we have not complained once about $8 million being soaked in one area," noted SCAN's Sanders to councilmembers Daryl Slusher and Ronney Reynolds before the hearing began. Sanders is convinced that the cause of the imbalance lies not with the council, but with favoritism among city staff. "I know what you're getting from staff and you're getting what they want you to hear," he told Reynolds and Slusher.

The wrangling did not end there, of course. Groups ranging from United Cerebral Palsy to the Texas Asian Chamber of Commerce stepped up for their share of the CDBG pie, and as the numbers were shuffled around between the two dozen worthy programs, no one knew when they walked into council chambers who was set to get what. "I'm not too sure anyone knows what we're going to be voting on," Mitchell said, opening up the hearing last Thursday. "But the city manager has assured me that in future we will manage a lot better so that we don't have everyone in here pitted against each other."

And so began the parade of community hats held out in hopes of a little CDBG coin being tossed in. The Mitchell T-shirt-wearers were there on behalf of LIFE, Inc., an East Austin drug treatment facility for men. "Black American men are the last on the list for everything," argued LIFE, Inc. participant Cletis Tolbert. LIFE is one of the many programs which was originally slated to be left off the funding gravy train, but which the council wisely decided to include.

SCAN's T-ball moms were out in force arguing that it was, in fact, their neighborhood taking the worst hit. "We're tired of being treated like stepchildren," said SCAN's Joanne Rodriguez.

Once everybody had their turn to speak, the general mood changed from uncomfortably tense to surprisingly cooperative. "I hate competing," said Cecilia Blanford of the Austin Community Nursery Schools. "We're competing with the very services that provide the continuum of care that our kids need."

Though the ACC trustees had nothing to complain about after being promised nearly $2 million for One Stop, they showed up anyway to make sure that no last-minute, backroom deal would threaten their monster allocation. Given Mitchell's $1 million Vision Village vision, they had reason for concern. However, after a meeting last week between Mitchell and the ACC board, everyone was making nice. "I think you'll find that Eric Mitchell's position has changed," predicted ACC trustee Beverly Watts Davis before the hearing began. Mitchell even managed to deny from the dais that there had ever been a problem. "I have always been supportive of ACC, and I have always been supportive of Workforce Development," he said, conveniently glossing over his earlier objections. Nobody seemed anxious to mention that Vision Village had quietly slipped off the list of funded programs. Perhaps Mitchell dried his tears over the loss with the $392,000 pile he got to hand out to his Central City Entertainment Center initiative.

As the hour got later and all the groups had had their say, the list of recommended funding began circulating through the audience and everyone realized that the council was preparing to throw just about all of them a bone. ACC got its $1.9 million, LIFE Inc. got its $10,000, and there were still enough loaves and fishes to parcel out to the rest of the groups. A few were left off the list, but it was truly remarkable, after weeks of the ugly CDBG tug-of-war, to watch the faces in nearly every group light up in turn as their funding allocation was read from the dais. After the unanimous vote approving the recommendations, all the groups boisterously filed out of chambers. What had promised to be a bloody money-grubbing battle ended with all the groups' leaders holding hands and singing songs while walking into the sunset swinging bags of cash. And everyone lived happily ever after. For now.