City ready to give out development grants
By Ray Gronberg : The Herald-Sun
Sep 13, 2006 : 10:29 pm ET
DURHAM -- City officials are poised to award four groups -- among them Mayor Bill Bell's employer -- $412,428 in revitalization grants it is hoped will promote new development in several downtrodden parts of Durham.
Administrators from the Office of Economic and Workforce Development briefed elected officials on the grants last week, and intend to ask them for an approval vote Monday.
The largest of the four grants -- $186,107 -- would go to the UDI Community Development Corp., a nonprofit that has orchestrated a variety of development and work force-training initiatives over the years. Bell is the group's chief operating officer.
http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-769556.html
** No conflict of interest here. The mayor had the city attorneys fix that. His boss at UDI is the former chairman of the board of trustees at NCCU. Real cozy downtown. UDI has a long history of pissing away many millions of taxpayer's dollars with little to show for it. Great management. The mayor is described as a former senior engineer at IBM in RTP. We always wondered what if anything he ever engineered besides sweet deals. His expertise has certainly not helped the city with all it's computer problems. We also wonder how a kid in the city attorney's office became city manager. You would think a professional should fill that job.
