To Mayor C. Ray Nagin- I recently became aware of a proposed city program, the Neighborhood Assistance Program, which was supposed to begin in the fall of 2009. The Neighborhood Assistance Program was a grant-making and matching grant program that ultimately was supposed to support local community groups and neighborhood organizations that are implementing plans within their communities. I was looking forward to learning more about this new process, applying to the program, and partnering with City Hall to bring new projects to life within my community. I was greatly dismayed to hear that the Neighborhood Assistance Program has been defunded and cut from the City Budget for reasons as of yet unknown. I would not only like an explanation as to why this valuable program was cut, but also would like to call upon the city to re-instate this program. Neighborhood organizations and community groups have provided countless hours of work, both technical and manual, towards the recovery and revitalization of our city. We were told that we were going to receive support from the city to help us not only continue our current work but expand into new projects via grant-money from this program, but before we got a chance to apply for this help, the program was defunded. Re-instating this program would initiate important collaborations between city government and local community groups, and also greatly help out our communities in these economic times. I believe that the Neighborhood Assistance Program could create many positive impacts in our city, and therefore strongly urge the city to revisit this decision and re-instate the program.

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