Once again, Congressman Ford is showing Tennesseans his dedication to having an open and honest government all the while showing everyone he is fighting for truly worthwhile things in Congress.The following is the list of special budget requests made by U.S. Rep. Harold Ford, D-Memphis. They are organized by the House Appropriations subcommittee that will consider the requests. The text below appears as it was provided to the newspaper by Ford's office.
Ford's funding requests
Labor, Health and Human Services, Education
• University of Memphis Model Teacher Program for MCS, $1 million — Attracting and retaining quality teachers remains a top priority for all urban school systems, and the Memphis City Schools are no exception. In partnership with the University of Memphis, the Memphis City Schools have developed a Model Teacher Program, which will stand as a new model for teacher development and induction in urban environments.
• Le Bonheur Children's Medical Center's new facility, $2.5 million — For a new facility that will improve the quality of care for the children, features include a larger operating rooms and an expanded emergency department.
• Christian Brothers' University Center for Ethical Leadership & Public Service, $500,000 — To create a comprehensive program that promotes and develops ethical leadership through teaching, research and community service activities.
• LeMoyne-Owen College Health and Wellness Center, $2 million — To develop a Community Health and Wellness Center that provides high quality, cost-effective primary health care and preventive services through health and wellness education, nutrition education and physical fitness programs. LeMoyne-Owen College's Health and Wellness Center will offer services that focus on health and wellness issues affecting low-income and medically underserved populations.
• Rhodes College Learning Corridor, $1 million — To expand the Learning Corridor, a program that helps K-12 teachers improve their students' math and science performance.
• LeMoyne-Owen College Math and Science Boot Camp, $500,000 — This program will teach the fundamental mathematical and science skills. This intensive summer program will target juniors and seniors in high school and incoming freshmen.
• The University of Memphis Institute on Disability, $1 million — To conduct research on practices that increase employment for youth and adults with disabilities.
• University of Tennessee Regional Biocontainment Laboratory for Emerging Infections and Biodefense, $3 million — To develop new areas of investigation involving emerging infections and biodefense pathogens.
• St. Jude Nuclear Chemistry Laboratory, $1.7 million — To equip St. Jude Children's Research Hospital with a Nuclear Chemistry Laboratory that would facilitate diagnostic studies and therapeutic intervention in children with cancer.
• University of Memphis SmarTennessee, $550,000 — A proposal for a state-wide effort to integrate financial literacy into the existing K-12 curriculum. The curriculum helps students become skilled consumers, prudent savers, knowledgeable investors and productive workers.
• City of Memphis Second Chance Prisoner Re-entry Program, $500,000 — A partnership between Memphis, the U.S. Department of Labor, public/private ventures, and local businesses. It is designed to assist ex-felons in their transition back into society and productive citizenship. The Second Chance Program has placed 315 ex-felons in jobs and is currently serving more than 100 participants with job training and job placement services. Second Chance has served more than 1,500 ex-offenders over the past three years with only four returning to prison.
• InMotion Musculoskeletal Institute, $1,605,756 — To fund research to accelerate musculoskeletal discoveries, reducing disability and improving mobility for the musculoskeletal patient.
• Tennessee Technology Center at Memphis, $1 million — Provides training for a career in the health-care industry. Each year, the Memphis health-care industry employs 44,000 workers (one out of every nine Memphians) and has an annual impact of $5 billion on the local economy.
• St. Jude Computerized Linear Accelerator, $2.5 million — To optimize radiation delivery for children with brain tumors and other types of childhood cancer. Because this technology enables one to direct the radiation beam with millimeter precision to the cancer, it can avoid normal tissue and reduce side effects.
• University of Tennessee College of Pharmacy Health Disparity Study, $800,000 — A study aimed at determining whether the TennCare program has served to minimize racial disparities. By formally documenting the experiences of TennCare enrollees, the proposed UT study will provide the understanding necessary to evaluate Medicaid alternatives down the road.
• Polk County, Tennessee, Library Construction, $100,000 — Polk County is the only county in Tennessee without full service libraries. A library will provide its children with public Internet access, reference and recreational reading materials and ongoing educational programs.
• Literacy Education and Ability Program, $1 million — To continue and expand its effective intervention program for at-risk youth in under-performing schools in Memphis and Baton Rouge, La.
• National Civil Rights Museum, $1,112,300 — To enhance and expand educational programming. The requested funding would enable the museum to continue its vital mission of teaching current and future generations the lessons of the American civil rights movement.
• Tennessee Best Buddies, $250,000 — This nonprofit organization is dedicated to fostering the social integration of individuals with intellectual disabilities. Best Buddies seeks to expand programs in Tennessee for the more than 170,000 children and adults residing in the state who have an intellectual disability. This funding would help Best Buddies open an office in Memphis to help 24 students with intellectual disabilities, fund 96 group outings and countless one-to-one outings.
Transportation/Treasury/Housing and Urban Development
• LeMoyne—Owen College/ SoulsvilleUSA Community Development, $1.5 million —To build affordable homes in central Memphis to address the growing demand from professionals moving to areas bordering higher education institutions.
• Memphis Airport Intermodal Facility, $3 million — To improve mass transit and parking at the Memphis Airport.
• Rhodes College Learning Corridor Community Center, $500,000 — Rhodes College will be rehabilitating an existing building to serve as a community center. The center will house after-school and summer activities for area high school students.
• Memphis Airport Plough Boulevard interchange with Winchester Road, $3 million — To improve this critical intersection and relieve worsening congestions for commuters.
• University of Memphis Southern Railroad pedestrian underpass, $1 million — To build a pedestrian underpass so students can safely cross beneath the Southern Railroad, which runs along the university campus.
• Memphis Housing Authority — University Place revitalization, $1 million — To transform an 130-acre area of land from an abandoned housing project to a new housing development that will include a community center and park.
• MATA bus operations and maintenance facility, $5 million — To build a new bus operations and maintenance facility that will support the entire MATA system.
• City of Memphis riverfront cobblestone, $750,000 — To restore the historic cobblestone landing along the riverfront. The current landing is unsafe and has resulted in several injuries and a death.
• City of Memphis North Second Street corridor upgrade, $10 million — An upgrade of this corridor would alleviate congestions and provide a new direct connection to the Central Business District.
Defense
• University of Memphis Center for Advanced Sensors, $1.5 million — Our military needs new sensors for use in urban terrain and small-unit operations. This federal funding would support research at the University of Memphis to develop the technology for this critical national security priority.
Energy and Water Development
• Le Bonheur Children's Medical Center cardiac program, $1.75 million — To purchase of a 3 Tesala MRI Cardiac Package and the equipment to monitor the children in the Le Bonheur Children's Medical Center cardiovascular intensive care unit. This purchase would reduce the number of invasive procedures necessary to diagnose a child's heart defect and provide the most sophisticated equipment and environment to ensure that Midsouth children receive the best possible care.
• Wolf River, Memphis, $1.5 million — To complete detailed design plans and fully fund construction of five tributary weirs, which are necessary to attain ecosystem restoration within the Wolf River Basin.
• Memphis Harbor/ McKellar Lake, $1.94 million — Funding for dredging. If dredging is not part of the maintenance operation each year, sedimentation of the harbor could cause impacts on barge traffic requiring barges to be light-loaded or the possibility of complete harbor closure. In addition, if dredging is not done annually, the accumulation of sediment will cause restoration of the harbor to become more costly.
• Wolf River Harbor Dredging, $540,000 — Funding for dredging. If dredging is not part of the maintenance operation each year, sedimentation of the harbor could cause impacts on barge traffic requiring barges be light-loaded or the possibility of complete harbor closure. In addition, if dredging is not done annually, the accumulation of sediment will cause restoration of the harbor limits to become more costly
• Memphis metropolitan area storm water management, $152,000 — To study and evaluate the need for improvements of flood control, ecosystem restoration, water quality and related projects associated with storm water runoff and watershed management in the Memphis metropolitan area. Record rainfalls in 2001 and 2002 prompted the need to comprehensively address flooding and storm water management problems in the study area.
• Mississippi River channel improvement in seven states including Tennessee, $19,492,000 — To stabilize the banks of the Mississippi River and obtain the most efficient flow characteristics for flood control and navigation by means of revetments, dikes and improvement dredging.
• University of Memphis TransAmerica grid study, $1 million — To fund the development of a strategic plan and feasibility study for the proposed TransAmerica Grid Project, a national comprehensive plan to construct a high voltage AC and/or DC transmission system with associated clean generation that would link the wind and coal rich western and great plains states with the large electrical load centers across the country.
• Wolf River and Nonconnah Creek, $5 million — To fund completion of city of Memphis flood control projects, the emergency stabilization of Riverport Bridge piers, as well as the completion of a re-evaluation study that will focus on methods of stabilizing the river and making it self-sustaining.
• City of Memphis riverfront development: design, engineering and permitting, $200,000 — To fund the design, engineering and permitting for the development of the Memphis riverfront. This project will feature open space, community development and transportation projects to create a riverfront of national significance in Memphis.
Interior and Environment
• University of Memphis Mississippi embayment regional ground water study, $3.15 million — To study ground water sustainability and quality in the tri-state area of Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi.
• Northwest Treatment Plant technology replacement project, $3 million — For reconstruction of its 8-year-old Northwest Wastewater Treatment Plant to update its existing treatment technology. The treatment plant improvements will protect the environment and water of the Wolf River.
Science, Departments of State, Justice, Commerce
• University of Memphis EFOCUS: Earthquake Fault Observatory for the Central U.S., $1.5 million — To improve seismic hazard estimates for the central U.S. Realistic preparedness plans that include the level of ground shaking at critical facilities, bridges, pipelines and other infrastructure that serves the entire nation will save lives and will save billions of dollars when the next large earthquake occurs.
• University of Memphis Center for Hazards Research and Education, $2 million — To establish a Center for Hazards Research and Education. The center would have a focus on awareness, preparation and citizen education in the central U.S., an area prone to earthquakes, severe weather including tornadoes, and man-induced hazards.
• Memphis Regional Seismic Risk Assessment Program, $325,000 — A broad-based analysis to assess the risk posed by earthquakes to critical infrastructure including utilities, transportation, hospitals, fire and police stations and emergency response centers.
• Rhodes College NASA Stars, $1,021,372 — For the NASA Stars Teacher Training Curriculum to help improve elementary and middle school science teachers
• University of Memphis CIT: Crisis Intervention Team Technical Assistance Center, $1.5 million — Law enforcement agencies, struggling to deal with the increasing number of crisis events and arrests involving those with mental illness, have turned to the University of Memphis and its Crisis Intervention Team partners to solve these concerns. CIT is an innovative model of police-based crisis intervention with community health-care and advocacy partnerships that has been nationally recognized as cost-sensitive, humane and highly effective.
• City of Memphis Regional Law Enforcement Communications System Technology, $3 million — To achieve a single shared radio system for emergency responders in the city of Memphis and Shelby County. Emergency responders need to communicate with a seamless radio system in the event of emergencies, terrorist acts or natural disasters, and to improve public safety and crime prevention activities.
• Middle Tennessee State University Middle East Center, $511,235 — To establish a Middle East Center that will integrate a curriculum in Middle East studies and create an extensive public outreach component with educational research.
Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration
• University of Memphis Lower Mississippi River water quality assessment, $1 million — This 650-mile river study will assess water quality and assess the role of floodplain habitats in removing agricultural pollutants.
Source: The Tennessean
