By Sidney A. Wolf
June 27, 2005

During The Conference of Mayors 73rd Annual Meeting, Cities United for Science Progress (CUSP), a partnership between The U.S. Conference of Mayors and DuPont, announced the winners of the 2005 Lead Safe...For Kids' Sake grant program. The three grants totaled $375,000.

The $175,000 first place Award of Excellence was won by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome. The two second-place $100,000 Awards of Distinction were presented to Rochester (NY) Mayor Bill Johnson, Jr. and Gary (IN) Mayor Scott King.

The Lead-Safe grants are awarded to cities for their efforts in proposing and/or demonstrating excellence in implementing effective solutions to make their communities lead-safe. Since its inception in 2002, DuPont through CUSP has awarded Conference of Mayors member cities over $2.6 million in an effort to make America's cities lead-safe. The 2005 award-winning cities represent the most innovative ideas among applications received.

"As chair of CUSP, I am delighted to stand with our partner, DuPont, in recognizing excellence and distinction in America's cities," said Macon (GA) Mayor C. Jack Ellis. "Thanks to these generous grants from DuPont, children across the country will be healthier, stronger and have better futures. We hope that mayors in these award-winning cities serve as an example for other cities and that their creative programs and initiatives can be duplicated."

Conference Executive Director Tom Cochran added, "We thank the participating cities from across the country for their active interest in CUSP's 'Lead-Safe...For Kid's Sake' Grant Program. DuPont and The United States Conference of Mayors are proud of the award-winning cities and look forward to following their example as they develop and maintain lead-safe programs and initiatives in their communities."

San Francisco will utilize CUSP funds to incorporate them into the Mayor's Communities of Opportunity Program, which is an initiative aimed at addressing the needs of the most vulnerable children and families in the most distressed and isolated parts of the city. The initiative will achieve its goals by a combination of leveraging resources from the private sector, state and federal partners and focusing the energies of city departments in an integrated and geographically targeted way. The mayor's housing office will hire outreach workers from the targeted neighborhoods to be their outlet in selected communities.

CUSP Funds will:

• Increase rates of testing in the identified areas of communities of opportunity though a grassroots door-to-door survey of residents with young children in selected areas.
• Identify housing within the selected areas for remediation of lead hazards.
• Institutionalize knowledge and awareness of lead hazards in housing within fair based community and community organizations.

Rochester (NY) will use CUSP funds to initiate an emergency response fund to respond to high-risk children (before they become lead-poisoned) and children with elevated blood levels. Funds will be used to cover the cost of temporary relocation for these families, lead inspections/risk assessments, child blood testing, dust wipe screening, cleaning kits, and minor interim controls. It is estimated that CUSP funds will be able to service approximately 50 families.

Gary (IN) will leverage CUSP funds in Gary's Safe Homes Partnership Project. The goal is to educate both landlords and tenants by providing them with technical assistance and to implement targeted screening community awareness initiatives in identified "hotspots." One of the outreach activities, Doc on the Block, will provide a series of educational sessions that provide free blood lead testing in high-risk communities aboard the Health Ranger, a mobile clinic facilitated by local physicians.

The 2005 LSFKS applications were some of the most competitive to date and our panel of judges had a very difficult time narrowing down the field to three winners. Several of the cities that applied received Best Practice Awards in recognition for their efforts. It is our hope that cities can learn from one another to build strong coalitions with the private sector and neighboring counties to create lead-safe environments.

To obtain more information about the CUSP partnership and our dynamic outreach program Science in the School Day, please contact Managing Director Sidney A. Wolf by phone at 202-466-7320 or send e-mail to swolf@usmayors.org.