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The new luxury hotel planned for the heart of downtown Greensboro isn't the only local project seeking low-interest federal stimulus financing.

In fact, it isn't even the only hotel on the list.

Dr. Don Linder's project is targeted for northeast Greensboro, near the Wal-Mart on East Cone Boulevard. It would comprise 62,500 square feet, contain 125 rooms and anchor a retail development called "The Shoppes at Pyramid Village II."

Linder is applying for $10 million in "federal facility recovery bond" financing for the project.

Also in line for the discount-interest financing:

-- An apartment and retail building on South Elm Street.

-- A new building for Deep Roots Market, a grocery store that hopes to relocate downtown.

-- The expansion of a veterinary hospital in Summerfield.

-- And two solar-energy projects.

Lessons to learn

Given all the kinks in the vetting process involving the downtown hotel, will city and county officials do anything different when the other projects come up for discussion?

They won't get that chance. The state will evaluate the second round of applicants.

Both the city and county can, however, take some valuable lessons from this experience.

The stimulus bonds are new and more than a little bit confusing. But both the city and county deserve at least a few wags of the finger for their laissez-faire approaches to the process.

Errors, confusion

The vetting of the projects, such as it was, was fraught with errors and confusion with both the governing boards of the city and county conceding that neither fully understood recent votes they took regarding the projects.

The City Council thought it was voting to hold a place for projects on Dec. 15, not actually approving them. The commissioners didn't realize until weeks later that they had ranked projects for funding preference in a Dec. 10 vote, despite being told so by the county attorney.

Councilwoman Trudy Wade said of the City Council's SNAFU, "I don't think we did our due diligence, and I don't want that to ever happen again."

How to ensure that it "will never happen again"?

Do your homework. Some council members and commissioners could do a better job of preparing for meetings. They could start simply by opening and reading the packets of documents provided in advance by staff. That's one of the least glamorous aspects of the job but also one of the most important.

Listen. On Dec. 10, County Attorney Mark Payne specifically and repeatedly told the commissioners they were voting to prioritize recovery bond projects. Apparently, many still didn't hear him.

If no criteria exist for a decision, create some. Some local elected leaders have complained that they lacked criteria for the projects vying for recovery bond financing. The county attorney, Payne, told the News & Record: "No one gave us any criteria of how we would even evaluate various different applicants. There were broad qualifying criteria, but beyond that nothing. And the fewer rules you have, the more confusion."

But there was nothing preventing county and city leaders from establishing their own rules, as other municipalities and local governments did. They should base their criteria on community needs and priorities, starting, obviously, with the potential for job creation and including other factors such as impact on economically depressed areas.

Stand your ground. A number of City Council members say they were all but strong-armed by County Commissioners Chairman Melvin "Skip" Alston, who is a real estate broker for the deal, to support the downtown hotel. But only three would say for the record that any such attempts at intimidation had occurred: Mayor Bill Knight and council members Nancy Vaughan and Danny Thompson.

Why such abject fear at being up-front about the obvious conflict of interest involved? And why the rush to accept Alston's half-hearted apology, in which he simply said he would be lower-key in his strong-arming next time?

Not our money

Finally, both the city and county appeared to take a more casual approach to the bonds simply because they involved no taxpayer money, and are, essentially pennies (lots and lots of them) from heaven. But they required a sign-off from county and city leaders and they could have a substantial local impact.

These leaders still had a fiduciary responsibility to pay closer attention.