DALLAS (AP) -- A Muscular Dystrophy Association fund-raising campaign came up short this year, but it wasn't because the economy is still slow to rebound.
Firefighters were restricted from soliciting for money on or near public streets by a new city panhandling ordinance and couldn't meet Dallas Fire-Rescue's $350,000 goal for the Fill the Boot campaign.
The Dallas Firefighters Association president, Mike Buehler, said ``the grand total was $60,000, about $300,000 less than what we had last year.''
Firefighters had asked the City Council to make an exemption to the panhandling ordinance that began shortly after last year's campaign. But Council members upheld the ordinance and declined to provide an exemption to avoid discriminating against anyone.
``What the city attorneys said, and what I agree with, is that you can't say it's a hazard for a church member to stand on a street corner and not a firefighter,'' Mayor Laura Miller told The Dallas Morning News in Friday's editions. ``When you're crossing streets all the time, it's a hazard.''
In nearby Fort Worth, Texas, and in Tulsa, city officials have made temporary exemptions to their ordinances to accommodate local Fill the Boot campaigns.
Fort Worth Fire Capt. Greg Yates said the exemptions have been vital to his department's campaign for the last two years.
``It shows that the City Council supports the F ire Department and the MDA,'' he said, adding that the Fort Worth Fire Department raised $70,500 this year, more than twice what it raised in 2002.
The Dallas firefighters' campaign had consistently been the largest noncorporate fund-raiser for MDA Dallas before this year, said Lauren Kennedy, regional public affairs coordinator for the group.
But the restrictions prompted the Fire Department to ask its 1,700 firefighters to volunteer to raise money at NorthPark Center over the last month instead of dispersing throughout Dallas. Firefighters said they had to increase the drive from one weekend to four.
