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The Comanche County Commissioners Court
met in an emergency meeting, Thursday, August 2, to discuss the FEMA
Public Assistance Pilot Program. Since Comanche County has been
declared a flood event disaster area by both Governor Rick Perry and
President George Bush, the county is eligible to participate in the
program.
All commissioners were present except
Jimmy Dale Johnson. Also present were Tricia Grimshaw and Ray Helberg,
assistant Comanche County Emergency Management Coordinator, and
Comanche County Management Coordinator, respectively.
According to FEMA, the Public Assistance
Pilot Program is designed to reduce the federal costs of administering
the PA Grant Program, increase flexibility in administering the PA
Grant Program, and expedite the much-needed recovery dollars to the
program’s applicants following disasters. Participation in the PA
Pilot Program is open to State and local governments on a voluntary
basis.
“The only thing,” Grimshaw said, “is that
the money will be based on estimates. On large projects, if we go over
that estimate, we will have to eat the costs.”
“That’s the ‘down’ side to it.”
Commissioner Garry Steele said. “The ‘up’ side is that we get the
money up front.”
“Yes, we get the money up front on our
large projects,” Grimshaw said.
After a general discussion about the
program, and the needs in Comanche County, Grimshaw said, “I think we
want to accept this Pilot Program. We can decide, as we come to each
project, whether we want to put it in the Pilot Program or not. But if
we don’t sign this, and we think there’s a project that we should have
put in the Pilot Program, then we’re out of luck. This is not binding
us to do even one Pilot Program, it’s just says that we’re interested
in doing it, we might do it, but we don’t have to.” Commissioners then
voted unanimously to approve County participation the FEMA Pilot
Program.
At the same meeting, Commissioners
approved Helberg as a primary authorized representative, and Grimshaw
as a secondary authorized representative for the FEMA Pilot Program
process.
After the meeting, Commissioner Garry
Steele reported that FEMA officials visited the area on July 31,
meeting with county and city officials to assess flood damage. “We
have several million dollars of damage to infrastructure around the
county, which includes streets, roads and bridges,” Steele said.
“There are still several county bridges that are submerged.”
In further discussing the damage from
flooding, Commissioner Steele mentioned that he thought Helberg had
done an outstanding job in making contact with local, state, and
federal officials in order to get things started for our county and
and cities. |
