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Emergency management updates: storm-shelter projects and concerns over FEMA threshold proposals
Summary
County emergency manager briefed commissioners on storm-shelter and hazard-mitigation projects and warned that proposed increases to FEMA public-assistance thresholds could shift costs and responsibilities onto counties.
Russ (Speaker 6), the county’s emergency-management speaker, updated the commission on Bear Creek and Shasta storm-shelter projects, hazard mitigation plans submitted through NACOG dating to 2021, and progress on public-assistance grant closeouts with FEMA.
He told commissioners he was working through documentation and account access issues with FEMA and said he expected payments to be processed by year-end for some shelter projects. Russ described the need to rework financials and specifications for older hazard-mitigation applications and said a resolution adopting NACOG’s hazard-mitigation plan would likely come to the commission in early January.
Commissioners also discussed reports that FEMA may seek to raise the per-event public-assistance threshold (the current threshold was discussed in the meeting as approximately $1,000,000 countywide) to a substantially higher level (speakers referenced proposals toward $4,000,000). Speakers warned that raising thresholds would shift more financial responsibility to counties and create administrative burdens that typically disadvantage smaller, rural counties. Commissioners said they would urge state legislators to increase state-level relief funds to offset any federal changes.
