News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
FEMA has denied Livingston’s hazard mitigation grant application after a cost benefit analysis showed the properties did not qualify.
TEMA representative Donna Holden said Monday night the federal government cited a lack of damage receipts, and the Cash Street homes are not located in a flood zone.
After working on the application for some three years, Alderman Kelly Coleman called the situation an “administration failure” by TEMA.
“I think its pitiful that we’re sitting here three years later to learn that we don’t qualify, because our residents didn’t submit receipts to document and to quantify the value what they’ve put on their sheets,” Coleman said. “It shouldn’t take us three years to figure that out.”
The program would provide a buy-out option for homes continually facing flooding issues. Some five to six homes were set to participate. Mayor Curtis Hayes said the news comes as a “bomb shell.” Hayes apologized to home owners present at the Monday Board of Aldermen meeting.
“I join the Aldermen and the entire board here that thinks this has truly been drug along way too long to kind of figure out we are here now,” Hayes said.
One of the home owners that spoke out during the meeting Monday was Pat Poston. Poston said the application never requested for receipts.
“She said if you get a (appraisal) to go and look at the property, they are going to give you what it was accessed at before,” Poston said. “No receipts were ever mentioned anytime. I sent a whole package of pictures before and after. This is not right.”
Holden said the receipts were originally not required, because a benefit cost analysis was not required. FEMA sent back the application and required the study because there was not enough evidence of the disasters.
Holden said the city does a have a small time frame ranging anywhere from 14 days to 30 days to find the additional information. At the same time, Holden recommended that the city withdraws its application based on the timing and try again under a different pot of funding.
Coleman requested for TEMA to send a letter to the city explaining the situation before moving forward.
