NICOLE LESSIN
So far, it doesn’t look like FEMA will be reimbursing the city any time soon for millions of dollars of unplanned expenditures for Winter Storm Mara, and several projects for this fiscal year are being put on hold temporarily as a result of the cost.
At the April 13 meeting, the Taylor City Council approved moving forward with amending this year’s budget to account for the approximately $5.2 million the city has had to shell out for debris removal and other costs associated with storm cleanup.
“We are going to use usetax to cover those expenses, but it is going to take us probably three or four months to work through the use tax revenues as they come in in order to cover that entire cost of the cleanup, so the use-tax purchases and projects that we were going to do are on hold for now,” said Jeff Wood, chief financial officer.
In response to Wood’s presentation, At-large Councilman Dwayne Ariola asked city officials for a status update regarding disaster grant requests to FEMA, which are contingent upon documenting city, county and state thresholds for storm cleanup costs.
“The request has been made, and we were going to use it out of the general fund/use-tax fund, but the whole idea was that we would get FEMA dollars once we met the threshold, and we had to keep our numbers precise, so that we would meet those thresholds, hence we requested everybody please tell us your damage so we could meet that threshold statewide?” Ariola asked.
While Taylor Fire Department Chief Daniel Baum confirmed the request and documentation had been completed, FEMA reimbursement was not looking promising at the moment.
“Basically, it’s in the hands of the federal government,” Baum said. “The governor already declared a disaster for the state of Texas and declared and requested a presidential disaster declaration from the federal government, and we haven’t gotten that answer. So, the state has met its threshold of $52 million worth of damages, so it’s just waiting on a response from the president to make a decision, and so until that point that the president makes a disaster declaration, there won’t be any money from FEMA.”
In a subsequent phone interview, city Spokeswoman Stacey Osborne said the lack of FEMA funds did not necessarily mean different departments and Capital Improvement Projects would have to go without forever.
“There are too many expenditures planned to list out each one individually, and some of them may still be completed this fiscal year, depending on level of use tax received,” Osborne said. “We don’t pay for all the expenditures at once. This (presentation was) is to explain to council that some of the things they had wanted to be included in this year’s budget may have to be on hold, and they will take them on a caseby- case basis.”
