(Host) Cities and towns across Vermont have begun to receive checks from FEMA to help them repair Tropical Storm Irene damage. The amounts are just a drop in the bucket for many communities. But as VPR’s Kirk Carapezza reports, town officials are struggling to pay for multi-million dollar repairs, and they’re happily taking the money.
(Carapezza) Irene’s floodwaters washed out gravel roads and destroyed bridges that provide access to the 800 homes in Halifax. Christina Moore is the project manager for the town near the Massachusetts border. She says the town suffered at least $7 million worth of damage.
(Moore) "The town of Halifax has an annual budget of roughly $800,000, and we’ve been stretching that $800,000 to pay for these damages. So seeing any movement from FEMA is just good news for us."
(Carapezza) FEMA says as of the start of the week, it had obligated $1.3 million to Vermont communities to repair buildings, roads and other facilities.
For many cash-strapped communities, that’s not much money, but it’s unexpected.
(Portalupi) "We’re ahead of the game compared to most disasters."
Alec Portalupi is with the Agency of Transportation, which collects the money from FEMA and then distributes it to the towns.
He says the state is handling this natural disaster differently from others because there’s such a budget crunch.
(Moore) "We’ve kind of jumped the gun and sent out the grant agreements way before we normally do. Usually we wait to see that FEMA is essentially done with that town and then we have a dollar amount to put in the grant agreement. This time we got approval to send the grants out without putting in a maximum limiting amount."
(Carapezza) So, Portalupi says, the state is issuing payments whenever FEMA has made obligations for individual projects in towns.
(Portalupi) It’s causing us a bit of extra work because we’re processing a lot more payments but at least it’s getting money to the towns as quickly as we can."
(Carapezza) Last week, Halifax got a $55,000 commitment from FEMA. Christina Moore says that check won’t go far but she appreciates it.
(Moore) "All of the public statements from FEMA and from officials at the state of Vermont were, ‘Do not expect checks until January or February.’ But I think they saw that towns were just in absolute desperate situations."
(Carapezza) The state has made payments to about 20 towns, so far, and that number should increase as FEMA is estimating grants to exceed $100 million for its Public Assistance program. For now, many towns have taken out lines of credit to pay for repairs until they’re reimbursed.
For VPR News, I’m Kirk Carapezza.