The INDEPENDENT, March 19, 2009
Page 15
Columbia County Flood Relief provides information on projects
by Jim Tierney, Director
Columbia County Flood Relief
Columbia County has re-
ceived a $500,000 Community
Development Block Grant
[CDBG] for elevation and repair
projects in Vernonia and rural
Columbia County. While these
CDBG funds are not the
biggest funding source, they
provide essential match to the
FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant
Program funds. FEMA typically
provides only 75 percent of
project costs.
According to Dan Brown,
Columbia County Flood Relief’s
deputy director, the flood relief
effort over the last 14 months
has adopted a two-track ap-
proach. The first track, working
primarily with volunteer labor,
has been driven by our lack of
available resources. Staff coor-
dinating this part of the strategy
has tracked more than 130,000
volunteer hours provided by or-
ganized volunteer groups and
individual volunteers. A conser-
vative estimate places the val-
ue of this donated labor at well
over $2 million.
More than $350,000 in direct
donations and $120,000 in spe-
cial grants have been given to
the flood recovery effort. Of
that, $180,000 has been con-
tributed to families, their proj-
ects and the city. The family do-
nations were given for materi-
als, and small grants for emer-
gency living expenses. The do-
nation to the city ($12,500) pro-
vided essential matching mon-
ey to help bring an intern from
the University of Oregon. The
intern will help the city plan
their crucial flood recovery pub-
lic works projects. The City and
CCFUNC [Columbia County
Flood Unmet Needs Commit-
tee] hope to complete an article
on the importance of these es-
sential projects for publication
in the near future. The Unmet
Needs Committee has been
working hard to protect and
maintain as much of the re-
maining fund as possible as a
means to completing its second
strategy.
The second strategy has
been to secure large public
grants that would have suffi-
cient scale to make a signifi-
cant difference for 10 or 20
times more families than could
be served with the existing
fund. In January of last year,
flood relief director Jim Tierney
laid out a $10 million strategy
based primarily on large contri-
butions from two public pro-
grams.
The first program,
FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation
Grant Program (HMGP) has
somewhere between $3 million
and $5 million available to proj-
ects in Columbia County. The
US Department of Housing and
Urban Development’s Commu-
nity Development Block Grant
(CDBG) program is a second
source. These two funding
sources are complementary;
the HMGP program is larger
but will only pay for 75 percent
of project costs. The remaining
25 percent can in many cases
be covered by the CDBG pro-
gram.
Even once the funding is se-
cured, a serious hurdle re-
mains. Most of these grant dol-
lars are only payable as reim-
bursements after the project is
complete. In most construction
projects, contractors are paid at
least once per month. Thus, for
jobs lasting more than one
month, homeowners must have
some kind of construction fi-
nancing. Time consuming and
difficult to obtain under ordinary
conditions, such funding is
even more difficult to obtain
during the current financial cri-
sis. It is for this need the Unmet
Needs Committee has protect-
ed its resource. They will lend
their funds to homeowners and
be repaid from the federal reim-
bursements. In this way, a core
of $130,000 can be the key to
financing more than $5 million
in flooded household’s projects.
In addition, Community Action
Team has been seeking foun-
dation support for a larger con-
struction fund.
Although the HMGP pro-
gram is designed for flood ele-
vations and buyouts, CDBG is
not typically used for flood re-
lief. As a consequence, pro-
gram details had to be invented
and examined carefully for
compliance with HUD rules.
This has been followed by a
complicated series of contracts.
In the end, County and the City
of Vernonia each applied for,
and expect to receive:
• $500,000 for Columbia
County elevation and repair
projects
• $500,000 for City of Ver-
nonia elevation and repair proj-
ects
• $500,000 for Columbia
County residential buyout proj-
ects
• $500,000 for City of Ver-
nonia residential, rental and
small business buyout projects
The development and fund-
ing of these projects, together
with their extensive sets of con-
tracts has taken much longer
than the leadership of the flood
recovery effort had hoped. At
this point, the County elevation
and repair grant is in place. The
final contracts and required
federal process steps for the
City elevation and repair grant
are being completed, now. This
funding should be available
within 45 days. The final de-
tails of the two buyout grants
are currently being hammered
out with state staff. Community
Action Team (CAT) staff expect
these two grants to be available
in approximately 90 days.
Beginning in December
2007, more than a dozen dedi-
cated volunteers have worked
to coordinate the County flood
recovery. Guided by Columbia
County Commissioner Tony
Who are the Col. Co. unemployed?
By Shawna Sykes, Workforce
Analyst for WorkSource Ore-
gon Employment Department
In 2008, unemployment ben-
efits to Columbia County resi-
dents totaled approximately
$11.9 million, just over 1.2 per-
cent of all benefits paid
statewide. Historically, benefits
claimed by Columbia County’s
residents are greater than pay-
roll taxes collected within the
county. In 2007, the amount of
unemployment
benefits
claimed by Columbia County
residents ($7.6 million) was
over twice as great as the
amount of payroll taxes paid by
the county’s employers ($3.3
million.)
Multnomah, Washington,
Lane, Clackamas and Marion
counties received the largest
amount of unemployment ben-
efits at $504,333,287 com-
bined, making up over half of
the state’s $954,931,369 bene-
fits paid in Oregon in 2008.
Of the 3,104 unemployment
insurance claimants residing in
Please see page 20
Hyde, the County took the lead
on this effort to protect the
overtaxed government of the
City of Vernonia. County lead-
ership used a [U.S.] Depart-
ment of Labor (DOL) training
grant through MTC Works to
hire and train many of these
original volunteers to manage
the projects and public re-
sources they expected to ob-
tain. In January of this year the
DOL grant funds ran out and
CAT picked up the financial and
supervisory responsibility for
that staff. For most of the re-
tained staff, CAT will absorb
this cost until support funding is
available from the CDBG and
HMGP grants. Because volun-
teer coordination and certain
case management work done
by the new CAT staff are not el-
igible under these grants, the
Unmet Needs Committee
asked the County Commission
to set aside $36,000 for CAT
from their recovery funds. This
money is intended to pay a por-
tion of the 2009 salaries of
three critical staff still working
on CCFUNC’s first strategy us-
ing volunteers.
Currently CAT Flood Recov-
ery staff has executed con-
tracts on the first two elevation
projects with two others ready
to sign contracts immediately
upon funding of the first City
CDBG grant. They have 27 oth-
er elevation projects at various
stages of development. In addi-
tion, CAT staff has more than
20 projects slated for buyout
using HMGP and CDBG funds.
They expect the number of
projects to increase over the
next two years. CAT’s Flood
Recovery staff hopes to see
both types of projects begin in
earnest this spring. CAT staff
expect progress from here on
out to be limited primarily by the
speed at which staff, contrac-
tors, and public supervisory
staff can process the individual
projects.
Beginning late last year, CAT
began another flood recovery
project. They purchased prop-
erty on 6th Street [Avenue] in
Vernonia to build four houses
and rehab an existing home.
These four newly constructed
homes will be sold at prices af-
fordable to families displaced
by the flood. The existing home
will be rented to a household
also displaced by the flood.
The flood relief staff provides
information and updates at
their website, www.vernoni-
aflood. org. For more informa-
tion and assistance they can be
reached at 503-429-4948.
(See related article on page
1 under headline “Council given
update on flood recovery
plans”)