An official from New Orleans told Springfield City Solicitor Edward Pikula about applications yet to be filed for FEMA money related to Hurricane Katrina, which hit that city in 2005.
Rita L. Coppola-Wallace, Springfield Director of Capital Assets, looks over an interior hallway wall that collapsed on the third floor of the Elias Brookings Elementary School as a result of the June 1st tornado.
Five months after a tornado tore across Western Massachusetts, Springfield City Solicitor Edward M. Pikula reflected on his city’s plight this way: “I feel as if I am a lawyer handling a massive accident case with $100 million in damages and that FEMA is the insurance company.”
Pikula said he knows the urgency of receiving money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to cover some of the millions the city has spent to recover from the tornado, but he also knows how complicated the FEMA process is and the value of negotiations on complex issues.
“Tornado law has become a new specialty for the Springfield Law Department,” Pikula said.
Since June 1 when the tornado caused millions of dollars worth of damage from Westfield to Charlton, cities and towns along its path have completed and filed many applications for cost reimbursement from FEMA and are working on more. There is more paperwork ahead.
Some of the costs have been paid with money the cities and towns borrowed, some has required deficit spending and some bills are going unpaid until FEMA money comes in.
Despite the urgency for bringing in the FEMA money, patience and a willingness to negotiate are advised by Bobbie Hill of Concordia, LLC, who is helping Springfield through its rebuilding process and has experience with the much larger rebuilding needs New Orleans has been going through since the floods that came with Hurricane Katrina.
“If the city and DevelopSpringfield settle up really quickly, they miss an opportunity to negotiate and do something that makes more sense,” Hill said.
Leslie Jones, the finance director for the city of Joplin, Mo., has similar advice for the cities and towns dealing with FEMA after the June 1 tornado.
“Make sure that everything is right before you sign anything. Don’t let them rush you. Make sure you do it right, up front,” were Jones’ words when asked what advice she would pass on to Springfield and nearby communities based on her experience with FEMA after a devastating tornado tore through her city May 22.
Jones said her office received a $6,000 payment from FEMA in mid-October to cover the cost of tornado sirens lost on May 22.
As he works on Springfield’s interaction with FEMA, Pikula said he has been in touch with several city officials from throughout the country who have had past dealings with the agency, and he said someone from New Orleans was telling him last week about applications yet to be filed for FEMA money related to Hurricane Katrina, which hit that city in 2005.
In Joplin, Jones has signed and submitted about 60 project worksheets detailing expenses Joplin encountered in recovering and rebuilding after the tornado, and she expects to finish and sign another 25 by the end of December.
In Western Massachusetts, municipal employees along the June 1 tornado path have been working on project worksheets, or “PWs,” since June.
“We are getting the applications out as fast as we can for FEMA, but they have to be complete before we can close them out,” said Kirsten Weldon, who handles this work for Brimfield in her role as treasurer and clerk for the Highway Department.
“Most of it we are still collecting information for. The applications should be over on FEMA’s side within the next week or two. I think we are all working a lot more hours and dealing with a lot of issues with this situation,” Weldon said.
Deborah A. Mahar, the finance director and accountant for Monson, said documenting and filing the paperwork required by FEMA is time consuming and can be daunting.
“You take a deep breath and get back to it,” Mahar said.
Both Weldon and Mahar said FEMA representatives have helped them with the required forms and when they have submitted project worksheets on behalf of Brimfield or Monson they have been judged as complete and in order.
“It is all about documentation,” said Mark H. Landry, a federal coordinating officer for FEMA who has worked on both the June 1 tornado process and the New Orleans efforts after Katrina.
“If you cannot document it and hand in that piece of paper, it is not going to get funding,” Landry said.
FEMA has distributed $4.8 million to individuals who qualified for payments to cover rental and other expenses after their homes were damaged or destroyed in the June 1 tornado, Landry said, and FEMA played a role in the approval of $16.6 million in low-interest loans provided by the Small Business Administration.
“We had 5,001 registrants for the tornado,’’ Landry said.
More recently, Landry said there has been an outlay of $3.2 million from FEMA in Western Massachusetts for individual assistance for people whose property was damaged by Tropical Storm Irene in late August. With the deadline for applying for individual assistance for Irene extended to Nov. 2, those figures are expected to grow.
“We have not had those kinds of numbers for individual assistance in the commonwealth in a long time,’’ Landry said.
Applications for what FEMA officials expect to be about $58 million worth of public assistance payments for cities and towns to cover debris removal, building repairs, overtime and other tornado related expenses in Western and Central Massachusetts are still working their way through the system, Landry said.
Relatively small amounts of this potential FEMA funding have been approved, or “obligated,” in FEMA terminology.
Alberto A. Pillot, a FEMA public information officer based in Westfield, said that as of Thursday, FEMA has approved payments of $481,109 for West Springfield; $300,199 for Monson; $202,185 for Wilbraham; $148,181 for Sturbridge; $18,606 for Holland; and $6,517 for Brimfield.
“FEMA has determined that at least those amounts are documented,” Pillot said. “The cities and towns work with a coordinator, and as they keep on bringing in more documentation, the dollar figures continue to go up.”
Pillot said that these communities as well as Springfield, Westfield, Southbridge and Charlton have applied for additional amounts and are expected to complete applications for more.
Landry said that once the individual city and town projects reach the stage of being obligated, the payments, which go through the state Emergency Management Agency for disbursement move quickly.
U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal, D-Springfield, has invited FEMA officials and municipal leaders to a meeting Nov. 7 at 1 p.m. at the Federal Courthouse Building, 300 State St., Springfield, to discuss up-to-date information about the public assistance and the recovery process.
Springfield, the largest city hit by the June 1 tornado, has the highest amount of expenses related to it, a figure Springfield Mayor Domenic J. Sarno puts at $106.2 million.
Not surprisingly, this highest total comes with more complications.
Springfield’s Mary Dryden School and Elias Brookings School need to be rebuilt, and Rita L. Coppola, the city’s director of capital asset construction, said both these projects are in design phase now.
Plans for the future of the city-owned South End Community Center, which was severely damaged June 1, are also under discussion.
While there have been discussions between the city and FEMA about these projects, they are not included in the $58 million FEMA list of projected reimbursements to cities and towns related to the June 1 tornado.
The potential for state funding of the school reconstruction and insurance coverage of the South End Community Center, as well as the complications of possibly relocating the community center and incorporating up-to-date codes and standards for the schools are factors in what funding source will eventually be sought by the city.
Concordia’s Bobbie Hill advises that when Springfield weighs its options for rebuilding schools, consideration should be given to negotiations like New Orleans went through when it managed to get federal funding for school construction that met that city’s needs after Katrina, rather than settle for FEMA payments which would have covered the cost of restoring schools to the poor state they were in and the locations they were in when Katrina hit.
“New Orleans has a crumbling infrastructure and a shrinking population. Why would we build the schools back to where they were?” Hill said. “The negotiations with FEMA took a very long time.”
Pikula said he hopes to have approval from FEMA for reimbursement funds by mid-November for portable classrooms needed because of the school damage, but FEMA approval for new construction will take longer.
“When you are talking about school constructions, you are gong to have estimates. FEMA may have its own estimating principle, which may be different from the city’s estimates,” Pikula said.
Springfield will look to FEMA for 75 percent of the cost of building schools and look to the state for the remaining 25 percent, Pikula said.
In the meantime, Springfield and its neighboring communities have had to spend money for less complicated expenses.
In Springfield this has included $902,662 for overtime and expenses for the Police Department, $70,058 for the Fire Department and the costs of removing trees knocked down on roads from the eastern end of the city to the western line at Wilbraham.
Some road repair expenses for communities are covered by Federal Highway Administration and some vegetative debris cleanup at or near bodies of water are covered by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which reimburse 100 percent of the cost accrued, not the 75 percent FEMA generally pays.
Wilbraham has already received $525,000 from the Natural Resources Conservation Service for cleanup of downed trees and stumps which threatened drainage of conservation areas.
Westfield has filed applications for $344,000 in FEMA funding, which includes $240,000 for cleaning debris and $104,000 for damage at Munger Hill School.
West Springfield Mayor Edward J. Gibson said his city is hoping to receive $525,000 from FEMA for the costs of removing downed trees and about $300,000 from the federal Highway Administration to cover work clearing debris from Route 5 and some of the major roads in the city.
Gibson said city officials and FEMA representatives have not reached agreement on how much damage should be covered.
Pikula said Springfield Mayor Sarno is aware of 90 percent FEMA reimbursements in some other communities in the country and is hoping for that rate for some Springfield projects, which will take negotiations.
“It is a very tedious process and very time consuming,” Pikula said.
“When you are dealing with a $100 million case, there is a lot at stake,” Pikula said. “We need to be very cautious as we go forward and not end up spending money that we do not get reimbursed for.”
Staff reporters Peter Goonan, Ted Laborde, Sandra Constantine, Suzanne McLaughlin and Lori Stabile contributed to this report.