Sunflower County residents could be getting some much-needed assistance with regard to possible future natural catastrophes that strike within the county.
On Monday, Sunflower County Emergency Management Director Mitch Ramage introduced Carlos Martinez and Todd Demuth of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency to the Sunflower County Board of Supervisors.
The assistance would come in the form of the Disaster Assistance Repair Program, which is legislatively funded and also legislatively dictated on its uses.
It would require establishing a long-term recovery committee to help county residents.
Demuth laid out the prerequisites for the program. Ramage said that former directors Ben Grant and Denny Evans had started working on this before they retired.
In describing his role at MEMA, Demuth said, "What I do is, when we have a disaster there's two types of recovery, public assistance, which helps publicly owned entities, roadways, different structures like that and individual, which is to help the people. So that's what my team and I try to do to the best of our ability is to help the individual."
He said they spring into action specifically when the natural disasters do not meet the national declaration thresholds. "It's very difficult to get an individual assistance declaration after a storm or natural event and as time goes on it becomes more and more difficult because FEMA has been tightening their strings," Demuth said.
That is what prompted them to try to find something to help individual citizens in case the federal declarations are not received.
Demuth said, "The Disaster Assistance Repair Program is a mechanism that can provide the county with up to $250,000 for building materials only. The county would be incumbent upon finding the people who can actually do the work."
He specified that the program does not pay for labor, just the materials. The money is given in $50,000 blocks up to $250,000. "The reason we do it that way is it assists the county and MEMA specifically with making sure that we have everything captured, reconciled,” he said.
Demuth explained that if Sunflower County had the mechanism in place to implement the program, MEMA would send the county $50,000 and once they spent that money and provided $50,000 in receipts for building materials and needed more money, then MEMA would send them the next block of $50,000.
He added that they would be seeking an increase from the upcoming legislature because some counties may need more than $250,000 and they want to make it on a case-by-case basis.
He said they would not just arbitrarily send the next block of money, but the county would need to reconcile before any new money is sent.
Gaining access to the funds requires that the county identify a volunteer long-term recovery committee or a 501c3 corporation to case manage the individuals.
Martinez is the individual assistance specialist for Sunflower County and other portions of northern Mississippi. He said the volunteer group or 501c3 organization will also be responsible for keeping track of receipts and tracking the work done on individual properties. He suggested that the volunteers be made up of representatives from each county district.
In spelling out how the program work, Martinez emphasized that documentation will be essential, as well as assessing the necessary materials for a particular project. Although the county has to sign off on the agreement with MEMA, the funds are handled directly through the volunteer or non-profit organization.
The long-term recovery committee would have to grant approval and any checks to the vendor for materials would go directly to whichever vendor was supplying the materials. He said the program is about two and a half years old.
Demuth and Martinez said their main goal is to simplify the process as much as possible
Speaking on behalf of Martinez and Demuth, District 3 Supervisor Ben Gaston assured the board that they were professionals and that they would stick with Ramage to make sure that everything was done correctly because he has seen them in action before. "These long-term recovery committees, they're a good thing for the county. They've been very successful in other counties, especially down on the coast and VOAD (Volunteer Organizations Active in Disasters) is a good place to go to get free labor and they'll help do all of that and I strongly encourage the board to go along and adopt it," Gaston said.
Attorney Johnny McWilliams asked about their recommendation for the makeup of the committee and was told that it would be different for each county. However, they did recommend limiting strong personalities. "I want one or two strong personalities because they make sure people do right, but sometimes you can have too many and they get in each other's way."
The Supervisors will have to approve the volunteer/501c3 organization, so McWilliams suggested that the county lawmakers be thinking about who they want to make up the committee.
In other business,
The county leaders unanimously voted to reinstate the emergency proclamation for another 30 days, even though District 1 Supervisor Glenn Donald stated there was no reason to reinstate it if they were not going to uphold it.
"If we're not going to operate under emergency let's not do the proclamation. I got a bad misunderstanding on this because I thought the reason we did the proclamation was that to keep our county safe and social distancing was one of them. Now, if we're not going to adhere to the social distancing in the proclamation order, the crowd gathering then ain't no use in us having one," Donald said.
The county lawmakers also unanimously approved District 4 Supervisor Anthony Clark's request to appoint Ruleville resident Sam Miller to replace Elise Jenkins on the Sunflower County Economic Development board.
The lawmakers received and approved a payment request to McBride Co., LLC in the amount of $95,000 for the Tindall Road project and received and approved an invoice from Gardner Engineering in the amount of $10,421.05 for that same project.
They also voted to renew the private-local agreement with the Fannie Lou Hamer Cancer Center and to ask the legislature to remove the sunset clause from it.
