SEA BRIGHT — The borough is withdrawing from a federal program that officials say has failed to help Sandy victims get back in their homes, and will instead fund emergency repairs directly.
During the March 5 Borough Council meeting, Mayor Dina Long said the municipality would allocate $650,000 to help fund installation of heating, flooring, plumbing and hot water heaters in storm-damaged homes to make them habitable.
The borough will end participation in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Sheltering and Temporary Essential Power (STEP) program.
“Our team has concluded that the STEP program has become unworkable at this point,” Long said. “Instead, my recommendation is that we, locally, as a council do something to make it right for those 130 people who have been counting on us to make those essential repairs over the last six to eight weeks.”
During the meeting, the council introduced an ordinance that would authorize the creation of the Rapid Return Reimbursement Program.
According to Long, the program would be open only to residents who qualified for STEP.
“Those 130 people that were originally approved for STEP would be able to receive reimbursement,” Long said.
“The criteria that we came up with is existing approval in the FEMA STEP program, documentation of materials, and installation for electrical service, heating systems, flooring and hot water heaters,” she added.
The STEP program provided a 75-percent match on $10,000 worth of improvements for residents to make homes temporarily habit- able while other major repairs are completed.
The borough program will max out at $5,000 per property.
“That is what we could afford — and even that is pushing it,” Long said. “We have literally tried everything we could think of, short of getting on a train to Washington.”
One of the key differences between the borough’s program and STEP is that the FEMA program only covers temporary improvements to make a home habitable.
“The mayor and council proposed [that] the $5,000 would be a permanent repair, as opposed to a temporary repair that you have to go in and add on to,” Nancy Sherman, the borough’s STEP administrator, said.
Sherman said one of the reasons the borough is pulling out of the STEP program is the fact that the borough would be liable for the $10,000 if a resident receives funding from the program and later decides to demolish their home.
“It was our responsibility to make sure you did not demo your home if we touched your house or put work into it,” Sherman said. “We would not be reimbursed, and the borough was liable for 100 percent of the costs.”
Under the STEP program the borough would have received the funds, purchased the materials and hired the contractor, so the funding would not be deducted from the property owner’s insurance claim.
Under the borough program, residents will be responsible for the purchase of materials and hiring a contractor. They can then submit a reimbursement form to the borough.
“You can get it installed by whichever contractor you pick; you don’t have to have the borough telling you who to do the work,” Sherman said. “[It is] actually more beneficial to the resident, because you are able to make the decisions you want for your home.”
Long said the borough tried to work with the STEP program, but could not get on the same page with FEMA.
“Those people have been painfully waiting for six weeks for the borough to come and do the work that was promised to them under the STEP program,” she said. “Since that time, there have been numerous challenges and setbacks with FEMA, beginning with a lack of specificity and clarity of what FEMA would cover.
“There was a lack of clarity in terms of who[m] they would cover, in terms of determining eligibility for residents and properties,” she added. “We had an inability to get those guidelines from FEMA in writing, despite numerous requests.”
Sherman agreed the program was hard to follow.
“To say that the guidance changed weekly was an understatement,” she said. “It was the responsibility of the borough — at least through the eyes of FEMA — to ask FEMA for clarification [on] how the program would work.”
According to Sherman, FEMA sent a seven-page guide for the program, but the borough was required to question all of the other issues that might be unique to each property.
She also said it was unclear whether rental properties or substantially damaged properties would be covered under the reimbursement program.
At least one resident was pleased that, under the new borough program, she would not lose eligibility for FEMA rental assistance.
“The reason they wanted to rush you back into your home is so that they could take away the rental assistance,” she said. “So now, with your solution, we will still be able to continue with our assistance through FEMA.”
“That’s a much better idea. I didn’t want to live in a construction zone,” she added. “[The council] did the right thing.”
The council is expected to adopt the ordinance creating the program during the March 19 meeting.