Disaster aid hinges on paper trail, SEMA official says

Thursday morning, officials from Bollinger and Madison counties devoted their time to a workshop on getting disaster aid.

Not for this week's floods, but for February's ice storms.

More than a dozen attended the last of seven Missouri State Emergency Management Agency workshops. Originally scheduled to be held at Marble Hill City Hall, the group moved to Marble Hill Bible Chapel across town. They'd been squeezed out of the city's offices, which are being used as the county's emergency operations command base.

Patrick Duncan, a planner with SEMA's disaster and recovery branch, emphasized the need for documenting every aspect of each community's recovery. Financial aid is broken into three segments: Seventy-five percent will be paid by the federal government; local governments will pay 15 percent of their total recovery cost; and the state will pay 10 percent.

Duncan said even volunteer work is valuable, though no reimbursement is made. Instead, emergency management planners calculate a relative value of the donated time, equipment or goods, and use that figure to reduce the local government's 15 percent share.

One effect of the ice storms is that the many rural Southeast Missouri governments used to providing mutual aid on a handshake basis will have to draw up formal contracts.

"Agreements should address who should be charged, how it is paid and in what amounts," Duncan said. Without some kind of written agreement, local officials will be forced to backtrack and find proof of previous aid and payments. That could mean using minutes of municipal or county meetings, he said, adding that it was a good reason to keep accurate, complete records of such meetings.

When Gary Schrum, Marble Hill's city administrator, suggested that half the cost of getting aid would come from doing all the paperwork, Duncan nodded slightly.

He said many times, especially in smaller cities, officials don't realize that something as simple as buying lunch for emergency workers is a reimbursable expense, as are "copies, faxes, long-distance calls and the time to attend meetings like this one," he said.

Other items, such as sandbags provided by the U.S. Corps of Engineers can't be claimed, unless the city or county gets an invoice for it.

He said recent alterations of Federal Emergency Management Agency aid plans have the state agency reviewing and revising its advice to local governments. The state-run disaster aid workshops also emphasized the importance of staying in touch with planners, for everything from adjusting deadlines for cleanup times to making estimates for recovery costs.

"We review, we approve, we pay. But if you haven't sent in anything to us, you won't get paid," he said.

"The strongest message? Provide good documentation for everything," said Rodney Bollinger, Jackson's public works director, who attended Wednesday's SEMA briefing in Jackson.

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127