Just something to think about - CDBG, SBA and Biggert-Waters....

For the rest of New York the big news of the day continues to be the "heat wave" that has seen temperatures of 90 degrees or more for the past several days.

Personally, having spent last fall and winter in a house open to the elements with no hot water and only a propane heater and and many blankets purloined from the V.F.W. for warmth, I am perfectly content to write these 90 degree days off simply as something that happens during the summer months.

In other word, you will never her me complain about "the heat" again!

For those of you who, like me, are still trying to recover from Hurricane Sandy, the only real news of today is the fact that the federal, state and city governments have come to the realization that their initial policy of precluding residents from (fully) accessing Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) fund grants if they had applied for and were granted loans from the Small Business Administration (SBA) was perhaps a tad bit unreasonable!

Yesterday my email in-box lit up like a christmas tree on steroids advising that the web sites of both Senators Schumer and Gillerbrand were touting press releases proclaiming that..."after their push, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will issue new guidelines providing more flexibility for Sandy-victims who turned down Small Business Administration (SBA) loans in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy. "

Now I have a tendency to view "press releases", especially those from politicians, as being not unlike the inside book jacket summary of a new fiction release -  it gives you a general feel for the story but there is a lot that goes unsaid and what is said is written by the publisher of the book who has a vested interest in your purchasing it.

I read both Senator's press releases (they are the same) regarding this issue and then attempted to ascertain what revisions had been made to the CDBG regarding these new guidelines "...providing more flexibility for Sandy-victims who turned down... SBA loans in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy."

Couldn't find any, but then it is still early as the decision to revise this process was only announced yesterday.

As usual I waited for Kevin Boyle's assessment of this movement on the part of CBDG/SBA issue as he has a better grasp of this issue than I and I posted his take on this story earlier on this site.

I know many of you are lauding the efforts of both Senators Schumer and Gillerbrand for their efforts in moving this issue along to an amicable resolution but I also question why they were not aware of the issue long before it raised it's heads at the various community meetings wherein the CDBG funding process was initially presented to residents of the storm affected areas?

After all, both these same Senator's were caught flat footed and embarrassed when the real impact of the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012 began leaking out shortly after Sandy's storm surge ravaged our area back on October 29, 2012.  [As an aside,  Biggert-Waters is a much larger problem that the CDBG and SBA programs will ever be and still looms in the not so distant future as a "town killer'.]

One would think that both Schumner and Gillerbrand would have become pro-active rather than reactive and placed "ears to the ground" and paid much more attention to the increasingly complex Sandy recovery processes that were being generated, especially those involving "grant" fundng to avoid yet another "whoopsie" moment as evidenced with Biggert-Waters.

Alas, that was not be.

Perhaps this week's WAVE stated my case more clearly and concisely than I have.  The following is a paragraph from that newspaper's "Beachcomber" column....

"Be careful of falling into a summer snooze. Just last July, the President signed the Biggert-Waters Act into law after our reps signed off on it. Our reps opened the door for flood insurance premiums that can devastate communities. We hope Schumer, Meeks, and Gillibrand aren’t signing something else this summer that will surprise us down the road. Even though they probably hope we’re sleeping, we’ve asked them what they’re doing lately. We’ll let you know."

Just something to think about!