Crawford County commissioners in March approved hiring a Topeka company to develop a comprehensive disaster mitigation plan that would list available resources and outline how the county would deal with a variety of emergency situations.
But, the fact the plan is not already in place could affect a number of construction projects within the county.
That was the word this week, anyway, when the commissioners met in regular sessions. On Tuesday, Craig Stokes came before the board representing the Franklin community council and Rural Fire District #2. At Friday's meeting, Dawn McNay, a member of the U.S.D. 250 Board of Education in Pittsburg, also addressed commissioners.
Both Stokes and McNay had the same general topic on their minds: Possible grant funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to help finance the construction of “safe rooms” as part of projects the entities they represented are planning in the near future.
The fire district is almost ready to start building a new fire station in Franklin. Word was received Thursday of approval of $723,000 in loan and grant funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development Community Facilities Program for the project.
U.S.D. 250 received bond approval from voters earlier this month and is about to launch a $6.1 million project that would include facilities for all-day kindergarten and other additions throughout the district.
As part of the plans, both entities had included the safe rooms, reinforced rooms within each of the structures that would serve as severe-weather shelters. And both were hoping to tap in to a portion of the federal funding from FEMA that is available to help cover a portion of the cost of those shelters.
Prior to Friday's meeting, just about everyone involved was under the impression that, because a  Multi-Hazard Mitigation Plan was in the process of being assembled, Crawford County would qualify for the grant funding.
That turned out not to be the case, though.
Brad Moeller, a mitigation specialist with the Kansas Department of Emergency Management, said Tuesday that Crawford County would not qualify for the FEMA funding. The federal agency had granted exceptions to the mitigation plan requirement for 10 counties, including Cherokee County, in the wake of last year's flooding.
Crawford County did not receive one of the exceptions, Moeller said.
Without the exception, Crawford County “will have to wait until it's plan is developed and approved by FEMA before it can start doing projects,” he said.
The fire district plans include construction of a multi-purpose meeting room that would double as a storm shelter. The Pittsburg schools plans call for construction of two underground, basement shelters at Meadowlark and Westside elementary schools, complete with elevators, where students and staff could go in case of severe weather, at a cost of about $1 million.
McNay told the commissioners the U.S.D. 250 Board had recently learned of the availability of the FEMA funding. When told that qualifying for funding was contingent on the county's mitigation plan being in place, she asked the commissioners when they thought it would be done.
Ron Albertini of Frontenac, flood plain coordinator for the county, has been working with development of the county's plan since day one. He told McNay and the board the best time line he had been able to determine in discussions with AMEC Earth Environmental of Topeka, the company hired to put the plan together, was six month to one year.
Albertini also said that, in conversations with Dennis Lawlor, the project manager at AMEC, he'd been told the county's plan “would be fast-tracked.”
Lawlor was out of his office and could not be reached Friday for comment.
The biggest portion of developing the plan involves listing every asset available in every community in the county, from bull dozers and trucks to radio equipment, that could be used in an emergency. That's also the part of the process that takes the most time.
“The biggest thing is, how fast can we get input from the other agencies,” Albertini said.
McNay said construction on the projects could be shifted around, with the shelter portions delayed until the county's plan was in place, if that would assist in securing the additional funding. But the start could only be put off probably three or four months, she said.
No action was taken at the meeting. But commissioners did note that cooperation between all county and city agencies involved would assist in the process being completed as quickly as possible.
“The more people we get on board, the more input we have, maybe gets this on a faster track as well,” Commissioner Ralph McGeorge said. “It isn't like we dropped the ball. It's just a slow process.”