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Community Corner

NY Rising: Anything But Stronger, Smarter

If you've been crushed by Hurricane Sandy, and applied for help with Andrew Cuomo's "NY Rising Program" --you probably noticed that your going to get nothing, or virtually nothing from them. They are not going to "make you whole" as they originally promised. They aren't going to come anywhere near it. This dismay and disgust with NY Rising, is only just beginning.

Here is what they are doing. I won't begin to guess if it's all deliberate, or if there is any political edge to it. Just the cold hard reality.

NY Rising IS committed to leasing space, opening NY Rising Offices, staffing them (often times with 3 or 4 people in a room watching the same papers get shuffled). They will keep opening offices all over NYS at great expense. They will have thousands on staff shuffling papers.

If you've been to a NY Rising office, and asked some simple, logical questions about the program NY State is pouring Hurricane Relief dollars into, they always say the same thing...  "I don't know..."

Doubt this? Try it, go ask a few questions about how their program really works, what the rules are, and what you should expect as a result of filling out countless forms, and often times filling them out again and again. 

They don't know.

The Federal Government gave NY State Billions of dollars to support the recovery --and to be fair, it's at the State's discretion how they spend it. 

Have you seen the TV Commercials? How about the one with the "hero shot" of the Empire State Building at the end. They're spending hurricane relief money to promote the Empire State Building. That's nice since it's the Empire State --right?

Here's another take. The Empire State Building just went public. That's right, they filed an IPO and raised millions upon millions of dollars. Flush with cash, this massive for profit corporation gets free advertising on the NY Rising expense account... and they didn't even flood in the storm. I don't know that the lights even flickered there.

So billions for "Hurricane Relief" and if you live in Long Beach, half your block probably hasn't moved home. Of those that have, few have elevated or mitigated --so much for NY Rising's motto... stronger, smarter... is rebuilding in a flood zone the same way smarter? Govenor Cuomo likes to talk about stronger, and smarter --but really, he's not released a nickel to fund in whole or in part elevation grants.

But it gets worse. FEMA, the federal governments division who's job it is to deal with disasters, has oceans of data, and decades of learning on how to rebuild a community after a storm. They have a program called the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program or HMGP.

This is a program that FEMA says if you meet the published criteria (publicly available, no secrecy like NY Rising Program criteria) they will cover 75% of the cost of the elevation or mitigation project. This assumes among other things that the project meets a BCA, or benefit-cost analysis standard... the project has to pay for itself by avoiding another flood. That is if you were to have a $100 loss in a flood, and rish another $100 loss in a flood, the cost of the mitigation project can't be more than the $100 FEMA would save on the second loss. I'm summarizing, but that's the spirit of the law. 

Now if you qualify by their standards, you'd expect to get your 75% in order to mitigate and rebuild "smarter and stronger" as per NY Rising, and Govenor Cuomo.

Not so.

NY Rising doesn't know anything about HMGP. Either does the State (even though it's published on their website, publicly) and in most cases even FEMA doesn't know about distributing those funds. Despite it being all over their website, and the fact that they've paid out billions in HMGP Grants over time in multiple states.

Yet no one knows, and NY Rising is what you get instead --and they pay, you guessed it, next to nothing. I have an elevation project they claim can be done for $25,000 The lowest bid I got in writing is $187,000. I asked them to provide the name of a contractor I can do this work with for $25,000 --they said they don't know any.

I asked if you don't know any, then where did you get the $25,000 number from? They said... you guessed it... we don't know.

So if they don't actually help you rebuild Stronger and Smarter as they promise, then whats the point?

Ah, jobs in NYS. Made up jobs. Jobs in NY Rising. Jobs that help buoy someones employment numbers so they get re-elected. Beyond that it's not much else.

If this sounds unfair, or unreasonable. Your right, it is.

But the guys that cooked this up WILL get away with it. They will unless people in the affected areas speak up, and loudly. Most politicians, regardless of their political affiliation don't really listen until popular opinion is at stake. That means you have to make enough noise that the media picks it up in a meaningful way. Enough media that they fear the impact on their personal brand.

Then, they play the hero, and make it right.

Until then, a we get a few thousand New Yorkers temporary jobs for a few years, shuffling papers, accomplishing nothing, and burning up the billions in aid that made the front page of the paper and Andrew Cuomo put his name on in the name of Hurricane Relief.

But it's not. It's a jobs program --Federal aid to manufacture jobs out of thin air. Thinly veiled as a Hurricane Relief for the victims of Sandy.

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