Port Orange too late to seek state aid for flooding | What else is new?
By Lacey McLaughlin
lacey.mclaughlin@news-jrnl.com
Published: Thursday, February 12, 2015 at 10:52 a.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, February 12, 2015 at 11:19 p.m.
PORT ORANGE — City officials have identified nearly $2 million in drainage projects to prevent flooding, but those projects won’t be eligible to receive funding from the Legislature this year.
As Port Orange identifies legislative priorities for the city’s lobbyist to tackle when the session begins March 3, Public Works Director Mike Silvey detailed at a workshop last month a one-to-two-year plan for drainage improvement projects in the city. But because those projects aren’t shovel-ready and lack engineering plans, they aren’t eligible for funding consideration by lawmakers.
Some City Council members were disappointed the projects hadn’t been identified sooner. Flood control became a priority for city leaders after 8 inches of rain fell in September, damaging 80 homes.
“Just to plan what we are talking about, we are about a year away from when we could get started on these projects,” Councilman Scott Stiltner said. “We need to get engineering work done so we can start these projects in six months.”
Councilman Don Burnette echoed Stiltner’s concerns.
“We are really behind the game this year,” Burnette said.
But without state or federal funding, it’s unclear how quickly the city could break ground on the projects listed in the plan.
Interim City Manager David Harden said staff moved as quickly as possible to identify problem areas after the September flood.
“It’s not possible to get projects ready that quickly,” Harden said. “We are going to try to find funding in our own budget to do this and explore the possibility of grants.”
read more via Port Orange too late to seek state aid for flooding | News-JournalOnline.com.
A day late and a dollar short.
This is endemic of Port Orange administrative management and political leadership loosely referred to as such because it has either incompetent FCCMA administrative management or incompetent Allen Green ass kissing interim management left in the wake of the FCCMA management’s void. Anyone from within the organization that thinks outside the box is blacklisted. Therefore it is a continuous repetition of management by crisis and missed opportunities. Proactivity and innovation from within the organization is not recognized or rewarded and the city council greases the squeaky wheels and celebrates their disastrous reactive decisions as hollow victories
prematurely.
If you remember their press releases about the reuse lakes about 7 years ago they all took bows for this as what was characterized as the best and most successful project since sliced bread. They have done this several times since then declaring premature victories on what has emerged as major debacles throughout the organization that can be linked to imprudent decisions that have been made in the past by elected officials and a few administrative managerial elitists. All or most of these decisions being made against the advice of most of the long term middle management and technical employees that have been silenced, blacklisted, and in many cases railroaded.It kind of reminds you of President George Bush’s declaration of success in the middle east after the seven day Iraqi shock and awe as having been characterized as the declaration of the victory of democracy in Iraq and peace in the middle east. Port orange will never improve until it revisits its sins of the past, deals with them, and takes a new direction in the future. There is one city official and four top city administrators that need to depart for the city to be righted.
“Lets Do What Port Orange Is Doing !!” …………….Said No other city ever!!!
This is a failure that rest squarely on the shoulders of two people, Greg Kisela and Alan Green. They were the two leaders that should have insured, last summer and fall, that something like this didn’t happen. Thanks for a job not well done!
Hey lighten up on those boyz. Allen was too busy having Greg cook up an obfuscating scheme to covering his ass from criminal liability on the Halifax paving dirt debacle and Greg was too busy hatching an escape plan in taking off to Destin before he was fired. To bad they don’t need a new mayor in Destin because Allen would be an ideal match with Greg and maybe Allen could relocate and hook up with Greg in Destin and help him screw up their organization there by importing his own brand of special interest politics.
I am wondering why Council always get a pass in these discussions. Why is it never expected that Council should grow a pair and take on the Mayor and the Manager ? Is saying nothing or repeating the other guy who said nothing if he went first all that is expected of Council ?
Step up tupac & say it face to face you chump
It is interesting that someone by the name of anonymous would be calling Tupac out as a chump face to face. You would think anonymous would identify himself personally if he wanted a personal face to face confrontation with Tupac and he considered his anonymity as well as Tupac’s to be the crux of the biscuit. . The fact of the matter is that what Tupac has implied is very close to true and it is up to our city officials and our city manager to root out this feces and quit covering this up. The problem is that political expediency and perceived personal necessity has not yet compelled Bob, Drew, or Scott to take the stand that their constituency that voted them in hoped they would take. The question we need to honestly ask, is this simply a new chapter in the history of the political corruption of Port Orange or are we finally approaching some form of political reform?
They are 5 people that were elected and they all are responsible for this. Scott gets a break as he is new, but he needs to step up now.
This whole “The Sky is Falling” and Port Orange is going to float away because we flood so badly is getting a little old. Look, we live in Florida people! Oh, and if you haven’t noticed we also live in a coastal community, in Florida. It rains here, sometimes a lot. We also get storms, tropical depressions (that’s right, we live in a tropical area) and hurricanes. Most flooding has more to do with volume of rain, wind direction, tides and moon phases, then it does berms and pine needles not being cleaned out of storm drains.
How about this . . . how about people protect themselves and their homes by purchasing homes on higher elevations and protecting their property with flood insurance. Most of the homes that still experience flooding in Port Orange from time to time have done so for decades. There are just over 29,000 homes in Port Orange. From 2012-2014 only 82 homes int he entire city experience any flood damage in their homes due to rain fall and rising water from rain. That is less than 1/4 of 1% of all the homes in Port Orange. The other 99.78% of the homes in Port Orange we just fine. So why does this justify spending millions and millions of taxpayer dollars digging more ponds, building berms, and purchasing high flow pumping systems? This is a ridiculous mind set!
Dunlawton is an evacuation route..only east/west road of any size through PO..State road 421…what about the folks on the barrier islands who may need to get off?…..thought you might consider that…since you clearly don’t care about your Port Orange neighbors’ homes that flood repeatedly…Guess we are not our brother’s keepers here in PO after all…. . And we paid for a berm remember? We just didn’t get it..and council did not know it was deleted. Hey..but you’re right..no big deal. Your neighborhood is apparently doing ok. We sure spent millions on the Cambridge canal area and resolved that flooding. Don’t hear any bitching about that.
Good points, but when do you draw the line? How much is enough money spent? Should we spend another $30 million to prevent damage to a group of homes that have a combined total value of probably less that $10 million? Does that make any sense? I’m good with some reasonable drainage improvements, but some of this is getting out of control and cost all of the tax payers far too much.
And when have you ever heard of anyone being stranded in Ponce Inlet or Daytona Shores because of rain fall? The causeway and Ridgewood doesn’t flood over like Dunlawton does near the RR tracks. So big deal, people living on the beach side have to turn left or right when they get to Dunlawton and Ridgewood Avenue. There are also a total of 5 bridges, to get off the beach side. As far as an “evacuation route” gimme a break. That means you are supposed to evacuate before the disaster hits, not after! If people aren’t smart enough by now to know when to evacuate ahead of a storm, then they deserve what they get themselves into. Why does the government have to fix everyone’s problems and protect them against their own stupid decisions all the time? Oh yeah, it’s because we have an Obama mentality in our nation.
Deep your thoughts are a little shallow. How about overlaying a flood zone map with damages and see just who lives in a flood zone. I for one Do NOT live in a flood zone! I did not build at the bottom of a hill. But because the roads around me have been over paved rather than milled and development over stretching the drainage I have been built into a bowl. So how do you solve that. The Dunlawton project true was about the road but the houses are above the road, if it had worked, if it had the berm or been operated correctly by city workers, the road nor the houses would have flooded. Then if you buy the 10 mil in houses what do you want to pay the depreciated value of a repetitive loss home or what it will actually cost to get them re situated in a similar home and location? What value would you give them for their sentimental home or land owned for generations? Growth and infill must be better managed to not create flooding issues in older structures. Maintenance of drainage systems must be caught up a kept up the city was negligent in taking money from it and now must pay the high price for poor leadership.
Claudette, It’s getting to deep is a CH resident. It’s obvious who he is.
I too am guessing at who the writer might be. Not to say that I think “Too Deep”s is a position that is widely held in the Cypress Head community. Cypress Head is full of great people who want this flooding issue resolved. For the east side residents and the poor people in Sleepy Hollow and all the other neighborhoods that still flood. I know that. No one wants to see neighbors and their homes abandoned to repeated flooding or have all of us placed in danger because the only large road through our city is closed. We all have friends/family on the barrier islands we do not want placed in jeopardy. And if nothing else, its bad for business. Just want to be on record on that.. We have a good city with many caring people.
Personally I draw the line at spending taxpayer money of about $2.9 million on a flood mitigation project and not getting what I paid for. What all the players got was a “berm deleted with the deletion unknown by council” modified project that did not work when it got its first real world test on 9-24-14.
Ken Parker back on May 18th, 2010, along with Dennis Kennedy and Mayor Green seemed to think that keeping Dunlawton free of flooding was a very good idea. Of course we were coming off the debacle of the rain event of May 2009 when Dunlawton was closed for days. And Port Orange was looking really bad. And people were frightened. Both residents/officials in and outside the city. So behind that event, Ken Parker got busy to fix the problem. Properly in my view. Took him a year to come up with a plan and to identify the financing. But he did. On May 18, 2010 at a CC meeting Andrew Giannini of Quentin Hampton and Associates answers a series of carefully scripted questions from Ken Parker about that planned engineering project. Engineer Giannini assures council that this project will keep Dunlawton free of flooding. See You Tube link below for the conversation that occurred between council, Ken Parker and Andrew Giannini on that date.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAil6ayptlE
Port Orange spent money, as did other government entities, Federal and State, who contributed tax payer dollars to this. There was consensus that this was a very needed project. By our council, Mayor Green, Ken Parker and other smart folks at State and Federal agencies. So….were they all wrong then or have priorities in this city changed? Apparently our new really critical priority: Got to renovate the Cypress Head Golf Course and that club house. People may take their golf dollars elsewhere. Property values could plunge in CH. OMG. To hell with flooding as a priority. And apparently to hell with holding engineers/ contractors who built a city project that did not work accountable.
I lived through the Hurricanes of 2004. Any detour was a crisis. Gas stations were out of gas. Power was out. Downed trees blocked roads. So in MHO, its insane and beyond short sighted to say its not big deal to close an evacuation route that serves so many.
And if spending to solve flooding on Dunlawton is a bad investment, maybe we could revisit some other bad investments that PO has made over the years and may make again soon.