An $8 million flood buyout program is at the top of the city’s wish list.

Wednesday, August 09, 2000

An $8 million flood buyout program is at the top of the city’s wish list.

During Tuesday’s Austin City Council finance committee meeting, committee members voted to request a $1 million grant from the Hormel Foundation, to be matched by another $1 million from the city. Ultimately, council members hope that the $2 million will make up the 25 percent required to get a 75 percent grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the amount of $6 million.

Although the grant requests to the foundation have to be voted on by the entire council at its next meeting, odds are good that the council will go with the committee’s recommendations.

"All together we’re hoping to get $8 million for another flood buyout program," City Administrative Services Director Tom Dankert said. "It’s our belief that when the Corps of Engineers comes, they’re going to tell us that buyouts are our best option. I think Rochester spent something like $100 million (on prevention); we don’t have that kind of money."

As in the past, the Austin Housing and Redevelopment Agency will play a major role in any flood buyout program.

"The theory is to try to get everyone who has any possibility of being affected out if they want to go," Tom Smith, HRA’s deputy director of community development, said. "We’re trying to get an idea of what it would cost to move all the homes and some of the commercial properties out of the 100-year-flood plain now. I don’t know if $8 million will cover everyone, but it certainly would cover the vast majority."

Smith said the Austin HRA has spent $5 million already – $2 million after 1978 and another $3 million after 1993 – and the county probably has spent another million dollars. Between them, 159 homes have been removed.

That’s 159 homes that would certainly have been flooded in the July 10 disaster.

"We’ve clearly taken the worst of them, but we’re going to make an effort to get money to get everyone out, even commercial properties," Smith said. "I think the city’s willingness to make a financial commitment will help our application, but I can’t predict right now how successful we’ll be with FEMA and the state."

Other grant requests to go to the Hormel Foundation as part of the city’s annual wish list, in the order they were ranked by the finance committee, included the following:

– Austin-Mower County Home Ownership Program – $10,000

– Smoke alarms – $3,000

– J.C. Hormel Nature Center, new windows for the Interpretive Center – $27,000

– Skate park – $15,000

– Portable stage for festivities – $80,000

– Marcusen Park removal and new baseball diamond complex – $200,000

"Last year the bigger item was the request for money for the multipurpose arena that we made on behalf of the county," Dankert said. "Plus we always have some smaller items like the home ownership fund and the smoke alarms."