HOT SPRINGS — Difficulty recouping labor expenses associated with the 2012 Christmas Day ice storm has prompted Garland County Judge Rick Davis to begin gathering information for a letter he intends to send the state’s congressional delegation.
Davis said Thursday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency won’t reimburse the county for labor its personnel performed, part of the approximately $672,000 he said the county spent cleaning up debris left by the storm. Davis estimates the labor cost the county about $107,000.
“We just need to get paid,” Davis said. “It’s been a long time.”
FEMA awarded $508,839 to the state to reimburse Garland County for storm-related expenses, said Earl Armstrong, public information officer for FEMA’s Region 6 office. The county received a $247,270 reimbursement June 9 for the labor it contracted out, said Barbara Hager, branch manager for the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management, the agency that administers FEMA reimbursements.
The state Department of Emergency Management has yet to remit the balance of the reimbursement. Hager said it’s still reviewing expenses submitted by the county, explaining that money could be withheld and returned to FEMA if the review finds the expenses are unrelated to the storm.
Hager said county employees’ overtime hours are eligible for reimbursement, but work performed during regular hours doesn’t qualify.
The $247,270 the county has received accounts for 75 percent of the approximately $329,000 in contracts it issued. It’s the federal share of the Public Assistance Program that funds disaster relief. State and local governments split the remaining 25 percent.
Davis said county personnel cleared considerably more acreage than the contractors for roughly the same price. Uncertainty of reimbursement and cost considerations made him reluctant to contract out a larger area, he said, adding that the county couldn’t wait for the federal disaster declaration that came Jan. 29, 2013.
Davis noted Saline County received a large reimbursement after it contracted out all of its cleanup. It was awarded $1.1 million in February for its storm-related expenses, according to a FEMA news release.
“If I would’ve hired a contractor for all of it, [FEMA] would’ve been fine with that,” Davis said. “They would’ve wrote the checks and went on, even if it’s wasting dollars on the matter.”
Davis said the county is working to modernize its documenting of the disaster-related expenses it submits for reimbursement.
“Our county’s used to a pencil-pad deal,” he said. “Some things get lost in the shuffle that way. We’re moving forward with a new tracking system, so helpfully we’ll have a better system before the next disaster.”