A Hill of a History
The backstory is that the hill that supports the homes of the five Culver Crest families is a frequently burping piece of ground. Analysts said at the time of the latest tragedy that the unreliability of the subterranean activity was too big of a risk. They said the shifting ground never should have been asked to undergird homes when the land was developed in the early 1950s. Mr. Herbertson said the ground presently is moving, and no one hereabouts has seen rain for months. The Public Works Director is not surprised by the length of the residents’ displacement. “When it first happened,” he said, “we knew it was going to be awhile. We did not make any promises about what we could deliver or when we could deliver. I was not surprised to see (the displacement) go past a year. This, though, is a longer than I would have liked.” Is relief within sight? Mr. Herbertson was asked. “We have made significant progress,” he said. “We have a set of plans that are complete and would repair the hillside. At the completion, we would let the families move back in.” Enter the lawsuits. Their ominous presence would “not necessarily” prevent repair work from starting. “But they definitely are a complicating factor because the hillside, the actual place where we will be doing the work, is private property. The city, even with outside funds from FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) and the state (OES, the governor’s Office of Emergency Services), can’t do work on private property without permission from the property owners. That will be an integral part of this. Whether the permission will be granted, and how that relates to the ongoing lawsuits — those are things I am not sure about. Our hope is we will be able to move forward despite the fact lawsuits are going on in the background.
On the Matter of Permission
The longer Mr. Herbertson talked about the zigzagging contingencies related to the repair work, the clearer it became that the project seems to be situated presently in the middle of a huge forest without dependable exit signs. ”We have the design done,” he said. “But we still need to finalize it with FEMA’s review and our own review. We also have had our design consultant meet with the experts that have been hired by the residents to get their input. Obviously we need their agreement on what we are doing so they will allow us to go forward. To make this work, first we need to get the plans agreed upon by everybody. Then we need to get the funding in place and finalized for the full plan. We have some funding from FEMA. But it is not for the full extent of the work that we have designed or that we think is necessary.” FEMA is crucial to unlocking the outcome, Mr. Herbertson said. “They hold the purse strings to a large part of the revenue to do the repair.”
Million-Dollar Baby
The Public Woks Director estimates the total repair costs at between $1 million and $2 million. “It is possible,” he said, “it will run even higher than that.” The complexity returns when funding is discussed. FEMA will fund 75 percent of the work it approves. The state will contribute 25 percent of the balance, leaving 6.25 percent unfunded, according to Mr. Herbertson. “We have not identified who is paying for the rest,” he said. Thirteen years ago, the last time the hillside required major repair, the homeowners participated, But it is not clear whether they will this time. “All of this assumes that FEMA is willing to fund 100 percent of the work we are recommending, which they are not now,” he said. “We are still trying to convince them to expand the scope of the work. If FEMA, for example, only agrees to two-thirds of what we are recommending, that means the remaining one-third will have to be picked up, 100 percent, by somebody else, not FEMA and not the state. That means we have to pay 100 percent of that, we meaning ‘locally.’”
