One Big Team

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Today there was a summit meeting in Baton Rouge for all the leads of all phases of the planning program and for the National Guardsmen.

It was an opportunity for us all to see what others were doing and how our parts fit into the overall puzzle. There are four simultaneous planning efforts going on. We are doing the recovery plans which include projects that will be initiated and sometimes completed this fiscal year. Another firm is preparing a series of pattern books providing guidance to neighborhood / culturally appropriate styles for rebuilding. Andres Duaney (the big advocate for “New Urbanism”) is leading three charrets across the region to provide examples of good design for the surrounding areas. Finally, Calthorpe will be tying all of this together in developing and assessing alternative growth scenarios.

Duaney was the most enjoyable speaker. He purposefully tries to challenge people’s ideas and get a reaction. Many of his points are good creative solutions.

It was really a good day to get everyone on the same page in terms of where we are going, what are the limits of our work and when we need to be done.

One of the things I realized with this entire pause event is that FEMA is really a quasi-military operation. Many of the folks involved are retired military. They are given a mission and their job is to get it done and get out. Results are measured in quantifiable terms like cubic yards of debris removed or trailers installed. Communication with the media and the community is closely and centrally control. And when there is a problem like the pause, the first people to be demobilized are the community affairs folks effectively reducing communication with the media. Planning which by its nature needs to be inclusive, needs to involve maximum communication, is multi-disciplinary with no easy performance measures and with no definitive time frame for success is an odd duck in this world. It is little understood within the organization. While mayors and others sing the praises of this programs, there are people within FEMA questioning its value. They just look at the world from a different perspective.

A Living Plan

Thursday, February 16 and Friday, 17, 2006

Many planners talk about how any plan needs to be a living document that changes as new information becomes available and circumstances change. The reality, however, is that one a plan is printed and bound it becomes a stagnant document which will require an update or total re-write at some point years into the future.

Typically, the FEMA Long Term Community Recovery Planning function has produced attractive, professional looking documents with many photos and renderings. This is a major expense. So the word has come down that there may not be a printed plan. Instead, efforts are being initiated to develop an internet based “planning tool.” It will be designed to capture all of the work we are doing and leave the LRA with a tool which will allow them to add projects as they are identified, update existing projects as new information becomes available, and tracking implementation of the projects. It will also allow people to look at projects for a given parish or instead look statewide for a specific sector like housing. Since it will be a web-based data base application, standardized formats for describing the projects that will make enforcing consistency much easier.

The hardest part is that they will be creating this application as we start to use it. No alpha or beta testing. Well, that is not 100% true since the results will not be accessible by the public until the plan is done.

Changes

February 14, 2006

The upheaval of the past few days has had repercussions. Suddenly the program has its forth director and third sense I arrived. We will have fewer reporting requirements, we will be closed on Sundays, and the maximum weekly hours without prior authorization has been reduced to 60.

Another Valentine’s Day away from my Valentine. This makes two in a row. We had never missed one prior to this. I miss being away from home and family. We have been told we can approve staff rotations if it has been at least 30 days since the last one and it is over before the end of the month. We are expecting to be flat out for the month of March – unless something changes again.

Pausing the Pause

Monday, February 13th

At the very last moment, the pause was paused. It is not known how long we will continue – a couple of weeks or until the end of the project? I would estimate that this pause of a couple of days has actually cost us at least a week. Now we need to do damage control, re-establish trust and reschedule the meetings that had been cancelled.

Weekend of Uncertainty

Saturday, February 11 and Sunday, February, 12, 2006

The team has been working hard preparing descriptions of key projects and organizing their notes. The suspicion is that we will not be demobilized since our Technical Assistance Contractor Coordinators have told us not to book flights until Monday just in case. We will see.

One positive out of this is that several of the Mayors have contacted FEMA and the Governor’s office to say that this has been one of the most positive relief programs they are a part of.

Black Hats

Friday, February 10, 2006

First thing in the morning, I filled in the Jeff Davis team via speakerphone and told them I would be down for a face-to-face meeting at 1:00 PM.

I once had a visiting professor who had worked for years for the EPA. He talked about, how there were times when the appropriate action was to firmly place the black hat on someone’s head. This morning I invited everyone to listen in to the 8:30 conference call and our National Guardsmen invited us to listen in on their conference call afterward.

The ESF 14 folks were very diplomatic. This was a joint decision, concerns were being addressed by the LRA & FEMA, they were not sure how long it would take to develop a workable approach, etc., etc.

In contrast, the LRA representative who spoke to the National Guardsmen said that FEMA felt they were spending too much money and had put a halt to things much to the surprise of the Governor and the LRA. H went on to say that the LRA was working on a proposal for the program to continue and hoped to have it done by the end of the day. In the mean-time the National Guardsmen were instructed to prepare to continue the program starting Tuesday on the assumption that we would be gone by then.

One of the National Guardsmen assigned to our team was a guy from Texas. He had a very rye sense of humor and keen sense of self. He was flabbergasted that after a month or so of working with planners for the first time in his life he was expected to take over. His response was great. He said, “After this I think I will go hang out at the hospital for a month and become a brain surgeon!”

The Pause

Friday, February 9, 2006

The day-to-day method of coordinating efforts across 19 Parishes is a series of conference calls. The operations unit conducts 8:00 AM calls – Mondays and Thursdays for Regional Leads and Tuesday and Friday for Parish and Regional leads. ESF-14 Senior Management also has a 5:00 PM daily meeting / conference call. Originally this was a meeting of Unit Chiefs. Then it grew to include Regional Leads. Then it became optional for Parish Leads to listen in.

As of Wednesday, the person in charge of day-to-day operations was scheduled to come visit both Allen and Jeff Davis on Thursday. In the morning I received an e-mail saying that the trip had to be cancelled – no explanation.

I was planning to attend the Kinder Public Meeting Thursday night, but mid-afternoon while down in Jeff Davis, I was told that it was important for me to listen in to the 5:00 PM conference call so I had to make some quick staff reassignments.

While I was not sure why they wanted all Parish Leads on the 5:00 PM call, I was stunned by the announcement made. They are “pausing” the Long Term Community Recovery function and sending us all home next Tuesday or Wednesday. It seems that there are issues regarding the level of State and local participation in the process and the Louisiana Recovery Authority and FEMA want to take some time to rework how this is being done. They anticipate it could be a few weeks or longer before the program is restarted.

I am not sure exactly what that means. I think that the attendance at the Louisiana Planning Day Open Houses was significantly (less than half?) of what was hoped and I suspect that the cost per attendee was rather high. I also know that while our National Guardsmen have been doing a great job, when FEMA asked for state partners to be added to each team they did not expect those people to be National Guardsmen with know planning experience and little or no knowledge of state programs in the project areas we were developing. I do know that the Mayors and other local officials in both Allen & Jeff Davis Parishes are very happy with the level of local participation.

We are to cancel all meetings scheduled for next week, focus on completing the basic description of all projects we have on our list, and organizing our materials to turn over to the National Guard before we leave.

The first thing I did was call all the Allen Team people who where at the Public Meetings and tell them to come back for an 8:00 PM staff meeting. The second thing was to call Travelocity. Just last night I had booked a flight for my wife and daughter to join me during my daughter’s vacation week. Now I will be home for her vacation. Luckily, they let me cancel the ticket since it was within 24 hours of purchase. What a bummer. I am really enjoying this work. It is one of the rare occasions to look at the complete picture of what impacts community not just one slice. It has been fun and I am good at it. And having made a commitment to finish this through, I don’t have an alternative contract in the pipe line!

The 8:00 PM meeting was a downer. Folks returning from two well attended positive public meetings being told that the plug had been pulled. I particularly felt bad for the local hire. She had been doing a great job. She was learning and growing and stretching beyond what she had done before and she too needs the money.

The Plan production Deputy was scheduled to go home for a three day weekend and I asked her to stay and help us button things up.

Allen Public Input

Saturday, February 4 – Thursday, February 9, 2006

We decided that since so many of the people who came to the open house were from Oberlin we needed to do more. So we set up mini versions of the open houses in the four other communities. Two on Tuesday night and two on Thursday.

On Tuesday night some 20 folks attended the Reeves Public meeting. Now this is quite impressive given that the total population of Reeves is about 350. On the other hand, in the largest city in the Parish (Oakdale) only a handful of people attended. We discussed this at our Capacity Working Group on Wednesday evening. The Oakdale Mayor, cited an over all lack of public interest, but it is also the case that he had forgotten about it until the last minute. In contrast, the Mayor of Reeves actively promoted the meeting and arranged for Pizza and drinks to be served.

A very interesting thing happened. This inspired the Mayor of Kinder – population 2,000. He arranged for Faustoe’s Restaurant to donate a buffet of traditional Cajun foods (including alligator) and had city staff actively recruiting people to attend. As a result over 35 people attended the meeting in Kinder. Including the moderate turn-out in little Elizabeth, approximately 70 people attended the four meetings bringing our total up to around 150 and significantly improving the geographic distribution.

One of the planners in the last group to arrive has been of great help in all of this. I had her coordinate the Open house, these public meetings and be the Plan Production deputy. In that capacity she is also assisting the Plan Production Deputy for Jeff Davis. She is great at seeing the big picture and juggling multiple tasks. She also has very good leadership skill. That makes splitting my time possible.

From Zero to 60

Friday, January 27 – Thursday, February 2, 2006

I have to get things moving in Jeff Davis and moving quickly. I started with a staff meeting on Saturday. On Monday I had a planning & orientation meeting with both Parish Teams. We defined who was responsible for each sector and established and schedule page for Jeff Davis similar to the Allen Calendar. Then I asked each person from Jeff Davis to shadow his/her counter part in Allen for the rest of the day.

On Wednesday, the GIS group representative was already planning to come out and we scheduled a “Brain Dump” day so that everyone on the Allen Team could share with each other and with the Jeff Davis team the documents and information they have collected as well as where they found it and tips on finding similar information in Jeff Davis.

The Allen Team continues to do great work and the Jeff Davis team is coming up to speed quickly.

The Director of Economic Development for Jeff Davis – something that Allen Parish does not have and could use – has filled in some of the vacuum by establishing a committee to provide input and by scheduling a series of public meetings around the Parish. I met with him and attended one of the public meetings. Due to staff limitations and the type of agenda differences you would expect, his approach is not quite the same as we need to take. I need the process to be much more actively participatory and move more quickly. I have asked the team to establish a working group in each of their area’s and hold the first meeting next week. I told them to build on but not be limited by what has been done so far. We need to do this in a way that makes it clear we are appreciative of the efforts previously made, that we anticipate a product that will be useful to all and that we are interested in a good partnership. I think the lack of a confident relationship between the Economic Development Director and the previous Parish Lead is on part of the problem in getting things moving.

I also had the Administrative Assistant set up meetings next week with the 5 mayors and the Parish Police Jury President, and to get us on all the council agendas. It will make for a busy week but we have only weeks to do this. There is some resistance to trying to create working groups and hold a meeting by next week, but people are doing it.

A Vote of Confidence

Friday, January 26th

This afternoon, I received a phone call from the Regional Lead. He had been in Baton Rouge for a management meeting. The effort in Jefferson Davis Parish to our south has not been able to generate traction. There is a lack of leadership and a shortage of staff. So they are sending out a largely new team of FEMA Technical Assistance Contractors (TACs) and have asked me if I can taking on being the Parish Lead in Jeff Davis in addition to Allen.

I see this as a vote of confidence and I am sure I can do it, but it is going to be a lot of work getting them caught up – even though they are starting very late they still have the same deadlines.

One great thing is that my Allen Team told me that they see this as a team assignment and anything they can do to help make the Jeff Davis team succeed and help me succeed, they are willing to do. That is a strong indication that I have a great bunch of people I am working with, that we have quickly formed into a functioning team and that they have confidence in me.

Jeff Davis is starting from a difficult place. They did have an Open House last weekend but only 18 people came.

In To Plan Production

Monday, January 22 – Thursday, January 25, 2006

Now the focus is on plan production. We have eight work groups set up and a schedule. The overall plan is to complete Plan Production by the end of February, do another Planning Day type set of Public Meetings on approximately March 11, and finish up the plans by around March 25th.

Communication is key. Lacking white boards, I have created a January, February and March calendar on flip chart paper. We have marked in the fixed dates like government meetings & holidays. For all of the FEMA deadlines and our own internal deadlines, we are putting them on square post-it notes so they can easily be shifted as things change.

I made up another one page Meeting schedule sheet and have asked folks to note any write any outside meetings other than work group meetings on a post-it and attach it to this sheet. Finally there is a forth sheet with a row for each of the work groups with columns for next meeting time / date and for meeting location.

These are all posted on the partitions at the back of the front conference area in the storefront. This seems to be helping keep everyone on track.

Another thing I have done is combine all the key information on day to day procedures from the multitude of e-mails and various documents into a field guide document complete with key phone-numbers, reporting deadlines & formats, etc. Again, trying to keep everyone on the same page with a minimum of communication. It seems to be working well and the folks in Baton Rouge seem happy with the work we are doing.

Recovery

Sunday January 21, 2006

Last night our Administrative Assistant had gotten tickets to Boxing Matches at the Casino. Several of us went over. I had never been to live boxing matches before. The card featured some bouts of different divisions including women and one championship fight. A few of us ended up sitting next to the Sheriff which made for an interesting and useful evening.

Sunday was supposed to be a day off, but most of the team came in anyway. They wanted to get their spaces set back up and get the results of the planning day completed. The results are very useful and interesting as to what people feel is a priority, what they treasure and what tough choices they would make.

Turns out that the average open house had about 100 people attend. We had 80, which is great for a small Parish like ours. My only concern is that almost all of the 80 were from the Oberlin area. We need better information from the other areas.