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.
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.
posted by J Corlss at 3:17 PM
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