Town of Halifax, VT

MINUTES – Emergency Meeting

September 23, 2011

Call to Order

An emergency meeting of the Halifax Selectboard was held at Town Office to meet with FEMA’s Public Assistance staff in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Irene.  The meeting was scheduled to start at 8:30 amon Friday, September 23, 2011, but was not officially called to order until approximately 9:30 am, as the guests had not arrived as scheduled. Selectboard members in attendance were John LaFlamme, Lewis Sumner, and Edee Edwards.  Others in attendance were Christina Moore, Joe Tamburrino, Bradley Rafus, Everett Wilson, Richard Lindemuth from FEMA, and John Bennett of Windham Regional Commission.

New Business

The main point of the meeting was basic introductions of Richard Lindemuth of FEMA to the town of Halifax, and our preliminary damage assessments from Irene flooding.  John Bennett from WRC brought Richard over to Halifax, and left shortly after introducing him.

General discussion about Public Assistance in Categories A&B was held.  Richard said we could go ahead and bid out projects and contracting for permanent work and hazard mitigation at any time.  He noted a $1000 minimum cost threshold per road for reimbursement, but it might be possible to combine things.  Ditch repair is not clearly falling into category B mitigation.

Richard was trying to get a ballpark estimate of our total repairs.  We sketched out:

Gravel and labor costs to $4-4.5 million, based on the washout mapping done by Everett Wilson, at $23/cy for bank run gravel and $28/cy for crushed gravel; $120000 for culverts; and $1-1.5M for bridges, for a total of $5.25M-$6.25M+

Edee Edwards left the meeting at 10:30 AM.

Later in the day, Project Manager Christina Moore and Emergency Management Director Lewis Sumner, and Brad Rafus, Road Commissioner, went out with Scott Michalak and Jason Paolino with the US Army Corp of Engineers for a detailed assessment of the extensive damages to Green River Road.

No decisions were made or other actions taken.

The meeting was adjourned at approximately 11:30.

Respectfully submitted,

Edee Edwards, Selectboard member