SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. – As we hit the height of hurricane season, leaders in Seminole County are planning for what factors may impact the cost of recovery.
Senate Bill 180, which was recently passed into law in Florida, is designed to help communities recover from storms faster in the future. It aims to improve emergency response and assist homeowners with rebuilding and permitting, but it also comes with some “unintended consequences.”
News 6 spoke with Alan Harris, Seminole County’s emergency manager, about the local impact of the new legislation.
“There are 50 different items that we have to go through to make certain that we have accommodated the new law, ” Harris explained. “Some of them are relatively simple activities, as an accredited organization we’ve done quite a few of them.”
One item that caught the Commission’s attention this week: new requirements for some disaster contracts. Harris said it’s something all 67 county emergency managers are concerned about because addendums to those contracts could come with added costs.
“While we understand that the bill is used to protect local governments and state government from private organizations that may not do what they say they will do in a contract, well-meaning organizations may still increase their contract costs to make up in case the unthinkable happened,” said Harris. “So, those are the unintended consequences.”
As commissioners consider added costs the county could be responsible for, they also must plan for what assistance may or may not be available for storm recovery.
“We have Senate Bill 180, but they haven’t even told us how they’re going to fund us. If FEMA is going to give them dollars or not, or whether the state’s going to be forced to fund our own FEMA-type organization. So, I think this is a wait and see,” said Chairman Jay Zembower.
If a storm were to hit now, Harris told News 6 it’s unknown what support the county would get.
“What we have heard though is very clear direction from the president of the United States that local needs to do more,” said Harris. “He said that multiple times. He’s also said that he wanted FEMA to do less and maybe even look at a completely new type of organization that maybe isn’t even called FEMA.”
Harris explained that there are multiple scenarios for what could happen, but the county does not know which one they will deal with.
“We don’t know if we’re going to get federally declared at all, and if we do it won’t be at 100%,” Harris told commissioners. “We’ve been told maybe 75, 25 and you may not even get that, right? And you may be a block grant, and you may not even get that.”
The county provided a graph that shows how costly hurricanes have been before. Hurricane Irma in 2017 was $23,331,960. In 2022, Hurricane Ian cost $15,156,024. Without FEMA or other funding, that’s money local taxpayers would have to provide.
“What we do to plan is we look at other parts of the country to see what’s going on. We look at the floods in Arkansas. We look at the floods that were in Washington to see what the federal government response to those were,” said Harris. “And, unfortunately in some cases, the federal government response was, ‘we won’t be providing any funding. It needs to be local.’”
Hurricane season runs through November 30.
“We don’ want to be the first one to be hit by hurricane, because we’re going to have to go through these trials and tribulations, and really through a lot of the unknown as we navigate this,” said Harris. “We’re going to do what ever is important to make sure that our residents are taken care of. No matter who pays the bill.”