Wayne County residents encouraged to attend hurricane recovery meeting
By From staff reports
Published in News on March 15, 2017 10:09 AM
Wayne County residents are being encouraged to attend a Thursday evening public meeting on damage, needs and strategies for redevelopment in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew.
The N.C. Resilient Redevelopment Planning meeting will be held at 7 p.m. in Room 101 of the Walnut Building on the Wayne Community College campus.
The meeting is being co-hosted by Wayne County and N.C. Emergency Management.
It will be conducted AECOM, a global infrastructure firm, that has been contracted to manage the process for N.C. Emergency Management. Christine Graziano is the lead planner for Wayne County and can be contacted at [email protected].
The purpose of Thursday's meeting is to introduce the community to the program and to get input on damages from the hurricane and what is necessary to rebuild, state officials said.
Public involvement is critical to the development of resilient redevelopment strategies specific to Wayne County and its communities and for inclusion in the final plan, the officials said.
The Resilient Redevelopment Planning program was created by the North Carolina General Assembly to deliver a roadmap for community rebuilding and revitalization assistance for the communities affected by Hurricane Matthew.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development required the state to adopt the Disaster Recovery Act of 2016 that included the Resilient Redevelopment Planning program, Wayne County Planner Chip Crumpler said.
It is designed for the 50 North Carolina counties hardest hit by Hurricane Matthew.
The Resilient Redevelopment Planning program is designed to empower communities across the state to prepare locally driven recovery plans that identify redevelopment strategies, innovative reconstruction projects and other needed actions, state officials said.
The redevelopment plans will be finalized in May. It will focus on residential houses, rental stock, jobs, infrastructure, ecosystem and business and economic growth, Crumpler said.
The planning process will be a highly collaborative effort and will entail discovery, analysis, collaboration and interaction with county officials, staff, municipal leaders and the public on damage, needs and strategies as well as discussion with subject matter experts and planners.
The objectives of the Resilient Redevelopment Planning effort are to develop strategic, resilient redevelopment plans and actions and define any unmet funding requirements needed to implement such actions after taking into account other funding sources.
The effort, and resulting resilient redevelopment plans, will be the foundation for any supplemental funding received through Congress, the North Carolina General Assembly and other funding sources.
These plans will also provide the foundation for the state's Recovery Action Plan that is required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development before the state can expend the funding received from the Community Development Block Grant -- Disaster Relief program, Crumpler said.