FEMA – 1, Local Government – 0

My weekend is going to be a lot less stressful than I had anticipated.  That would be because yesterday I mmade a reality chick and admitted there is no way I can get this FEMA grant done in time for Monday’s deadline.

I made that decision after spending Friday morning working on it and trying to get someone, anyone, at EMA headquarters for the state to answer a phone call.  You see, I still had questions.  Lots of questions.  And no one answered their hone.  And no one returned a call.  And I had to sit there and look at all the things I didn’t know and decide I can only beat my head against this wall for so long before I knock myself unconscious.

In the grand scheme of FEME things I cam not trying to procure alot of money – maybe $125,000.  But my gosh, this poor guy’s house gets flooded lamost every year.  Doesn’t that count for something?  I can’t figure a way around the fact he doesn’t show up in their flood plain, which doesn’t have a certified base level but doesn’t stop them for using it as Gospel.  Maybe there is a way, but until someone answers their phones and my questions I will never know.

So, I packed it all up and gave up.  What a discouraging feeling.

Meanwhile, the township’s fiscal officer is wading htrough paperwork to try and recoup about $50,000 in expenses to the township from the windstorm in September.  Her stack of paper is as thick as mine, but then I had a 40 page online application to deal using my stack of documentation and she “just” has to fill out the paperwork hiding among hers.  I ffel her pain.

FEMA is a four letter word to both of us.

A New Four-Letter Word

For those of you who think they want the government to provide their health care, boy do I have a word for you.  It has four letters and starts with “F.”

Yep.  That’s it.  FEMA.  As in the acronym for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.  I don’t want any government that invented this to have authority over my medical care. 

“Just fill out the online application and we will start treatment for your heart attack.  You’re number 437 for the next available computer.”

I have attended meetings on eligibility for FEMA flood grants, a workshop on how to do the required cost/benefit analysis, and one-on-ones with the homeowner we are trying to help.  The homeowner whose house has flooded five out of the last six years.  The homeowner whose house will probably continue to flood unless something is done. 

I have spent innumerable hours on the phone with various county and state employees, gleaning esoteric information they just have to have.  I have spent even more hours days actually working on the cost/benefit analysis software (give it an award for being some of the least user-friendly software invented by man) and the online grant application itself.  I am trying to get a grant to buy this house and tear it down, since changes in the watershed appear to have caused intractable flooding problems. 

The deadline is Monday, and it’s not looking good for getting it done by then.

I had Hope earlier in the day, until the newly certified first floor elevation reading showed the house is one foot too high to qualify.  You see, if your house isn’t in their flood plain you are out of luck.  It also doesn’t seem to matter that they themselves don’t have a certified base elevation for their flood plain to justify what is and what isn’t a flood area.

So I started in a different module of the program, using a USDA flood map and trying to justify the grant through repetitive losses.  That one came out even worse.  I need to talk to someone at state EMA tomorrow and see what I am doing wrong.  Maybe nothing.  Maybe this is what I get for all this work – booted before the project even qualifies to apply.

Oh, and let’s not even talk about the historic preservation/endangered species section.  I don’t think there are too many endangered species living in this guy’s yard, but who have I talked to in order to document that?  Where is my attached justification?  Not to mention that he lives near a historic road, for crying out loud.  I need documention to show that the project won’t have any adverse effect on the road.

I like a challenge, but I’ve decided that FEMA is the most bureaucratic agency I have ever dealt with.  I have dealt with a lot, and I haven’t found a federal one yet that is user friendly for the average person.

Keep that in mind when they start talking Universal Health Care.  In the federal government service doesn’t go to the person who needs it most, but to the one who knows how to work the system best.

If I were a drinking woman I would be hitting the bottle pretty hard right now.  Instead, I am going shopping.  Nothing like a little retail therapy.

It’s Voting Day in Ohio and the Machine Didn’t Work

My entire life I voted using a paper punch card ballot.  Quick, painless, reliable, and easily tabulated.

Then some presidential candidate in 2000 claimed that any little nick near his name was a vote that wasn’t counted, and we endured endless pictures of people staring at hanging chads, dented chads, and every other kind of chad you can image.  Why didn’t someone have the gumption to say “there are probably an equal number of voters who don’t know how to punch a ballot on both sides, so let’s just call it even.”

No-ooo.  The would-be-president was certain his voters were more inept and incompetent than the other guy’s voters, so they needed to keep looking for those “intended” votes, and only in the counties of his choosing, please.  To give him a better chance, don’t you know. 

Well, we all know how that ended, and that the media reviewed those outcomes for months and decided Mr. Sore Loser would have lost no matter how they had counted the votes.  They never really reported that though, since that wasn’t what they had hoped to find.  “Election Results Accurate” just wasn’t part of their game plan, and didn’t make nearly as good a story as “Election Stolen by Ignorant Reprobate.”

Anyway, to make a long story short, my nice dependable punch card ballots were deemed unacceptable because of this and I now vote on an expensive-to-operate-and-cumbersome-to-transport optical scan machine.  You just take a pen and fill in the bubble next to your preferred candidate’s name and stick it into the slot to be counted.  The slot of the optical scan machine that isn’t working today.

These machines tend to be reliably cranky, but today the machine for my precinct flat out went on strike.

First I got a call from my daughter, upset that the machine wouldn’t take hers and her husband’s ballots, as well as about half the others who voted while they were there.  They were instructed to put them in the “provisional ballot” slot to be tabulated later.

By the time I got there about fifteen minutes later the machine was accepting almost no ballots, then jammed and retired from service for the day. 

“Just put your ballot in the provisional slot,” I was told by my precinct worker/neighbor.

“Okay,” I croaked back, the laryngitis still strangling my speaking ability.  I then addid, “But the provisional slot is almost full and it is only 9:30 in the morning.  What will you do when it is full?”

Deer in the headlights looks all around.

“I don’t know what we’ll do, but they usually come out about halfway through the day and take the provisional ballots, so they’ll empty it then,” replied the same neighbor/worker.

“But it’s almost full now,” I press on.  “It won’t make it till halfway through the day.”

The workers acknowledge I am right, then tell me how they will have to somehow get the ballots through the machine to get an accurate count at the end of the day.  Or maybe they will bring them another machine in the middle of the day. 

Meanwhile, the machine beeps forlornly with annoying regularity, causing me to wonder how the workers will stand it for hours on end.  They can tape paper over its slot so no one tries to put their ballots in and have them counted, but they can’t get it to shut up.

Probably deep in its innards it is having a cup of hot cocoa and watching reruns of I Love Lucy or something.  And laughing.

Playing on the Black Notes

I had to get someone else to play the organ for me in church today – cold, laryngitis, fever etc.  All is not right with the world when I miss church, but sometimes life gets in the way.  Playing the hymns isn’t as important as not sharing the germs.

So, in celebration of Sunday I am giving you this gift.  It is an amazing performance by Wintley Phipps, an ordained minister and founder of The Dream Academy to help the children of convicts.  He understands history, but draws strength from it to move ahead rather than nurturing past wounds.

Mr. Phipps has performed for Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela as well as presidents Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George Bush.  Perhaps he will perform for our next president as well.

Watch and Learn While You Wait For It To Be Over

Wow, talk about your old cartoons, this one is ancient.  It would be politically incorrect to show this to children today, because it advocates capitalism.  Oh my gosh, we can’t have them learning about that!

h/t: mbg